Colloquial Hebrew

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 Colloquial 8 9 10 Hebrew 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 4211 The Colloquial Series Series Adviser: Gary King The following languages are available in the Colloquial series: * Afrikaans * Japanese Albanian * Korean * Amharic * Latvian Arabic (Levantine) * Lithuanian * Arabic of Egypt Malay Arabic of the Gulf and * Mongolian Saudi Arabia * Norwegian Basque Panjabi * Breton * Persian Bulgarian Polish * Cambodian * Portuguese * Cantonese * Portuguese of Brazil * Chinese * Romanian * Croatian and Serbian * Russian Czech * Scottish Gaelic Danish * Slovak * Dutch * Slovene * Estonian Somali * Finnish * Spanish French * Spanish of Latin America German * Swahili Greek Swedish Gujarati * Tamil * Hebrew * Thai * Hindi Turkish * Hungarian Ukrainian * Icelandic Urdu Indonesian * Vietnamese Italian * Welsh Accompanying cassette(s) (*and CDs) are available for the above titles. They can be ordered through your bookseller, or send payment with order to Taylor & Francis/Routledge Ltd, ITPS, Cheriton House, North Way, Andover, Hants SP10 5BE, UK, or to Routledge Inc, 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001, USA. COLLOQUIAL CD-ROMs Multimedia Language Courses Available in: Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish 1111 2 3 4 5 6 Colloquial 7 8 9 10 Hebrew 11 12 13 14 15 The Complete Course 16 17 for Beginners 18 19 20 21 22 Zippi Lyttleton and Tamar Wang 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 4211 London and New York First published in 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Zippi Lyttleton and Tamar Wang This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-41352-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-24048-4 (book) ISBN 0-415-24049-2 (tapes) ISBN 0-415-30260-9 (CD) ISBN 0-415-24050-6 (pack) 1111 2 Contents 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Acknowledgements vii 12 13 Introduction 1 14 15 16 18Ú·¯È˙ ÂÏÎ˙«· Ï˜¯«‡ 17 Reading and writing Hebrew 18 19 224·È◊¯‡Ï ÙÈË¯ 20 Peter arrives in Israel 21 339Ï‰ÈÙ‚÷? ‡Ù÷¯ 22 Can we meet? 23 24 455Ù«Ù»Ï¯È˙ Ó‡«„ ÓÒÚ„‰ Ê‡˙ 25 It’s a very popular restaurant 26 27 572Â˙ÎÈ«˙ Ó÷ÙÁ‰ 28 Family and plans 29 30 692·˜È«Ô ˜ÈÈ«˙ 31 Shopping at the mall 32 7ÒÈ„»¯ÈÌ 113 33 Making arrangements 34 35 8»·ÊÓÔ ·„¯Í 132 36 On the road and on time 37 38 9··È˙ ÎÓ« ‡ÈÔ 157 39 Home Sweet Home 40 41 10Â˙¯·»˙ Ò¬«¯Ë 177 4211 Sport and culture v vi 11‰ÓÏÁ ÏÈÌ ·„¯Í 199 Driving down to the Dead Sea 12·Ó¯Ù‡‰ 218 At the doctor’s 13‰˜«„÷ ÚÈ¯ È¯»÷ÏÈÌ 238 Jerusalem the holy city 14Â˙˜˘«¯˙ ÚÈ˙«»˙ 258 Media and communications Key to exercises 272 Appendix l Transliterations for Units 10–14 326 Appendix ll Quick Grammar Reference 337 Appendix lll Prepositions Chart 348 Verb Glossary 350 Hebrew–English Glossary 371 Index 390 1111 2 Acknowledgements 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sincere thanks and appreciation are due to Sarena Alfandary for 10 her successful ‘matchmaking’ – working together on this project 11 was great fun; to Adam Albion, who generously gave of his time 12 to pilot our first few units – his encouraging comments and useful 13 suggestions were beacons of light in the early days; to Sally Levy 14 and Aviva Karlinski, who, despite the difficult times, provided 15 much needed back-up and encouragement from home ground in 16 Israel, with punchy names, jokes, realia and all kinds of informa- 17 tion; to Sally for her introduction to the Ulpan Akhvah in Rishon 18 Le Zion whose wonderful staff opened their doors and offered 19 important insights; to Zehavah Meyusef for her expertise in 20 Hebrew grammar and invaluable advice on colloquial and accepted 21 usage; to Harvey Miller and Ofra and Jeff Graham for commenting 22 on the completed draft; to Haya Vardy, illustrator, for her draw- 23 ings that so effectively animate the text; to Gary King, Series 24 Editor, Sophie Oliver, Language Editor, and Ruth Jeavons, 25 Production Editor, at Routledge, without whom this book would 26 never have been started, and very importantly, finished; to all 27 pupils, colleagues and friends whose helpful comments throughout 28 the writing were always greatly appreciated; and last, but of course 29 not least, to our long-suffering families and friends who put up 30 with us working into the small hours. 31 This book has seen us through sad times and happy, some of 32 the most painful times in the history of the Middle East, alongside 33 family celebrations and many vicissitudes of life and computers. 34 We hope this book will make a contribution towards broadening 35 communication and understanding, and we thank the very many 36 people who have encouraged us along the way and helped bring 37 it to fruition. 38 39 40 Tamar Wang and Zippi Lyttleton 41 4211 1111 2 Introduction 3 4 5 6 7 8 About this book 9 10 Colloquial Hebrew aims to teach Hebrew as it is spoken in Israel 11 today, to give you a level of competence to be able to travel around 12 and to converse generally on a range of topics. Being able to read 13 menus, road signs, posters, brochures as well as to catch snippets 14 of conversations, are part and parcel of this competence. It will 15 help you to understand, be understood and to feel more a part of 16 what is going on around you. 17 Each lesson or unit contains dialogues of everyday encounters 18 and situations, which introduce vocabulary and language points you 19 can practise in the exercises that follow. We hope our dialogues 20 will be entertaining as well as realistic and that you will find a good 21 variety of exercises to allow you ample opportunity to gain confi- 22 dence in your fast-growing skills. 23 We strongly recommend that you do all the exercises, as they 24 progress in difficulty, allowing you to learn step by step, and we 25 hope you will enjoy the journey to proficiency. At the end of the 26 book is a key so that you can check your answers. Some answers 27 to exercises will also give a transliteration and/or a translation, so 28 don’t give up if an exercise looks too difficult to decipher at first 29 sight! You will also find glossaries of vocabulary taught, together 30 with a grammar section, which draw together major points in 31 schematic form for easy reference. 32 Hebrew is a logical, elegant and highly accessible language. It 33 is a shame that the biggest stumbling block for many students 34 comes right at the beginning: at first sight Hebrew’s unfamiliar 35 alphabet may seem an insurmountable obstacle. Yet the Hebrew 36 alphabet is not as alien as it might appear, since it lies at the base 37 of English and other Indo-European languages. The names of the 38 letters in the English alphabet are remnants of old Hebrew words 39 representing the ancient letters. Hebrew is closely related to 40 ancient Phoenician; the ancient Greeks who traded with the 41 Phoenicians were the first to adopt their alphabet around 800 BCE, 4211 and added signs for vowels missing in the Semitic alphabet. Initially, Greek too was written from right to left like Hebrew, and 2 when they started to write from left to right some of the letters were turned around. Playing around with a couple of the Phoenician letters below, you will soon see the resemblance to the English letters we use today. Phoenician Roman A S So the Hebrew alphabet may not be as difficult as it looks. If you work slowly through the alphabet, describing each letter closely for yourself, you will soon find that you are reading with little difficulty. You may want to think about what the letter reminds you of: for instance, the letter L in Hebrew is Ï , which looks a bit like lightning, or maybe a llama; the letter d is „ which could be seen as a door-hinge; h is ‰ – a house with a hole in its wall; p is Ù , possibly a pug-dog’s face! You may prefer to give yourself aural rather than visual clues, or a mixture of both. We have tried to suggest mnemonics in our pronunciation guide, but you will learn most effectively when you find the ones that mean most to you. The accompanying tapes or CDs should help you too in associ- ating sound and symbol directly.

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