Ani Lo Yochel LeDaberet Ivrit

I am taking a course in Hebrew this semester and its proving to be just as snarky as I anticipated.

I don't know if you are one of those people who sees a picture of everything as they think them. I most definitely am. I am a visual learner and when I think of languages or numbers, I acctually see little question marks floating around in my consciousness. Like acctual chicken scratches and patters like this: @#$$% $#$%&^ $ ^&* &*(^( #$^ its not symbolizing expletives, its just random figures that I cannot decifer. I also see colors, but not colors specific to symbols or letters, but when confronted with new characters in math or language, my brain associates random symbols with the new gumboldeegook so there is a vertual toy chest of random objects flashing in my noggin.

It gets kookier. I know I am not the only one who does this: my grandmother does it. When I was in France, I had the unexplainable urge to speak Hebrew. Standing under the Eiffel Tower, I had to stop from asking Mr. Pierre Shmoex "BeVakasha, Aifo HaSheirutim?"

Which is why, to the unmerciful glee of my ever patient instructor, I blurted out something in Yiddish in my Ivrit class yesterday. Go figure.
(My grandmother, by the way, was speaking Russian in Turkey)

For all of my math/language friends, I cannot even begin to comprehend what they '' see " in their minds as they focus on numbers or letters. Maybe they don't see them at all. But I know with my brain, I don't learn unless I experience, and I don't experience, unless I feel it. Unless there is an emotional association, you can repeat it and repeat it but it will never enter long term memory. Not on your life. I have to connect the new information to things I already know and create elaborate context to associate the new information to the old. Its almost like I have to take new friends and introduce them to the Ganse Mishpocha. My math/language buddies say they like that stuff because it all just makes "so much sense; it's so concrete."

Now what was I saying?