Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Fun with Hebrew

[In Aroma]

Yaakov: Did they call your name?
Me: Yes
Yaakov: What did they say?
Me: Gila
Yaakov: So they spoke in English?
Me [pausing to digest that]: Well, my name is the same in English and Hebrew.
Yaakov: So is mine. [Pause] Well, in English it's "Yah-kove" and in Hebrew it's "Ya-ah-kohv."

*********************************************
The Heblish phrase of the moment that's getting my goat (לוקח את הגדי שלי?) is:

"That kid is the lowest kid in my class."

No, they do not mean that this kid cheats on tests, steals other kids' chummus sandwiches or rips up their Supergoal cards (although I would not be surprised if ripping up Supergoal cards was part of the game, since my children hit, blow and spit at them. Oh dear, did all the cards get lost in the move? Shame, that.)

They mean he is short, נמוך. But it sounds so wrong.

Also, has anyone ever noticed problems with Angli-vrit? Not once have my kids said, "הילד הזה קצר מאוד"



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the first part of this post. Didn't you use your Coffee Name?

Gila Rose said...

I can't use a coffee name with a straight face.

OneTiredEma said...

I can't use a coffee name either. Even though at least 50% of the time I have to repeat my actual name.

As far as namuch/katzar I think it's just your English bias--because we use the same word for both. But I think perhaps katzar is more for length/width and namuch for height, if that makes sense. Which OMG OF COURSE IT DOESN'T and now I am going to go rock myself in a corner.

Donny said...

I'm all in on coffee names, of course. Sometimes, I even use it in the US and get frustrated that it doesn't work...