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18 Sivan 5759, June 2, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family

Speaking Hinglish
by Miryam Bat Ne'eman

On my first trip to a supermarket to prepare for our first Shabbos in Israel, I encountered the phenomenon known as Hinglish. Most Israelis speak some and the more intellectual and highly educated they are, the higher the incidence of Hinglish in their Hebrew.

I entered the supermarket with trepidation. How would I make myself understood if I wanted an item that wasn't sitting on the shelf clearly labeled and reasonably familiar (like ketchup)? All went well until I reached the vegetable and fruit department. I selected what I needed by sight but didn't see any celery for my soup and salads. Taking courage and putting on a brave smile, I approached a dark gentleman with a large black mustache and glowing eyes to match and described very clearly what I had in mind. Using large hand motions and speaking loudly, because that's what we do when want to be understood, I told him it was something green and very long with curly leaves at the end and its raw state made a noise like crunch. [Ed. How did she get that across?]

"Oh!" he said, beaming, and very natural. "You're looking for CELERY." Only later did I learn that it did have a hardly-used Hebrew counterpart - karpas amerikai.

Sometimes you need a little imagination to stretch the Hinglish to its pidgin adapted form. For example, when I went to have my car inspected, I already knew about breksim, the pedal you step on to stop the car (the counterpart of pedalim on bicycles), and vinker, the blinky-winky thing that lets people know you're turning. But the young Arab worker who was checking my braking ability on the rollers kept screaming, "UMBREKS, UMBREKS." At the braking point, myself, I finally picked up on his hand motions and pulled up the handbrake. Compared to that, eggsozz, which I almost mistook for an egg- cream, the New York soda fountain favorite which does not contain egg but whose Hebrew version did sound to me like egg plus gazozz, was a cinch for the car's `exhaust'. After finally figuring out that one, I was temporarily, mentally eggsozz.

By a slight mispronounciation or a misplaced accent, just about anyone can learn to speak this language. Ven-ti- lah'-tor should be easy. According to logic and the way we are taught Hebrew, a microwave oven should be called a tanur galim. No way. It may have a Hebrew name, but everyone I know calls it a meecro. It may take time, though, to get used to the misplaced teminology like tape, which refers to the tape recorder, not the tape cassette, which, interestingly enough, uses the Hebrew kaletet. As for radio, telephone and FAX machine, you'd be looked at very strangely if you used their Hebrew equivalents - and they do exist. `Telephone' and `Fax' are so Hebrew, in fact, that they are conjugated in grammatical verb form: (lefaxses).

All of the words for feelings and concepts can surely be expressed in beautiful Ivrit, many times using words that are familiar to us from the Torah or the siddur. But the Israeli who wants to be known as a man of the world will surely use the English word with the addition of the `ia' suffix, so that his speech is peppered with mongrelized words like communicatzia, motivatzia and, of course, Protektzia, with a capital P.

So if anyone reading this is thinking of coming on aliya and is concerned about his lack of a Hebrew vocabulary, have no fear. Just mispronounce your English, put the accent on the wrong syllable, add a Hebrew suffix, soften the vowel like in texi, and everyone will think you're part of the Intelligentsia.

 

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