SGN LNGG

Israel is a demanding place, at least until the jet lag wears off.  The people are some of the friendliest I’ve ever met but even the most well-intentioned encounter can’t take place without struggling to cross the language barrier.  The locals may have learned English but they live Hebrew and any conversation in English is always a challenge to find the right words.  The people are amazing, though.  Our landlord has given us the use of an umbrella, a box of strawberries, sweets, fresh flowers and tonight he came by to give us some of his dinner.  Nice guy!

When going out into the city there are signs all over the place, only a small fraction of which are in English and even they are sometimes spelled in three different ways due to the varied phonetic representations of the Hebrew characters.  For example, the city of Ceasarea can also be “Qisariyya,” “Kesarya,” or “Qasarya.”  On a previous trip to Israel Kenny nearly missed the exit for the city due to the fact that his map used one spelling and the road sign used another.  Even the English needs some phonetic gymnastics before it becomes totally intelligible.

            Hebrew characters are another story altogether.  First, they read right to left, which means that the logo for the Israeli airline runs one way in English and another way in Hebrew EL (AL) AL (EL)—not to mention that the “al” character looks like LY which is why the flight numbers show up as LY006.  Weird.  At any rate, even when you’ve successfully matched the character to the phonetic sound, you still have an uphill battle in front of you because A) the vowels are missing and B) you have no idea what the Hebrew word means!  One word I did learn was “Supersell” the name of our local grocery in Haifa.  The first character can be pronounced “sh” or “s” depending on the placement of a dot above it, but the logo has stripped that out, leaving the ambiguity.  What we’re left with is “SH/S P/F R S L” and knowing that it should be “SUPERSELL” we can make sense of it.  I’ve mostly given up trying until I learn a few more words.

            Some restaurants in the city center have adopted creative English branding in an effort to appeal to the tourists who stay in the nearby hilltop hotels.  One of the few burger joints (offering lamb burgers as well as beef ones) is called “Zestys” with the slogan “meat in & out.”  A nearby restaurant heralds passersby with “Reubens: when meat meets bread.”  It doesn’t get much better or simpler than that.  Today I used “Fairy” dish detergent in my washing up.  I don’t think that would export well.

            Today we hiked down a wadi (valley) to get to the beach.  It was a very mentally relaxing day because there were very few signs to read and no people to negotiate with other than my husband.  On the other hand, it was hard walking and now I am exhausted and ready for bed.