Hebrew Ulpan at BGU

An "ulpan" is the Hebrew word for an intensive course in Hebrew to bring prospective immigrants or long term residents up to speed on the official language of Israel. Actually, Israel has two official languages, Hebrew and Arabic, but according to our teacher, and according to what I've seen, most non-Arabs do not take learning Arabic all that seriously. She told us that young people are much more likely to know English than they are to know Arabic.

Our first class was Sunday, November 16th. Classes meet on Sunday and Wednesday evenings from 5-8 pm. This is less than a traditional ulpan outside the university, which generally meets 5 days a week, for 4 to 5 hours a day. I was very impressed with our teacher, "Mrs. Hannah". She was born in Argentina, and moved to Israel 41 years ago. I would guess she's somewhere in her low to mid 60s, and I believe her claim that she has lots of experience teaching non-natives Hebrew. She is fluent in Spanish, English, and Hebrew, and also knows some Russian. I was quite impressed. She didn't do anything fancy, but the 3 hours went by quite quickly. We learned how to say Hello, my name is.., what's your name, etc.., as well as the expression for to like or not like something, that we are learning Hebrew, and that we speak any number of languages. In my case, that would be Anglit (English) and Germanit (German). The class has about 20 students, many from Russia or Ukraine, and also from Thailand, China, Canada, Peru, and of course, the U.S. We did not have class Wednesday evening, as Hannah told us that her grandson had just been born 4 days ago, and the 8th day is the traditional day for the circumcision ceremony, barring any medical complications that postpone the circumcision. Wednesday happened to be that day.

In a future post, I'll try to list some Hebrew phrases. The hard part is going to be not the speaking, but the writing, as not only do they write from right to left, instead of left to right like Europeans, Americans, and many others, but the Hebrew alphabet is a series of lines, dots, curves, and dashes. The alphabet has 22 letters. I have my work cut out from me, but it will be great if I can say something other than "Anglit??" or "Shalom" (Hello) or "Todah!" (Thanks!).