Speaking Like a Native

When I spent my “year” in Israel after high school, I said to myself that I would not care how I sounded or what people thought of me when speaking Hebrew. That worked fairly well for me over the years: Though my accent is horrendous, my vocabulary and conjugation are more than passable. Most adults are able to see past the poor accent and the gender-specific mistakes that I make on a regular basis and are able to judge me by the content of my words not their style.

Not so with Israeli teens.

I figured that they would not “see past the poor accent and the gender-specific mistakes.....” I assumed they would see only the poor accent and gender-specific mistakes. So I addressed it head-on in my first day of teaching. After introducing myself, I mentioned that if they pay attention very, very carefully, they’d notice a slight accent [chuckles]. I said that it was indeed true. I am not from here; I’m from Haifa [more chuckles].

For the most part it worked. They knew that I didn’t take myself too seriously and that language was not (or should not) be a barrier to our teacher-student relationship. Since then, I most certainly make mistakes (I’ll post some of the most egregious errors in a future post). But we have created a learning relationship where I learn from them and they learn from me. When there is a great word that they teach me, I take out my pocket-sized Kohinor notebook and write it down during class.

Once in a while, I used to get a jab in the hallways. A “boker tov” from me might have received a heavily accented “bokerrrr tow-vvvv!” I decided to address that head on too. When a child honed in on my accent, I looked him straight in the eye and said, very gently, that if he had any advice on how to speak, I would appreciate it if he told me directly and not behind my back. I had, after all, feelings too! It sounds cliché, but he is one of my closest students today!