Many Americas consider or assume a person stupid if they can’t read or write English. They often get upset if two foreigners are talking among themselves in their native tongue, “You’re in America, talk English or go back home!” Well, here in Israel I’m the dumb foreigner. People tell me all the time, “You’re in Israel; you need to learn to talk Hebrew!” No ones told me to go home, at least not to my face. Being 6’4 ¾” guess people figure I can go and come as I please (smile).
Even the few Hebrew words I’ve managed to pickup for ‘toilet’ and ‘water’ are hard to understand when people speak Hebrew with Russian, Ethiopian, Chinese, French, Romanian, German, etc, accents.
I’m even having major problems with English! You see, the few people I run into that speak English usually have a very limited vocabulary on top of one of the above accents.
In broken English and sign language, I’ve been asked “How tall are you?” When I answered 6’4 ¾” they didn’t know what I meant. If they’d ask me my weight in broken English, I couldn’t answer even that! We can’t even make small talk about the weather because they know about as much about degrees F and I do degrees C. I couldn’t tell you how far point A is to point B. Grams, centimeters, meters, kilometers, liters…I couldn’t even tell you my shoe size!
If you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you think I was stupid? To tell you the truth, if I didn’t know what was going on, I would!
Seems that the few English speaking encounters I’ve had were with people talking a different type English, the Queen’s English vs. American English. I’ve had to sifter through words like: lift – an elevator, boot – car trunk, queue – a line, round about – a traffic circle, car smash – car accident, W.C. (water closet) – bathroom, toilet - bathroom.
The other day I was thinking about making ‘Certificates of Appreciation’ for the Ethiopian youth group acknowledging their outstanding contributions during 2003. Then it dawned on me that in the Queen’s English ‘outstanding’ means unfinished or pending, and wouldn’t sound right.
The last straw was a newspaper article I was reading. It was about a feud between Settlers, Palestinians, and olive trees. I found the article interesting and wanted to know all the details but I didn’t know what a ‘dunam’ was.
This inspired me to write a program that will convert dunams to acres, etc, etc. I now know that I’m 1.95 meters tall, I weight approx 61.24 Kg, my shoe size is 46, and the cost of gasoline (4.57 shekels per liter) is $3.91 per gal. Yes, now I can chit chat about the weather and complain about the high gas prices!
P.S. I only associated olive trees with Bible stories. But like my t-shirt says, “Israel Is Real”. Olive trees are not just found in the Bible nor do they simply make a nice photo shot for tourist, they are a way of life!
Remember to keep all the stuff straight. I’m not 1.95 feet tall, weighting 61.24 lbs, with size 46 feet! ():)
():) = a smiling face with a kippah
Say! I just finished drinking 330 ml of coke in one setting. I drank that much? After crunching numbers and doing the math I was relieved to find out that it only came up to 11.16 oz. Hmmm!
Edwin Beckford
December 2003
