Purim afterthought

[cellio]

One observation from the seudah: my Hebrew comprehension was way below the norm for that group. I'll have to ask Yaakov what the kiddush text really said; I caught bits and pieces that were clearly, um, not traditional, and lots of people were laughing, but I missed most of it.

What actually brought this to mind was digging through the goodie bag for some candy and coming across the bubble gum with the Hebrew wrappers. I tossed the gum (yuck), but I kept the Bazooka Joe cartoons in hopes that I can get someone to read them to me. (If they either had vowels or were written in square script, I might stand a chance...)

The word "Bazooka" looks funny transliterated into Hebrew -- but not as funny as "New York" (or "New" anyplace). You can translate "new" (chadash), and transliterating it instead looks really weird.

Comments

I concur!

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

Your Hebrew comprehension is probably far better than mine. I have been rapidly improving, but I'm still far below the norm for that group of people. I caught enough of the kiddush text to find it amusing, but not quite enough to understand all of it. I was a bit lost at parts. That's an understatement!

But as for the Bazooka cartoons...I can't even read print that small in English, let alone vowel-less Hebrew! I get very frustrated without vowels. I know if I understood more Hebrew and if I had a better grasp of grammar, leaving out the vowels wouldn't be so counter-intuitive to me. But for now, it's pretty difficult for me.

ah well....this will be on my list of goals...don't know if I'll ever get there though!

Re: I concur!

[cellio]

Sounds like we're at similar levels with the Hebrew. I'm guessing I have a vocabulary of under 500 words, mostly liturgical or halachic terms, and I don't really grok the grammar yet. I don't automatically spot the shoreish, so I don't pick up on the various transformations. So when Rabbi Gibson points out that these two words are from the same root I can see it, but I don't necessarily spot it on my own, and I definitely don't know how they differ (that is, the grammer rules) without help.

And sometimes I mis-understand a rule because I'm jumping to a conclusion based on too few examples, so I try to always ask when I think I see a pattern. Sometimes I do and sometimes it's noise. :-)