Visiting South Africa - any places I should visit for shave stuff?

Hebrew is very difficult for most people to learn because of the alphabet, the guttural pronunciation, and the grammar as well as Israelis tend to speak it very fast. The only people who can learn it without much difficulty are Arabic and Aramaic speakers. Ethiopians who speak Amharic can learn it also fairly easily because Amharic is also a Semitic language so there are quite a few common points. A friend of mine is originally from Italy and he moved to Israel for sixteen years because of the work he was doing and although his Hebrew is fluent he still doesn't have the accent quite down pat because he didn't learn the language when he was young. I know a Congolese girl who told me that she wanted to learn Hebrew and she asked me if I thought it was possible for someone who's not Israeli or Jewish or who has no background in the language or Judaism to learn Hebrew with a real Israeli accent. I told her that if she put in the time to study the language she could learn a good Hebrew but she'd be asking too much of herself to get the accent 100% because it's completely different from any language spoken in Congo. In fact, even among Israelis there are some different accents - for example Israelis of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Yemenite, Iraqi, Iranian, or Turkish origin don't have the same accents as Israelis of Russian, Polish, Romanian, German, Austrian, or Hungarian origin. The strange thing about myself is I'm of Russian origin but my appearance would lead people to think that I was either from North Africa, Lebanon, or Egypt and many times in Israel I've been asked if I was Yemenite. Even when I speak Hebrew I don't sound like I'm of eastern European origin. My wife looks and sounds pure Moroccan. We're a very mixed people!

 

The alphabet may be different from the Roman and therefore initially intimidating, but as I'm sure you know it's actually the simplest, most consistent writing system there is, as even the most bored 12 year old American Jewish kid could attest.

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In many ways the Hebrew alphabet is very close to Arabic which I also read perfectly. Arabic is slightly more complicated but once you catch on you don't forget. I also read Amharic, Farsi (the Arabic alphabet), and Armenian which use two completely different alphabets. Amharic is difficult yet it's very consistent. The pronunciation is also similar in many ways to Hebrew. Armenian took me a while to learn to read because although at a quick glance it seems to look a little like Amharic, it's VERY different. The Armenian language is not too hard to learn how to pronounce but the grammar is very complicated because it's not really related to any other language. It's definitely not Semitic but where the roots come from only an Armenian would know. Farsi is much easier to learn to speak because the roots are Indo-European. As I said, it uses the Arabic alphabet but there are a few extra letters which don't exist in Arabic.

 

I lived in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1999/2000 - for almost 18 months. I learned a lot of Hebrew - certainly enough to get fed and watered and also the alphabet, I thought was quite easy for printed material. A different story for handwriting.... I have not used it for so long that I forgotten most of it though. Pity!!

 

BTW I lived in Libya too from 1992 to 1993 and found Arabic text much harder.

 

I was speaking Arabic yesterday to one of my neighbors who's Lebanese and she's from the region near Zahle. Their dialect is different than what you'd hear in Beirut, and she was shocked that I was speaking it to her with their accent and their expressions.

 

Please do so. I have several acquaintances in SA who are lifelong residents who are looking to leave. I have been Johannesburg and Pretoria, but it has been a number of years.

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