Learning the Lingo

It turns out that learning the lingo really is as hard as it seems. Yaakov and I are at an advantage having come to Israel with pretty good Hebrew, but we still have plenty to learn. It took a couple of weeks to understand what the cashiers were asking us every time we handed them a credit card, "tashlumim?" they would ask. We politely declined every time and as soon as we would leave the store we would turn to each other and ask, "whats tashlumim?" I don't know about you, but the last time I heard the word tashlumim was in Midreshet Lindenbaum, when we learned the Halachah about which prayers could be said at a later time if you missed it the first time around. Something was telling me that this was not what the Russian cashier at Supersol was referring to. Anyway, we finally learned that tashlumim means installments, because apparantly Israelis pay for absolutely everything in installments...

It was Meet the Parents Night, back in September, and one of th eparents of my class asked where I live, and I answered, and she explained that she also lives in Buchman. She proceeded to ask me what street, what building etc. Then she asked me if we were "merutzim". I didn't recognize the word, so I figured I'd use my survivial skills- quickly dissect the word, find the root and go from there. The problem was that the root of the word means want or desire. In the passive tense, which was the word she used, means "wanted or desirable". Was this lady asking me if I was wanted or desirable in my building? If my landlord liked us? How rude! In the half a second that it took me to think those thoughts, which in the end only paralyzed me, I figured I'd just be honest and say, "huh?" She explained, that merutzim means happy or content. The innocent woman just wanted to know if I was happpy in her neighborhood. Good thing I fought my initial instincts to bite her head off. That could've been really awkward...

Surprsingly I've had very few mess-ups at school in general, but this one was pretty embarassing: I was on recess duty when one of my students came to me saying she wasn't feeling well. She looked okay to me, so I told her to get a drink. Now, the word for water fountain is "beerzeyah". My intention was to direct her to the water fountain, but instead I told her to go get a drink from the duck-"barvaz". I think she's forgotten about it since, but I don't think I ever will...

I pulled up to the gas station and one of the gas girls (oh yeah, the people who work at the gas
stations are not creepy uneducated men. They're pleasant, young girls. really weird..) Anyway, she asked me if I "hidlakt"- which I interpreted as "have you lit the fire?". In a panic I said yes. Don't ask me why. I honestly had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. So I stayed there and waited for someone to fill my car with gas. She came over to me after and said, "you said that you hidlakt already!" I then learned a new word - l'heedalek-which happens to sounds an awful lot like l'hadleek, means to get gas.

In school I speak Hebrew all day, and sometimes I'll rack my brains for the right word, and then the other person will blurt it out before me- only its an English word that been Hebraisized!! Here's a couple of examples: concept, legitimacy, optmisitic...But the most confusing ones are the English words that are misused! Velcro is called "Scotch", "Tape" means a tape recorder, and Scotch tape is called "Niyar Devek". A stapler is a Shadchan, not to be confused with a matchmaker. And a marker is a Tush. It took me a couple of days to control myself from bursting into laughter everytime a kid would say "I lost my Tush". But I'm over it now. I think.