In my hebrew textbook at the University of Maryland, the dialogues had ridiculous names and personas--ridiculous but, it seems, realistic. I'd like to introduce my ulpan classmates.
I'm only introducing a select few today. Names have been changed to protect ... me (if any of them ever read the blog). Except one name, which is too good to be true. A girl named Armina joined our class today. She's from Armenia. Armina from Armenia! (In hebrew, Armina is an anagram for Armenia.)
Yael - 14 year old American girl. She speaks hebrew rapidly and confidently with an Israeli accent. Her Israeli parents spoke hebrew to her as a child. By comparison, all the others in the class sound like stuttering fools. And yet she complains during breaks that the class is too hard. What could explain this? She can't read hebrew.
Irina - 20-something Russian woman. She speaks at least as well as I do, but with a thick Russian accent, which grates on my ears. I think she and I have diametrically opposed senses of humor.
Andrew - 40-something American man. He seems like a nice guy, but I feel bad for him. He habitually transposes vowel sounds, struggles mightily with any sort of reading aloud or verb conjugation, and generally looks like he doesn't understand what the teacher is saying. I think he's taken an Ulpan Akiva course before, so he might have been socially promoted to our class, so to speak.
Ariella and Natan - 12 year old french girl and her father. The French accent in hebrew is, I think, the most pleasant of the foreign accents I have heard. Natan and I sat next to each other one day and I defined a bunch of words for him in Hebrew. I bring a dictionary to class.
Rachel - 24 year old American woman. Her vocabulary and grammar are pretty good but she speaks with an unapologetic American accent. Most of the time when she speaks, her inflection implies the question, "Am I saying this right?" I respect the humility but think it is a bad habit.
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