How good is your Hebrish?
By Herb Keinon

It happens to every English-speaking immigrant. You are in the middle of a Hebrew sentence, and all of a sudden find yourself groping for a word. For instance, you're talking about a politician and want to know what his appeal is. But instead of saying, ma ha'kesem shelo, you let something slip like, ma ha'appeal shelo.

But you don't say "appeal" like you would were you in Kansas, with a full-rounded "p." Rather you say something like a-peel, with a long "e" sound. You pray it sounds Israeli, and that the listener is worldly enough to know what the heck you're talking about.

Interestingly enough, native-Hebrew speakers play the same game. More than a century after Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's Herculean and successful efforts to revive Hebrew, and 52 years after the formation of the state, the number of English words that have crept into Hebrew is simply astounding.

Take the following example that Ruth Almagor-Rammon, Hebrew language advisor for Israel Radio, culled from the radio recently: "Once anahnu mekablim et ha'hatza'a ha so-called a'atra'tivit hazot, lo nuhal lenatseah et ha'mavak shelanu by hook v'uli gam lo by crook." (Once we accept this so called attractive proposal we will not be able to win our battle by hook or by crook.)

Almagor-Rammon admits this is an extreme example of "Hebrish" spoken not by a child of American immigrants beseeching his parents to "pass the tapuhei adama (potatoes)," but rather a public figure giving a lecture to lawyers. Yet turn on the radio, watch the television news, look at advertisements in the Hebrew press or even just talk to your neighborhood grocer, and you can only be amazed by the amount of English that has insinuated its way into the language.

CONSIDERING the number of Russian-speaking immigrants who have arrived over the last decade, one would think it logical that the language applying the heaviest pressure on Hebrew would be Russian, not English.

By the same token, there are about half as many native Amharic speakers here as native-English speakers, so some tiny amount of Amharic influence could be expected.

But with the exception of nash kontrol, an expression meaning "under our control" that gained currency during the elections thanks to an Yisrael Ba'aliya campaign advertisement last year, few Russian words have slipped into the vocabulary over the last decade. And as far as Amharic is concerned, just ask yourself how many Amharic words you have picked up since the Ethiopian Jews began arriving in large numbers in the early 1980s. For instance, how do you say "yes" in Amharic?

The reason for this imbalance has to do with the prestige attached to English, a prestige not associated with Russian, and definitely not with Amharic, says Amnon Shappira of the quasi-governmental Hebrew Language Academy that coins new words and tries to direct the development of Hebrew.

"In certain circles, the feeling is that using English words adds to your prestige. If someone wants to show that he is intelligent, he will use an English word, not a Russian one. Using a Russian word is only done if someone is trying to be funny," says Shappira, one of a team of linguists working on a 41-year old project called the Historical Dictionary Project that aims to chart the development of every Hebrew word ever written.

Besides, says Ronit Gadish, the Hebrew Language Academy's academic secretary, English is not penetrating Hebrew by way of English-speaking immigrants. It is not as if words like "delay," "extra," "rating," or "sitcom" can be traced to English-speaking pockets in places like Ra'anana, Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem, or Omer.

IN THE early days of the language's revival, Russian and Yiddish played a dramatic role because those speaking and writing modern Hebrew were native Russian or Yiddish speakers. Today, English words are not becoming part of everyday Hebrew use as a result of a conversation between a native-Hebrew speaker and an immigrant from Illinois who said he saw a sitcom gadol emesh (a great sitcom last night).

Rather these words enter the language because the native Hebrew speaker watches CNN, surfs the World Wide Web, and goes to see movies like American Beauty. A greater amount of English words are influencing the language because more Israelis are being exposed, through these channels, to English.

English words, says Gadish, are used by Israelis to spice up their sentences because English "represents America, prestige, a pinnacle, and it is also thought of as a way to show a form of cosmopolitanism." If in the past these words were used primarily by higher socio-economic groups who were more exposed to English, today these words - thanks to television talk shows - are out there in the public domain for everyone to hear and mimic. LANGUAGES, all languages, are influenced by each other, points out Chaim Cohen, a lecturer on Hebrew language at Tel Aviv University and editor of a quarterly published by the Hebrew Language Academy called Leshonenu Le'am.

Take, for example, the increasing phenomenon of English words appearing in Hebrew print advertisements. Last month a full page Kitan ad on the back of Yediot Aharonot's Friday magazine plugged linens, with one particular type of towel spelled out in English, "Ocean."

This, Cohen says, is not something unique to Israel. "The minute you see the word 'Ocean,'" it gives you the feeling that it is a higher-quality product. The consumer sees the word 'Ocean' and it looks like something American, even though it is manufactured in Kiryat Gat. I imagine the same is true in Burma and in Taiwan. I also see it even in Arabic papers, like An-Nahar, though to a lesser degree."

Tel Aviv media consultant Roni Rimon says the same principle applies when giving buildings English names. "Look at Century Tower in Tel Aviv, or Airport City [a planned complex near Ben-Gurion Airport]. We have a tendency to think that things with an international connotation are better. And international is American. It is part of a psychological feeling that what is American is good."

According to Cohen, there is no real way of preventing this linguistic tango. "I don't think it is possible to prevent the influence of one language on another when there is close political and cultural connections between the people speaking them. A linguist does not speak in terms of whether this is desirable or not, but rather in terms of what is happening."

TO SEE how other languages impact on on each other, one need look no farther than the amount of Yiddish expressions and words that have crept into English. And if one gets a tickle and degree of satisfaction hearing non-Jews use words like plotz, shtick, spiel, kibitz, or meshugane, then why not get an equal thrill out of hearing Israelis use words like "cool," "fun," "delay," "toast," or "happy end" in the middle of their sentences.

The reason has to do with values. From the beginning, Hebrew was more than just a language, it was also a value - part of the historic effort to bring a dispersed people back to its ancient land. It was tied up with Zionism, draining swamps, Jaffe oranges, creating a new Jew.

As such, for many there is something unseemly about the English encroachment on Hebrew. "The revival of Hebrew was part of the Zionist enterprise," says Cohen. "This use of English might be one of the symptoms of post-Zionism."

In Cohen's mind, the Americanization of Hebrew poses no real existential threat to the language as a living, thriving tongue. Indeed, he says, there has never before been so many people - some five million - who speak Hebrew as their primary language. Nor has there ever been a time when nearly a million non-Jews - Israeli Arabs - also speak it fluently.

The Americanization of the language does not represent a retreat from Hebrew, but rather a retreat from Hebrew as a Zionist value, he maintains. "My parents came from Europe, raised a family here, and spoke Yiddish between them," Cohen says. "But with me they didn't speak Yiddish, only Hebrew. That was the attitude then. If they would have spoken to me in Yiddish, their neighbors would have looked at them funny."

Rimon says that not only has the value of speaking Hebrew changed, but so too has the value of speaking proper Hebrew. Or, as Shappira says, "there has been a decline in Hebrew's prestige," to the advantage of English.

"There is more usefulness in English, and less of a stress on transmitting culture - even Hebrew culture - for its own sake," Shappira maintains. "Now the goal is to succeed, and it is easier to succeed in the big world with English."

Rimon remembers the days when "it was seen as horrible for someone to say eser (10) instead of asara. But today nobody cares. And I'm not talking about immigrants, but native Hebrew-speakers. There is a lack of seriousness about the language that I don't like."

Rimon - like Cohen - links the changing attitudes toward Hebrew to post-Zionism. "Over the last 50 years, since the establishment of the State, we have lost the importance of values, and have turned into a nation without values. Now there is a value to only one thing - money."

Creeping Hebrew annexation of English words can be seen as part of this same phenomenon, he says. "The only thing that matters today is whether something sells, period. If using English sells, then do it, it doesn't matter if it sounds good or not, or if it is right or wrong. The marketing manager is not thinking about what using English will do to the language, but only how to sell more."

PROPER HEBREW usage may well not be foremost in the minds of the country's advertising executives, but it is something that does concern Ruthie Almagor-Rammon. One of her jobs at Israel Radio is to go over every advertisement to be broadcast to make sure the Hebrew is correct.

Almagor-Rammon, who has been a language arbiter with the Israel Broadcasting Authority since 1971, says in the past she was much more didactic, and would send advertisements back for a reworking if they were full of foreign words. But those days are long gone.

"Times change, language changes, the radio changes," she says. "Once all the texts broadcast were written, and it was possible to go over everything. But now you have all types of radio hosts, and there is much more improvisation."

Recently an automobile spot came across her desk for a car that had the reader saying it has automatic and sporty "gears," using the English word for "gear," rather than the Hebrew word hiluchim.

"I changed it to hiluchim," Almagor-Rammon says. "But the company called and asked that "gears" be put back in because they want the speech to sound authentic, and no one says hiluchim. So we put it back."

Almagor-Rammon, who writes the popular Rega shel Ivrit (A minute of Hebrew) segment that is broadcast every afternoon on Reshet Bet, does not feel Hebrew is threatened by the introduction of English words. In her mind the threat comes from changing the language's structure.

"Hebrew is strong enough and mature enough today that the influence of foreign words is not that harmful - so what if there is another Hebrew or Arabic word in the vocabulary. Everyone realizes it is an English or Arabic word, and the language is not harmed. But if you start to break the grammatical structure, then you begin to endanger the language."

To a certain extent, Almagor-Rammon says, this structural change is taking place. For example, she says, it is now common for people to say, lenatzeah et ha mishak, which is a direct translation, preposition and all, from the English "to win the game." The proper Hebrew, she says, is lenatzeah b'mishak.

What's the difference?

Well, she says, it would be structurally equivalent to Israelis saying in English "I arrived to Jerusalem," rather then "I arrived in Jerusalem." "It grates on the ear," she says.

"When a language influences the prepositions, that is already an influence that goes to the very soul of the language, it is beyond just using words like "cool" or "easy," Almagor-Rammon says.

"The structure of a language is its skeleton, but also its soul - when you break that, you lose what uniquely characterizes the language. You use the words, but construct them along the lines of a different tongue. The beauty of a language is in the structure, the syntax, the grammar."

ANOTHER good example of how English is affecting Hebrew syntax, is the through the use of the English verb "to take."

"In English you use the verb to take for everything," Almagor-Rammon says. "You take a chance, take a shower. We now have a direct translation of that in Hebrew. People now say lakahat sikui, to take a chance, which is not proper Hebrew usage."

Yiddish, which has had an enormous impact on Hebrew, is the last language to have had such a structural influence on Hebrew. Many common expressions in Hebrew are direct translations from Yiddish, using a grammatical structure that is indeed foreign to Hebrew.

The best proof of this, says the Hebrew Academy's Shappira, is that people use expressions that are directly borrowed from Yiddish, thereby changing Hebrew's grammatical structure without knowing they are even doing it.

For example, he says the expression koev li ha'rosh (my head hurts), is directly borrowed from Yiddish, with the proper Hebrew being roshi koev. Another good example is the popular expression, al tebalbel li et ha'moah (don't drive me nuts). Proper Hebrew syntax would read, al tebalbel et mohi.

WHETHER the frequent use of English words is good or bad for the language "is a question of taste," says Shappira.

Rimon agrees. "I can't say unequivocally one way or the other whether I like English words in Hebrew sentences or not. Sometimes it seems natural because English is a richer language, and often you can say in one English word what in Hebrew would take three or four. But other times I don't like it, because it sounds as if the person speaking is trying to show that he knows two words in English."

In fact, Rimon says he advises clients - be they politicians or business people - to cut the English out of their speech, so they are not perceived as trying to come across as elitist.

Shappira, for his part, cringes at Israeli Hebrish. "It gives me a strange feeling to sit with a letter from Ben-Gurion University that has a logo featuring the letters in English "BGU." I know that it is part of an attempt to be part of the big world, not provincial, but it gives me a strange feeling. I reject it. It is a value thing."

Shappira's rejection of English words does not, he admit, extend to the occasional use of a Yiddish or Arabic word in his speech.

"It is the English that bothers me, and not because I am a Hebrew purist. I see a cultural enemy in English, that I don't see in Arabic and Yiddish," he says. "It may have to do with an anti-snobbism. I think the use of English words in Hebrew is snobby."