18/8/95

Bilingual triumvirate

I'm learning Hebrew from my children through a technique never taught in ulpan: humiliation.

    My Auntie Sarah once invented a word to describe the likes of us who are, as they say these days, multilingually challenged: "sesquilingual" -- speaking one and a half languages fluently.
    Having spent my first 25 years in Quebec, and the last 14 in Israel, my problem with extracurricular tongues has been more than merely academic. First with French and then with Hebrew, I have never had an easy time reading junk mail or arguing with a policeman. My conditioned reflex is such that, when I visit English-speaking countries, I automatically read only the bottom half of signs.
    I could only marvel -- but not adopt -- the attitude of a former colleague named Douglas who lived here for many years but never admitted to understanding even a word of the local lingo. He was quite adamant about it. If someone would say "Shalom" to him, he would respond, politely and Britishly, "I'm sorry but do you speak English?" When he was drafted into the IDF, everyone assumed he'd be cured of the condescending charade. Au contraire. At the end of the army's preparatory course, he was pulled aside by his sergeant, a strapping young sabra, who said to him -- frustratedly and in English -- "Dooglus, vy you do not lirn to spik Hibroo?" And the little fellow looked up and, staring his commander spit in the eye, explained: "Because, sir, anybody worth speaking to speaks English."
    I am especially confounded by the need, in both French and Hebrew, to apply gender to everything. Why a chair or an apple has to be male or female is beyond me. And why are specifically female things linguistically male, and vice versa? Who decided this, and based on what rationale? How silly to create a language with a word for everything except one for "it"!
    I gave up this battle of the sexes as far back as my ulpan days, deciding that I could communicate just as clearly if I stuck to one gender -- male, as it so happened.
    But then...
    Five years ago, while my wife was in the midst of giving birth to a few children, I had a most extraordinary thought. Two baby girls had already emerged, and during the 60 incredible seconds it took for the third to be plunged out, when I could have been overcome by any emotional outpouring, I actually said to myself: "If the next one's a girl, I'm gonna have to learn Hebrew gender." 
    I am proud to say that I am beginning to get the hang of it, because, as Ephraim Kishon so lyrically put it, "Hebrew is the mother tongue you learn from your children." I'm finally learning because my kids apply a technique  never used in ulpan: humiliation. My children, already (im)perfectly bilingual, think it's a riot that Daddy speaks like an idiot.
    It seems I embarrass them. I'll be chatting (in Hebrew) with the mother of one of their friends, and one of my little 'uns will tug at me and whisper "It's OK, Daddy, she speaks a bit of English."
    Or they'll be helpful and correct us: "No, Mummy, you have to say it like this: 'Or-r-r-r-li.'" I don't know from whom they inherited that authentic rolled R.
    My wife and I foresaw this problem even before the kids were born. When we were discussing what to name them, we agreed on a few rules: no cutesy rhymes (Huey, Duey, Luey); no themes (such as tree names); no Hebrew names that sound like English words (we couldn't have the grandparents in England introducing them around as "Door, Drawer and Udder"); no names that sound ugly in English (Osnat, Osrat, Smadar); and most important, no names containing a resh or chet: we didn't want names we couldn't pronounce ourselves.  (I still can't forgive my sister for naming my niece "Rahel" when her surname was already "Rahmani." It takes a talent I simply don't have to be able to reach down into the gullet and say her name without gagging or gurgling.)     

IT IS fascinating to watch children develop language skills. Without any formal training, they seem to pick up the rules and conventions of speech with breathtaking logic. I still recall with wonder an instance from early in their development. Odelia was trying to tear off a piece of paper, but the tear was anything but straight. "Oops," she said, "I teared it spoilily." Her grasp of syntax and adverbial principle floored me.
    At this age, they pick up the lingo strictly aurally -- with humorous, and insightful, results. My kids say "brop" instead of "bra," the more Englishly-sensible "snitchel" instead of "schnitzel"; and because of my wife's British accent they think our friend Ada is named after a cow's teat.
    They regularly speak of a "clo" as the singular of "clothes" -- as in: "There's still one clo on the clothesline." There's even more of it in Hebrew ("We had a shiur today, and it was nice but there was no singing."), and most evocatively, with body language (we were once walking past Kupat Holim. Nomi, recognizing it as the place where she went for a blood test, winced and said, "Ooooh, that building makes my toes curl.")
    In our case, with triplets in a mixed-accent marriage, we've observed three children learn individually and as a group -- not just English and Hebrew but also British and Canadian accents and vocabularies.
    I became aware of the complexity a couple of years ago. The kids were clamoring to get in the car, and I told them to wait a moment, I have to put some stuff "in the trunk." Little Donna piped up: "That's 'boot' in Hebrew."
    At a dance class, the teacher asked if there was anyone who didn't speak ivrit. A couple of newcomers put up their hands, as did one of the veteran students -- my Donna. "But I know you speak Hebrew," the surprised teacher said. "Only in kindergarten," Donna explained.
    When they began to pick up Hebrew in kindergarten, their English suddenly swerved and became affected by a heavy Israeli accent. My wife and I put a stop to that immediately, explaining that the two languages must be spoken differently. They had no trouble separating the two, but every so often they'll learn an English term from their Israeli classmates, and naturally classify it incorrectly.
    I once was called upon to referee a squabble between two of them, who were fighting over a toy.
    "Awright, what's it all about?" I said, pulling them apart.
    "Nomi took my prenjes," Donna bawled.
    "Your what?"
    "My prenjes."
    Even before they could fetch the object of their affections, I had guessed the word was not English, skimmed off the Hebrew accent, inserted the missing sounds and figured out they were fighting over "Power Rangers." You can imagine my joy.
    Their development in the two languages is not exactly parallel. They're still picking up the basics in kindergarten, while from the home they learn some real doozies because of our love of the English language.
    Donna had had a rough day at school and on the way home, was telling her mother about it. "Orli said I have to sit and l'rageh [to relax]. She said I should l'rageh until I could play nicely." With a sigh she added: "Mummy, what's 'l'rageh?' "
    By comparison, we've got them on a PhD level in the mother tongue. It was really only for our linguistic entertainment, and it was almost embarrassing when, on a recent visit to the doctor, Odelia recognized an instrument hanging on the wall. "Dr. Joe," she squeaked, "can I play with your sphygmomanometer?"