1:2 The Alef Bet, Men and Women (Monday, October 10, 2005)

My newly acquired skill: to beable to order falafel and humus in the most polite and appropriate forms.

I have been at an ‘ulpan’ since July, this being a place that one learns Hebrew having made ‘Aliyah’ (this being “Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel”, Wikipedia encyclopedia).

Hebrew is an interesting language. Despite the fact it has developed upon biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Babylonian and other ancient languages, gender somehow worked its way into the equation and played a defining part in determining its formation.

Now, I am sure in ancient times people had already determined that men and women just don’t talk the same language. I am assuming the whole men are from Mars and women are from Venus theory existed in some form back then. However, this conflicting relationship just seemed to work its way through to communication, and gender was incorporated into the construction of the Hebrew language.

This certainly did not make things easy for me. For example, I can say the word ‘love’ in about a thousand ways, including: masculine singular, masculine plural, feminine singular, feminine plural, as a noun, as the root of the verb; past masculine singular, past masculine plural, past feminine singular, past masculine plural, future forms, imperfect form and the list is endless. Why can’t love just be simple … men always seem to know how to complicate the situation.

The difficulities of the Hebrew language didn't end there. You may be thinking, it can't be that hard, it must be the same pattern to say each verb, for example to say I love, I hate. Oh well, uh oh, no pattern at all. Each bloody single verb is part of one of the plentiful, complicated groups that exist, each having its own pattern of how they are constructed, spelt and pronounced. On top of that, there are the thousands of bloody exceptions, just to throw a spanner in the pipeline (English phrase), the logic explained by my teacher as ‘Cacha Cacha’, i.e. just because.

Conclusion to my dilemma: I wont be surprised once having ordered my falafel and humus that the guy at the counter asks if I had a sex change.

(No I haven’t ... but if you haven’t got the last line, please read again, this time slowly!!)