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Home
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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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