The Epiphany
When I was a youngster, many years ago, I had learned how to read Hebrew. In fact, I was beginning to not just learn how to sound it out, but I was learning how to actually understand it enough to write some short materials. This was mainly of interest when we went to Temple which I did up through most of high school.
But then for many years we drifted away from involvement in doing anything except reading some of the passages on certain holidays that were essentially ingrained. So around 1990 we decided it would be good to visit Israel and at that point I decided it would be nice to see if I could actually learn to read again. So I picked up a book to teach me Hebrew really quickly. Well it was really much slower than I imagined.
We decided to take a tour so I would now be able to sit on the bus and gaze out at the signs and landscape. By the time we got to Israel I had not really progressed very far, but I was intent on trying to make progress.
As we drove along the highway we would see signs for the next city which were in both English and Hebrew with letters the same size. I started to try to read the Hebrew. And so began an interesting feeling. Try to follow this by slowly sounding out as I tried to read the city: Teeeee Ehhh LLLL AHHH VVV EEEE VVV . And we were way past the sign now. What was that?
When I looked up on the next sign and saw the English I read it immediately as TEL AVIV which you too would be able to read instantly. You are not trying to sound out each letter as you go through those characters. You would see that Hebrew characters are very different from the letters we use every day. And just as you instantly recognize the difference between an E and an F or a P and an R even though each of those pairs are only distinguished apart by a single line. The same is true with Hebrew letters. But until you can catch them in total combination you will sound them out one character at a time.
And this went on for day after day and sign after sign.
Once I got a fair degree of comfort with the capital letters I realized that I had serious problems with lower case and even worse script or unusual fonts.
So what was the Epiphany? - Think of the problem of learning a new language.
But then for many years we drifted away from involvement in doing anything except reading some of the passages on certain holidays that were essentially ingrained. So around 1990 we decided it would be good to visit Israel and at that point I decided it would be nice to see if I could actually learn to read again. So I picked up a book to teach me Hebrew really quickly. Well it was really much slower than I imagined.
We decided to take a tour so I would now be able to sit on the bus and gaze out at the signs and landscape. By the time we got to Israel I had not really progressed very far, but I was intent on trying to make progress.
As we drove along the highway we would see signs for the next city which were in both English and Hebrew with letters the same size. I started to try to read the Hebrew. And so began an interesting feeling. Try to follow this by slowly sounding out as I tried to read the city: Teeeee Ehhh LLLL AHHH VVV EEEE VVV . And we were way past the sign now. What was that?
When I looked up on the next sign and saw the English I read it immediately as TEL AVIV which you too would be able to read instantly. You are not trying to sound out each letter as you go through those characters. You would see that Hebrew characters are very different from the letters we use every day. And just as you instantly recognize the difference between an E and an F or a P and an R even though each of those pairs are only distinguished apart by a single line. The same is true with Hebrew letters. But until you can catch them in total combination you will sound them out one character at a time.
And this went on for day after day and sign after sign.
Once I got a fair degree of comfort with the capital letters I realized that I had serious problems with lower case and even worse script or unusual fonts.
So what was the Epiphany? - Think of the problem of learning a new language.