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As anybody that has lived a foreign language or spent significant time with
foreigners can attest, the native language creates challenges in fully mastering
a foreign language. These interference errors often seem to be more resolute
than the ability and desire to stop making them. In many cases, non-native speakers never
succeed in removing these inappropriate borrowings. Having lived in Israel for
32 years (immigrating on this date in 1989) and taught English to Israelis for
the same period, I have experienced and observed certain error patterns in my Hebrew
and the English of my students. These errors include sounds, gender issues and
syntax constructions. Some of them are less critical than others but definitely
mark the origin of the speaker.
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The sounds of the different language family groups vary, making it
difficult for learners, especially adult ones, to pronounce or distinguish
certain letters. For Americans and Brits in Israel, the most common confusion
is between alef א and ayin ע, which are pronounced
[a] and [aa], respectively. Fortunately, most native Hebrew speakers tend to
blur the difference, taking foreigners off the hook. On a more serious note are
the Hebrew letters hay ה, het ח and chof כ,ף, with the first a soft h sound and the other two a guttural
ch. The correct pronunciation distinguishes lah לה, meaning to her, from lach לך, to you.
By contrast, Israelis struggle with distinguishing short and long vowels. For
example, Israeli pronunciation of the word feet and sheet often
more closely resembles fit and shit, which are neither homonyms
nor synonyms. It is possible to train the mouth to properly pronounce these
sounds but this improvement takes sustained effort.
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Hebrew, being a Semitic language, makes gender/number agreement an
essential aspect of its structure while English is limited to natural gender.
This requirement for grammatical agreement leads to repeated errors by English
speaking expats living in Israel. They sometimes simply forget to pay attention
to the gender of the noun and randomly use the masculine or feminine form of the
adjective and sometimes the verb, frequently immediately correcting it at the
end of the sentence. The effect of such errors is a lack of aesthetics but
fundamentally does not prevent understanding. More embarrassingly, the Hebrew
word for you is different for men and women, whether in the singular in
plural form, specifically אתה [ata] and אתם [atem] for
men and את [at] and אתן [aten] for women. English speakers don’t always remember
to think before speaking and use the wrong form. Sharing a house with women, I tend
to use at even when I should use ata and end up sounding rather
stupid. The 2nd person command form also has masculine and feminine
forms, with the same result. Native
Hebrew speakers have an equally difficult time removing gender. They tend to
forget that he and she only refer to a biological gender with
everything else being it. As a result, a company becomes a she
because it is a feminine noun in Hebrew while a house is a he. Certain nouns in
Hebrew are plural, such as sky and water, are occasionally referred
to as they by Hebrew speakers. It turns out that gender
differences are also confusing in languages.
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Every language has its own syntax but the difference between languages
from different families can be rather significant. In Hebrew, prepositions,
(e.g., on and in) are letters attached to words, with each word retaining its
own preposition. To demonstrate, in
English, you can say, “I got tired of the noise and cars of the city” with the
preposition of implicitly linked to the word cars. In Hebrew, you
would have to add the preposition of (meh מ) to both nouns. Curiously, many otherwise knowledgeable expats
are unaware of this fact. On a more practical level, when Brits literally
translate their English construction of “It’s hot today”, זה חם היום [ze cham hayom], it is incorrect as Hebrew eschews the it is
construction with the correct form being “hot today” חם היום [cham hayom]. By contrast, Israelis tend to err when using
the connecting term for example in writing. While in formal Hebrew, it
is correct to add a colon after the term and then write the examples, in English
the rules of composition require a full sentence after it (as compared to the
expressions such as and including). Temporal clauses are also
traps for Israel as they tend to apply the Hebrew logic of putting the verb in the
future. The result is “When I will arrive, I will call you,”, which no native
English speaker would ever say. Likewise,
after modals, Israelis sometimes use the infinitive instead of the base form,
e.g. The car can to break down anytime’ because Hebrew modals are
followed by the infinitive. Thus, native language syntax does invade learned languages.
Clearly, the vast majority of language learners never reach completely native
level of a foreign language partly because of first language interference. Some
transference will always occur. However, most of these mistakes actually do not
affect comprehension. Furthermore, native speakers are generally willing to
forgive foreigners for these errors and focus on the positive. As in dealing
with any type of disturbance, it helps to have a sense of humor regardless of
your role, speaker or listener.
* Add picture capitons to help the blind access the Internet. Pictures via Pixabay.
