Look, it should surprise no one that there's a certain, perfectly serviceable (if somewhat antiseptic) lexicon you learn in Ulpan (Hebrew school) and an entirely different, juicier, and plain old nastier set of words you learn just being out and about in the city--fending off guys at the bars, elbowing your way to the front of the Sabieh line (Oh, Sabieh, if heaven could be contained in a pita it would taste just like you.), listening to the chants and boasts of the fruit sellers at the shuk, and separating two warring kita hey (6th grade) boys after their insults give way to blows.
These are some of the latter:
"Die!": One of the most jarring exhortations to hear directed your way when you're a new Hebrew speaker, the homonym actually means, "Enough (already)!" It's a good word to know if you're regularly required to quiet classrooms of screaming children, but also effective when hissed at a hovering makeup counter lady. Apparently it's also the command Israeli dog-owners use to quiet their barking dogs, but since mine is hopelessly monolingual (on his best days) I don't have any first-hand knowledge of the usage.
"Efshar?" and Yesh Matzav?": "Efshar?" literally means, "It is possible?" and it's a nice way to ask someone to move their stuff so you can sit down on a crowded city bus, or to request a favor of any kind. However, it's also often asked of girls in bars by shady-looking dudes (often "Arrseem" see below)who want to dance with (i.e. dry hump) them. Same thing goes with "Yesh Matzav," which literally translates to the ominous-sounding "There's a situation," but really means, "There is a chance," and is generally phrased as a question and used to ask for a dance, a cigarette, or a phone number (generally by someone to whom you'd deny all three).
"Arrs" (or in its plural form, Arseem): A type of guy who might resist precise definition but whom, as in pornography, you know when you see. Generally an "arrs" (another false homonym for English-speakers, however a far more accurate one) is an overly-groomed, jewelery-wearing, hair-product-using, designer-jeans-buying young man out on the prowl, whose hands seem to be constantly occupied with a cell phone, a cigarette, a drink, or some combination of the three. Lifelong Tel-Aviv residents seem eager to brand the suburbanite males who come into the city on weekends to pack the Namal nightclubs and clog Rothschild Blvd as Arrseem, leading me to conclude that these must be the equivalent of the New York "Bridge and Tunnel" crowd. You've been warned.
Faltzani: Okay, to be fair, I've never heard this one used in conversation, and I'm pretty sure it's outdated as far as slang goes, but the etymology of it is so fantastic (and so resolutely Israeli)that I couldn't resist mentioning it (one of my fellow teachers filled me in on it). A "Faltzani" is an egotist, someone who thinks too highly of himself and acts snobbishly.
It's derived from the verb Ha'fleetz, which means to pass gas.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Halloween in Israel
I've been doing halloween-themed lessons in all my classes this week, and have never seen kids more excited to be introduced to the joys of pumpkin-carving and free candy (though almost all of them already have a basic, albeit fractured, understanding of the holiday apparently gleaned from "Hannah Montana" and other American TV shows)
I dressed up like a ghost which thrilled the kids and, as a delightful side-effect, confirmed for all the other Elhareezi teachers that their illiterate, stuttering colleague was also completely MENTAL.
We read a spooky story in the dark (sort of. pitch-blackness is hard to achieve on an 80 degree, unremittingly sunny day) by flashlight, wrote a ghost story of our own together, paired up to administer "Are you a Witch?" and "Are you a Werewolf?" quizzes I found on a funny ESL lesson-planning website(sample questions: Do you like your hamburgers extra-rare? Do you ever wake up confused and full?), and tried to answer some Halloween rhyming riddles (During which, somehow the question, "What type of Halloween monster hates sunlight and rhymes with 'fire'?" was answered with "Ooh, my brother!". . . "A liar?" . . . and, finally, Hagit!" . . . which is the name of a certain class's homeroom teacher (pseudonym used to protect the innocent)).
But the most eagerly-awaited moment of the whole lesson was the last five minutes of class, spent trick-or-treating. We "trick-or-treated" at the secretaries' office (who were very confused about the whole thing, and possibly thought I was giving the candy to *them* when I dropped it off and tried to explain it before class), the teachers lounge (where one of the long-suffering Kita Vav (5th grade) teachers silently gave out candy with one manicured hand, while clutching an unlit cigarette in the other) and the medic's room (Where the medic pretended, with a complete straight face, not to recognize any of the costumed kids, which was a big hit. And yeah, they have ex-IDF medics in the schools here instead of nurses. because it's Israel, and god forbid something should happen, the medics know how to evacuate people and/or respond to trauma. But ours, Elad, mostly gives out ice packs, cleans scrapes, and serves as a beloved confidante/therapist/recess sparring partner).
I was happy that a lot of the kids dressed-up for the occasion (though I couldn't resist asking more than a few, "How can you remember every piece of an elaborate costume ( such as the pirate get-up comprised of lace-up blouse, boots, wig, hat, hook-hand, felt eye-patch, and plastic cutlass) yet you can't remember to do your homework, or bring your pencil case to class?
Besides the already-mentioned pirate, I also had a cow-girl (very eager to perform her country line-dancing moves for me and the class, a super-woman (complete with a pink satin cape and a giant "S" logo that twinkled with little battery-powered LED lights), several soccer players (the boys, obviously), and a sequin-spangled rock star so committed to her costume's alter-ego that she insisted on speaking into her glittery plastic microphone every time she raised her hand in class)
And though the kids liked the trick-or-treating the best (free candy plus no discernable academic benefits=WIN!) I loved some of the spooky stories they came up with. Even though I tried to prep them both last week and during this week's lesson, a lot of the kids had a much smaller knowledge of halloween ghouls to draw upon than the average American elementary-school student. Consequently, the expected ghostly adversaries of many of the stories were supplanted by other more universally familiar but perhaps less Halloween-typical "bad guys" such as Bowser the evil dinosaur from the Super-Mario Brothers video game, various Pokemon villains, and "Pharoh."
"You mean, a mummy?" I stupidly asked, when that particular baddy was added to one of the stories. "Looooo(No)!" came back the exasperated reply from this particular author, "You know, Becky, the one in Egypt(as opposed to all the non-Egyptian pharaohs, I thought to myself), the one who Hashem made all the plagues for, and then Moses came?"
"Ohhhh, right" I said, a smile forming in spite of my best efforts, "Who's scarier than that dude?"
I dressed up like a ghost which thrilled the kids and, as a delightful side-effect, confirmed for all the other Elhareezi teachers that their illiterate, stuttering colleague was also completely MENTAL.
We read a spooky story in the dark (sort of. pitch-blackness is hard to achieve on an 80 degree, unremittingly sunny day) by flashlight, wrote a ghost story of our own together, paired up to administer "Are you a Witch?" and "Are you a Werewolf?" quizzes I found on a funny ESL lesson-planning website(sample questions: Do you like your hamburgers extra-rare? Do you ever wake up confused and full?), and tried to answer some Halloween rhyming riddles (During which, somehow the question, "What type of Halloween monster hates sunlight and rhymes with 'fire'?" was answered with "Ooh, my brother!". . . "A liar?" . . . and, finally, Hagit!" . . . which is the name of a certain class's homeroom teacher (pseudonym used to protect the innocent)).
But the most eagerly-awaited moment of the whole lesson was the last five minutes of class, spent trick-or-treating. We "trick-or-treated" at the secretaries' office (who were very confused about the whole thing, and possibly thought I was giving the candy to *them* when I dropped it off and tried to explain it before class), the teachers lounge (where one of the long-suffering Kita Vav (5th grade) teachers silently gave out candy with one manicured hand, while clutching an unlit cigarette in the other) and the medic's room (Where the medic pretended, with a complete straight face, not to recognize any of the costumed kids, which was a big hit. And yeah, they have ex-IDF medics in the schools here instead of nurses. because it's Israel, and god forbid something should happen, the medics know how to evacuate people and/or respond to trauma. But ours, Elad, mostly gives out ice packs, cleans scrapes, and serves as a beloved confidante/therapist/recess sparring partner).
I was happy that a lot of the kids dressed-up for the occasion (though I couldn't resist asking more than a few, "How can you remember every piece of an elaborate costume ( such as the pirate get-up comprised of lace-up blouse, boots, wig, hat, hook-hand, felt eye-patch, and plastic cutlass) yet you can't remember to do your homework, or bring your pencil case to class?
Besides the already-mentioned pirate, I also had a cow-girl (very eager to perform her country line-dancing moves for me and the class, a super-woman (complete with a pink satin cape and a giant "S" logo that twinkled with little battery-powered LED lights), several soccer players (the boys, obviously), and a sequin-spangled rock star so committed to her costume's alter-ego that she insisted on speaking into her glittery plastic microphone every time she raised her hand in class)
And though the kids liked the trick-or-treating the best (free candy plus no discernable academic benefits=WIN!) I loved some of the spooky stories they came up with. Even though I tried to prep them both last week and during this week's lesson, a lot of the kids had a much smaller knowledge of halloween ghouls to draw upon than the average American elementary-school student. Consequently, the expected ghostly adversaries of many of the stories were supplanted by other more universally familiar but perhaps less Halloween-typical "bad guys" such as Bowser the evil dinosaur from the Super-Mario Brothers video game, various Pokemon villains, and "Pharoh."
"You mean, a mummy?" I stupidly asked, when that particular baddy was added to one of the stories. "Looooo(No)!" came back the exasperated reply from this particular author, "You know, Becky, the one in Egypt(as opposed to all the non-Egyptian pharaohs, I thought to myself), the one who Hashem made all the plagues for, and then Moses came?"
"Ohhhh, right" I said, a smile forming in spite of my best efforts, "Who's scarier than that dude?"
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Shockingly Teacher-like Things I have Honest-to-God Said to My Students to my Increasing Horror
1. "[Omri/Tomer/Lior/Liat/Romi/Roni/Roi], what did I just say?
(After inevitable silence or mumble of "I don't know")
Well, the reason you don't know is because you were [talking to your desk partner/taking apart your pen/breaking your eraser into many small eraser nuggets/industriously picking your nose/industriously picking your scab/playing with your webkinz stuffed animal under the desk/ trying to balance your mini hand sanitizer bottle on top of your water bottle] so you need to stop [doing that] and pay attention."
2. "Mouths closed, eyes on me!"
3. "No rocking in your chair!"
4. "Walk, don't run!"
5. "Speak up so the whole class can hear you, please!"
6. "Stop [hitting/kicking/poking/chasing/spitting on/throwing your chocolate milk at] h[im/her]!"
7. "Apologize!" Almost always followed by "Look h[im/her] in the eyes when you say you're sorry!" or "And why are you sorry?"
8. "Is it an emergency, or can you wait to go after class?"
9. "I don't want to [call your mother/tell the principal/take away your recess], but I will if you keep on: [walking out of the classroom in the middle of the lesson/making high-pitched cat noises while I'm writing on the board/ burping repeatedly and on purpose/calling your classmate an [incongruous English-language epithet you've learned from American television whose meaning is a mystery to you such as "fugly," "douchebag," or "shithead"]/purposely pouring water on to your notebook to "see what happens"/taking my tape dispenser and affixing long strips of tape to all of your facial features then getting some tangled in your hair/taking my red whiteboard marker and drawing on your willing desk-partner's arm/texting someone on your phone under your desk (you are in third grade! WHO IN THE WORLD could you possibly be texting?).
and, for some reason, the most horrifying of all,
10. "Use your indoor voice!"
(After inevitable silence or mumble of "I don't know")
Well, the reason you don't know is because you were [talking to your desk partner/taking apart your pen/breaking your eraser into many small eraser nuggets/industriously picking your nose/industriously picking your scab/playing with your webkinz stuffed animal under the desk/ trying to balance your mini hand sanitizer bottle on top of your water bottle] so you need to stop [doing that] and pay attention."
2. "Mouths closed, eyes on me!"
3. "No rocking in your chair!"
4. "Walk, don't run!"
5. "Speak up so the whole class can hear you, please!"
6. "Stop [hitting/kicking/poking/chasing/spitting on/throwing your chocolate milk at] h[im/her]!"
7. "Apologize!" Almost always followed by "Look h[im/her] in the eyes when you say you're sorry!" or "And why are you sorry?"
8. "Is it an emergency, or can you wait to go after class?"
9. "I don't want to [call your mother/tell the principal/take away your recess], but I will if you keep on: [walking out of the classroom in the middle of the lesson/making high-pitched cat noises while I'm writing on the board/ burping repeatedly and on purpose/calling your classmate an [incongruous English-language epithet you've learned from American television whose meaning is a mystery to you such as "fugly," "douchebag," or "shithead"]/purposely pouring water on to your notebook to "see what happens"/taking my tape dispenser and affixing long strips of tape to all of your facial features then getting some tangled in your hair/taking my red whiteboard marker and drawing on your willing desk-partner's arm/texting someone on your phone under your desk (you are in third grade! WHO IN THE WORLD could you possibly be texting?).
and, for some reason, the most horrifying of all,
10. "Use your indoor voice!"
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