Monday, August 24, 2009

New Cassette Player

I AM PROUD OWNER of a brand new cassette player from Argos the shop that sells everything ~ in order that my hardcore Hebrew
הכלב צ'יקו הגיע אל המרפאה בגלל בעיות קשות וגירוי חריף באזור פי הטבעת
can make some sense to me. The course is so oldfashioned it's on cassette only. Two of the books are exclusively in
לפני שבוע עברנו מסימילאק(טופ 3) למטרנה (שלב 3), היתה ליובל בשבועיים לפני כן קיבה רכה פה ושם, אבל גם קיבה קשה ולא שלשול.
So now I'm £23 lighter and (hopefully soon shall be) a one stately language of modernity and antiquity heavier.
So I sincerely hope, at least.
As I mentioned before, I have already familiarized myself with the Hebrew alphabet, both in printed and "script" forms. The printed letters are those in scribal forms, as used in most newspapers and books. "Script" letters are derived from 19th century Yiddish handwriting ~ they differ just as much (if not more) from printed letters as does the Russian alphabet than ours. It took me more than a week just to get a rudimentary reading knowledge of Hebrew but I'm glad I bothered as the course I'm now using barely troubles to teach the alphabet before launching directly into what appear to me to be quite sophisticated dialogues with no transliteration whatsoever. The one concession to the learner is that dialogues are printed out "pointed" # that is with vowel dots under the letters, rather than unpointed whch wd lk smthng lk ths but it's the way Hebrew-speakers have always preferred to jot down their tongue ... What I'm glad of is that this new alphabet book gives an accepted way of copying down Hebrew letters in standard printed form ~ the way you might wish to write on a public notice or poster for example. There are too many similar-looking letters to reliably invent one's own style of characters without fear of creating absolute confusion in the eyes of a native Hebrew-speaker (if they were unfortunate enough to clap eyes upon my notebook-doodlings.
Anyway it's past 2pm and I must dash. Busy busy busy! Never a moment to spare today. Which could put me in a very bad mood if I let it but I'm keeping positive. So cheery-o now y'all!!

4 comments:

  1. Well you know the old saying "The devil makes work for idle hands" so keep busy, busy, busy! LOL

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  2. I have only one thing to say to you, Gleds. Wow, I'm impressed...you're one motivated little Vegemite, aren't you? Congratulations on what you're doing.

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  3. AKELAMALU: definitely!

    PUSSINBOOTS: what I don't understand is how I used to take out Linguaphone courses from the library years ago (the full-on proper hardcore version not crappy own-brand) and usually not get past the first lesson and when I DID get stuck into 2 of them, only made it halfway before getting sidetracked ... Now I feel totally motivated, but I couldn't say why ...

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