The necessity of necessity

In most of my linguistic endeavors, I've been motivated by some sort of desire to communicate with someone somewhere, even in retrospect. By that I mean, for example, running into someone that speaks Twi and not being able to speak a single word of it. So I'll go home and look up some words or phrases or learn how to count to ten; even if I won't see that person again, it stands to reason if I've run into a Twi speaking person once, it's likely to happen again, and then I can at least say hello. But that's pretty much the extent of it. A day, maybe two. Some notes, a youtube video or a quick look at the alphabet on Omniglot.
A more devoted project was my recent pursuit of Italian, which I must say, although I wasn't terribly fond of in the studying process, I came to thoroughly enjoy when I had the chance to speak it with people IN Italy, and I will say that my conversations went beyond 'survival' Italian; I spoke with people about wines, cheeses, decent restaurants, real estate, culture and business, albeit still very simply. I was somewhat burdened by my commitment to 'learn' it before I left for Italy, but was motivated solely by the knowledge that I would bask in my success while there, or immensely regret my failure to stick with it before I came, thereby relinquishing a wonderful cultural and linguistic opportunity. That necessity was motivation.
A more long term but maybe slightly less aggressively violent pursuit has been that of Thai. I've dilly-dallied with it on and off for the past year and a half or so, but only last year did I really pursue it before I returned from Thailand and it fell into abeyance until just before I went again (with Li'l bro). I love the language and have since taken a long-term approach to learning it. Movies, music, reference materials, learning to read and write, etc.
What does this have to do with Hebrew? It's basically an excuse to say I'm finding motivation to learn this (incredibly difficult [or at least very foreign]) language extremely difficult to muster. It was part of the project from the get-go: to stack the odds against freakishly fervent language learners and see how we did. However, with nowhere to use it and very little motivation (except pride to complete this little project), I'm finding its arbitrary nature very uninspiring.
That's not to say I'm not going to continue to (try to) study it and see how far I get in two months, but the fervor with which I usually pursue a new foreign language is fueled by a desire to communicate with other people and USE the language. Even in the past month, Japanese has recently reared its head as a language I greatly admire and whose speakers I envy. It would actually be extremely useful to me here, and I have a slew of people and resources available to me to learn it, but I've tried to keep faithful to Hebrew.
This is to say that I'm finding, for me, usefulness is outrageously motivating, and the lack of it naturally the opposite. I am slightly excited by the idea of personal edification, knowing what used to be such an important (Classical) influential language, but I'm still not finding myself itching to listen to half-hour Pimsleur lessons at every opportunity. There are still 36 days, 8 hours and 47 minutes (at time of this post) left to the Hebrew Experiment, and usefulness is definitely my biggest obstacle to mustering motivation to finish all 60 lessons....

Pimsleuring along

It's May 6, and I'm in lesson 6 of Pimsleur. I'm right on schedule, but barely...

Not to brag, but it's rare that I need to go over a Pimsleur lesson more than once, and (if I have the time) can often do three or four in a day. I had some difficulty with a few lessons in Russian as well as the semi-confusing 4-segments-of-six-hours-each time counting system in Thai. Aside from that, I can usually get stuff sufficiently.
The first two or three lessons were great. The sounds aren't necessarily foreign. Between German and Russian, some of the more guttural or strange sounds aren't hard to make. I did two lessons on one day and none the next, but was still on schedule.
Until lesson 5. Yesterday. The first half of the lesson was all review; there wasn't even a new conversation (that I recall), but about fifteen minutes in, you get hit with streets and their names, squares and their names, the verbs for "to eat", "to drink" and "to know." I don't recall if it's in 5 or 6, but they also tack on "to want" and some question words "when", "where." There are a few more concepts they add, and before then, it seemed like it was all according to the regular Pimsleur script (which it feels like I've done a billion times now), but it feels now like I'm moving at breakneck speed. I think I know why.
Hebrew (like Arabic), as one of my HebEx companions put it, is "obscenely" gender-specific. Whereas in Chinese (what I'm used to by now) doesn't have ANY gender, Hebrew specifies male and female in both pronouns and verbs themselves; the effect is learning TWO sets of vocabulary.
"Now," you might say, "I only need to learn my own gender's grammar since I will only be using that form of speech." This IS the case in Thai (with gender-specific polite particles to end your sentences) or in Russian, but in Hebrew, you also consider the gender of the person to whom you are speaking when you speak, so yeah, if you think you might ever speak to anyone of the opposite sex, you're learning two forms of a lot of vocabulary. That's how it seems now anyway...
Going to go over lesson 6 again before the day is over. Oof.

Hebrew Handwriting

Found a helpful site for Hebrew handwriting.
I've learned to recognize the shapes of the letters and how to differentiate between some that look similar to each other. This is fine, but in trying to take notes, I find myself more drawing the letters than writing them. The script actually looks pretty great, but trying to replicate it with a ballpoint pen just wasn't working. It looks like... scribbles, even though I know what it should say. It just doesn't LOOK like Hebrew when I write it down. The link above is a link for the handwritten script, which in most areas closely resembles the general shape of the block letters you see on a computer. It serves not only to make the characters simple enough to write down, but also differentiates between some similar ones (to untrained eyes), thereby leaving no ambiguity when I go back to look at my notes.
Worth a look, because when learning a foreign language that uses a new script, I feel it's one of the most important things to learn that script first. (I say that as a fluent Chinese speaker that can write very little Chinese, but yeah, I regret that). It will give you an opportunity not only to learn to read and write, but it's another avenue by which to practice and become comfortable with the language.

Baby Steps

I'm in lesson four of Pimsleur. At this point, I feel like if I can just learn to read Hebrew in two months I'll be satisfied.
The whole thing is overwhelming at this point, but it was like that with a lot of my initial forays into new languages. I remember trying to learn to read Thai, Urdu, Arabic, Japanese, Korean. Maybe overwhelming at first, but after a return to it (maybe much) later, it made sense.
I'm recognizing consonants in Hebrew at least, and getting through Pimsleur lessons okay. Thought I'd get a head start on my own with verbs, but I'm just not up to it yet. Might have to take a few more weeks of just Pimsleur and the writing system before I can get out on my own and supplement my study. It actually makes me tired.
Slow'n'steady wins the race.

Language Phobias

"IF you don't use it, you loose it." This exhausted adage probably isn't any truer than in the realm of language learning. In fact I'd venture to say that nothing is more fatal to an acquired language than disuse.

However, I have a hunch about another acquired language threat. But it's heretofore nothing more than a hunch. It is completely untried and I have absolutely no personal experience that proves whether it would in fact prove fatal to an acquired language. The Hebrew Experiment will change that.

Allow me to explain. I have a morbid phobia of learning languages that are perilously close to the languages I've already learned. Don't misunderstand me. I know that few languages are islands and that most languages can host family reunions with their linguistic relatives. However some cut it a bit close. The veritable twins of the language world.

Take for example Portuguese and Spanish. There are a host of languages that are similar, so to speak to Spanish. Italian is quite similar, the matriarch Latin of course, but even French and Romanian are quite like it. But Portuguese...I don't know. I've heard stories from my Spanish speaking friends who've attempted it. They shake their heads with a chuckle and relate how during the time they attempted to learn it they came out speaking a sort of self-invented Esperanto if you will.

So I stay away from that tongue, and if I meet someone from Brazil or Portugal I'll speak to them in Spanish they can speak in Portuguese, misunderstandings will be infrequent and communication possible I'm certain.

But, on the other hand, I know my stance on Portuguese is cowardly. I'm limiting this marvelous, wonderful, almost boundless organ that is the brain. As one devoted teacher of language acquisition put it, "our brain is a Ferrari but we only use it to drive to 7-11." Maybe he's right. Maybe one can acquire perilously similar languages and speak them as separate entities. Maybe I'm being a linguistic curmudgeon in my avoidance of Portuguese.

But what, you might ask does this have to do with "The Hebrew Experiment." Allow me to explain, I've been studying Arabic for a few years now and to me, Arabic is to Hebrew as Spanish is to Portuguese. Lethal? I certainly hope not. My greatest fear in this experiment is not failure, or even that my ADD tendencies will cause me to abandon the project mid way through (but its def a close second), no its that this little foray into Hebrew will cause me to end up speaking a Semetic Esperanto, rendering both my Study of Arabic and Hebrew virtually useless for communication. Or that it at least prove to be an Arabic setback. I guess it remains to be seen.

But I'll sally forth, I guess its time to take this supposed "Ferrari" on a road trip. I only hope that, in my case, its not actually a Ford Focus.

Stay tuned, tomorrow begins the Hebrew Experiment. In spite of my reservations, I'm actually extremely excited to venture into a language that I find both intriguing and eloquent.

The time has come!

I had a little debate with myself about whether to wait for my other two study partners, seeing as I'm twelve hours ahead of them. In the long run, it doesn't make much difference, that twelve hours, but we've (at least I have) been alternately chomping at the bit or rather apprehensive to start.
When I looked at both my calendar and my timer I'd set on my computer for May 1, 2010 and they were both down not to days, not to hours or minutes, but seconds (clock just ticked 11:59), I kinda made up my mind: I'm starting NOW.
Over on my personal blog, I've been keeping a steady (but lately more and more hefty-seeming) pace with learning Thai without slacking off. One Pimsleur lesson a day is what I've got planned.
Yes, plans... how do we go about this, you ask? Let's discuss our plans of attack.
Wikipedia (and maybe Omniglot, etc) do a great job of giving me some very useful little bits of information about a language, especially a new one; it's like a cold read on a language. How is it constructed grammatically? How do they treat their verbs? Nouns? What about genders? How many cases? Sentence structure? This is all a good argument for how knowing other languages helps you learn new ones. On the one hand, I can relate to SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order from languages like Russian or German; English is SVO. There. I get that (mostly). After a brief overview, I want to learn two of the most commonly irregular verbs in any language: to be and to have. Then there's to know. Then I want most general rules for how to treat verbs. Can I change a present tense verb to the past (or future) tense with a simple particle or conjugation? What's the root form? The infinitive, etc.
Those are pretty much the two big ones. Pimsleur will help me with the most basic of sentence structure and the other most necessary vocabulary. After that, knowing how verbs work and strengthening my grasp of sentence structure, I should be able to start filling in blanks with other nouns as I need. That's my approach.
Oh, and also to learn to read as soon as possible.
I'm not so much excited about learning HEBREW, per se, as much as I am about starting a language from scratch, especially the way we're doing it.
Gals, what are your gameplans?

The countdown...

Advantage 1: Getting ahead of yourself

We're only six days away (almost exactly, in my time zone [GMT +8]) from the start of the Hebrew Experiment. Rather like a game of roulette, I was kind of wondering where this project would fall in the spinning scheme of day to day life. Everyone has stuff. Things. Circumstances. Busy spells, quieter streaks, etc. Stuff comes and goes, but it will be interesting to see how well the three of us hold up against the barrage of Pimsleur Hebrew lessons we've set ourselves up for. It'll be great, but certainly a challenge to keep up.
My pre-Semitic linguistic life is nearing its end, and it reminded me of a reason we decided to do this: cramming.
Everyone DOES have stuff going on, and when undertaking a seemingly overwhelming, momentous task such as learning a second language, things like discouragement, fatigue, boredom, frustration, etc. can set in over time. Resigning pursuit of a language early in the game negates so much of the effort one has already put forth. Everyone has to find the right pace.
However, to get a head start on life and frustration and the tedium of study of a language (if that's how you feel), it might behoove you to take an approach like the one we're going to use. Berlitz has held immersion classes for ages, and last I checked they had multi-day, week long, and multi week classes. For a pretty penny, you study in a classroom setting with other students desirous (or in need of) a language, and are instructed and commanded to speak in only the target language.
With some effort, one can go a long way toward recreating this linguistic barrage, and if done successfully, it can be an excellent time investment that will serve you well when you become less than enthusiastic about hitting the books. It's inevitable, but that foundation you have should provide you with enough useful knowledge to see the pursuit as worthwhile and continue using what you're learning.

Back in town

... with a renewed zeal for a former linguistic venture, but I can't let it get in the way of Hebex, which starts in 18 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness how are we less than three weeks away? Oh yeah, this is how:

March 11, 2010: Little brother arrives in Taiwan.

March 12, 2010: We leave for Italy

March 13, 2010: We arrive in Italy. Ten-ish days in Europe.

March 22/23, 2010: Back in Taiwan. Catch up on previous week's worth of EVERYTHING. Brother in town, seeing Taiwan, doing stuff, catching up, playing.

April 4, 2010: Thailand.

April 9, 2010: return from Thailand

April 11, 2010: Dog sick.

And here we are, 18 days away from start of The Hebrew Experiment. I just posted on my other (first) language blog about my recently revived, re-inspired interest in a serious pursuit of Thai. However, we're coming down to the wire on the start of Hebex, and have I done ANYTHING to prepare for it? NO!

As it should be. No one gets a head start. The prep, or I suppose better referred to as the setup, is part of the process. On Iron Chef, when the guys run to their stations to start breaking down the wild boar they've been given or the ducks they're going to debone, they're being timed. It's all part of the process, and it's something they learn to do quickly because it's a critical step toward the final result. I have bought a few notebooks, pens, flashcards and Post-it ® notes, but haven't even begun compiling an English vocab list I want to translate into Hebrew. "An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure," or something about how preparation is just as important as the process itself. So, with only 18 days to go, the task is seeming daunting, looming, maybe even overwhelming. We'll be looking to find ways to record our progress, and would love to have suggestions in this regard.

May 1, 2010.

Disadvantage 4: I don't already speak Hebrew

.... or anything even remotely similar to it.

As Americans, our exposure to language is arguably both extremely high, and unnaturally low.

On the one hand, American news is very international. CNN and Fox and and the like (whatever your political views) cover all sorts of international stories and Americans arguably know more about international affairs than a lot of other nations. (There are certainly those people entirely ignorant of anything that doesn't happen in their county as well, but I feel our exposure to the world, primarily due to the prevalence of technology and media, is generally high). However, from a strictly linguistic standpoint, aside from those of us who are already multilingual, those of us who enjoy foreign films and those of us that like to travel, most peoples' exposure to truly foreign languages is low. I got back from Europe yesterday and listened to all sorts of people speaking in English: a Spaniard and a guy from Shanghai, a French stewardess and a Japanese passenger, etc. After exhausting my Italian conversation skills, which I was proud of, I ultimately had to revert to Chinese with some friends there that don't speak any English.

What I'm getting at is that the second-hand-smoke equivalent of our language encounters is generally Spanish. Unless you live in a large city and/or an area with a foreign community (Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, etc) the general American populous (on average) would come into most contact with Spanish, even if we don't study it formally.

Also, from a linguistic perspective, German is easier to learn for an American than an Asian, and French is easier for an Italian than a Turk. This is because they're related. There's already that similarity that gives one a headstart. I already posted the "Hebrew isn't Spanish" bit, but the truth is, Hebrew is about as foreign a concept as I could get for a foreign language. It's as dissimilar to anything I speak or have studied as I could possibly think.

I'd like to think others' language ventures would be easier, or provide them with some head start. It's hard to avoid, actually, even in small ways. Look for it. It's helpful.

There’s an app for that

While foreignwords is off having 38-course meals comprised exclusively of foods that end in “ini”, we back home (which is a relative term) will keep the HebEx blog afloat with this yummy find.

Once relegated to big-city hipsters and teeny-boppers who live through their music, the iPod is now a ubiquitous device that even the older friends in my congregation use to listen to the latest Watchtower podcast in the car group. Beyond being “mp3 players,” they can help you organize your life, do research on the go, enable your “social networking” addictions and—of course—learn a language. I took a turn about the iTunes store and was not surprised to find a plethora of podcasts, apps and even games all designed to help you expand your linguistic horizons. However, I was excited to learn that even Hebrew was included among its offerings. Stay tuned for more on which language apps rock and which...well, don’t.

Disadvantage 3: 60 days is only 1,440 hours

...and we humans spend about a third of our lives asleep.

Obviously time is a concern. People throw around all sorts of figures like "They say it takes seven years to become fluent in Chinese" (seen this one around), "you have to live in [country] for [this long] before you can speak [their language]." But honestly, that's such a subjective thing. I've heard people speak Chinese that have only been studying a year or two who speak exceedingly better than people that have been studying for nearly a decade. There are so many factors that affect the length (and effectiveness) of one's study: methods, opportunity to practice, diligence, the language itself, and on and on and on. I've been studying Chinese now for not quite three years, but have spent almost an entire year in a Chinese speaking country, thereby greatly accelerating the process.

However, many people do spend hours a day, five days a week for months or years in high school or college to study (or even major in) a specific language, and while this certainly provides structure and resources at your disposal, it's very arguably lacking a great deal, too. While many people find that it takes way too much time to learn a language (to any useful extent), we're going to try to accomplish (as much of) the task (as possible) in only two months. Again, that's only 1,440 hours. If the three of us are "average" in our sleeping habits, we will only be left with 960 waking hours to put to use, which is not quite six weeks' worth of actual time awake.
There are so many useful and very creative ways to use time effectively and efficiently in an effort to memorize vocabulary, phrases, etc., even while doing other things. Barry Farber's book How to Learn Any Language, while I question some of the material, has some very creative suggestions on how to use even three and five minute chunks of your day to be able to make progress just that much faster. In any case, we'll need to be as efficient as possible; a breakneck pace like the one we'll be on for this project would undoubtedly be hard to maintain for any real length of time. Again, though, it will serve as motivation as well as provide a strong foundation for when you inevitably will have to give it a rest or slow down. Building momentum early on will serve you well in the long run, and we aim to see just how far we can get in these 60 days.

Disadvantage 2: Israel is a small place

... so there are far fewer materials to be had.
Again using Spanish as a comparison (or benchmark), Hebrew is exceedingly lacking in study materials. As many as 400 million of the world's people speak Spanish as a first language, and including second language speakers, the number rises to around half a billion, and Mexico contains the largest number of Spanish speakers. This means that it's incredibly easy to find study materials on Spanish practically anywhere. This is especially the case in America. With its proximity to the US and its usefulness, most bookstores have a foreign language section, and a section dedicated entirely to Spanish. This makes finding study material very easy, quality aside. In short, it's got very high exposure in whatever media you want.

Hebrew, however, is drastically different. Less than 10 million people speak Hebrew. It's estimated that only around 5.3 million people speak it as a first language, and only around 200,000 speak it in the home in America. It's most spoken in the State of Israel, which has an estimated population of over 7 million. These are much lower figures than Spanish. There's nothing wrong with that, except that it has far lower exposure (to Westerners) than many other languages. Technology has made the world a smaller place, and websites like Omniglot, Youtube, Wikipedia and the BBC's language resources offer information to anyone with an internet connection, but relative to the omnipresence of Spanish (or French, German, Chinese, Italian) language learning material, Hebrew media is virtually nonexistent.

This does present a problem for anyone studying a more exotic (or rare) language. It takes more time, effort and diligence to find information, and it may be of poorer quality; the student will have to discern what's reliable and what isn't. It will take patience to find enough resources to support self-study. It may be difficult to find native speakers. All of these things do make acquiring this foreign language more difficult.

Thankfully, with Hebrew, we have Pimsleur, which will serve as an excellent foundation for our studies and a springboard to learning on our own. Pimsleur has produced courses in what are arguably all the major languages, and one might be surprised to see some of the far less common languages they have teaching materials in (Irish, Ojibwe, Haitian Creole, Twi, Armenian), although in speaking with the folks at Pimsleur, I learned that some of these were commissions by cultural groups in an effort to preserve that specific language.

In any case, the relative rarity of Hebrew materials will be yet another factor that will make this project arguably harder than many other language ventures.

(As a side note, for those of you who might serve a distinct purpose to learn another language and those that speak it natively: with a goal in mind, that is, responding to a need for a language, there are arguably study opportunities present. They may not be in book form, but if you live in an area where Amharic is spoken and decide to learn it, that community probably already has some infrastructure in your area. Speak with the people there. Natives are a linguistic Godsend, and they can help you, or at least point you in the right direction. Having a distinct purpose in learning a specific language makes it easier.)

Disadvantage 1: Hebrew isn't Spanish

... or, for that matter, any other language with which we Indo-European speakers are even vaguely conceptually familiar. This was a strategic decision. Hebrew is different from Spanish (so often in America the go-to "learn a foreign language" language. There's nothing wrong with this, but there are, in fact, thousands of other languages to learn and enjoy) or any other language most of us would study in school. It's also unlikely that most people have considered a study of a language as exotic and foreign as Hebrew. There are a few that are arguably as foreign (Chinese, Arabic, Russian), but they are all also far more useful than Hebrew. But back to that in a moment.

What are the most fundamental, immediately noticeable differences? For one, Hebrew is a Semitic language, and like almost all Semitic languages (aside from Maltese), it uses an alphabet entirely different from English. It is also written from right to left. Like its Semitic cousins, it does not specifically denote vowels as characters; rather, these sounds are represented by diacritics or vowel marks, which is another very foreign concept to the English speaker.

I've done a nice job of avoiding any and all study or preemptive analysis of the language, so I'm not sure how its grammatical structure varies, how they conjugate their verbs, how they handle modifiers, etc. But I do know (or seem to remember) that like its cousin Arabic, Hebrew verbs have gender (a rare concept to begin with, and dually foreign to us English speakers since hardly anything in English has gender, much less our verbs). As I recall, Hebrew also has a dual verb form; English only has singular and plural, but Hebrew denotes when the subject specifically consists of two people. Nice, but just one more unique thing. In addition to that (and this is something I think would be very useful; Chinese has it as well, but it's very rarely used), Hebrew has an inclusive and exclusive first person plural verb. This in English would be "we go" or "we are going." When saying this to someone in English, it is not clear (without context) whether the speaker is including the listener or not. Note the difference between:

"Don't forget: we're going to the movies at 7 pm tomorrow." (This sentence includes the listener, because you are speaking to them and including them in the "we." This is inclusive)

"We're going to eat. I'm sorry you can't make it." (This "we" denotes the speaker and other people, but does not include the listener. This is exclusive).

[Think of the social awkwardness that could be avoided by tactfully and grammatically saying "We're going to dinner" and clearly implying the listener is not invited.]

Those are about the only things I know of Hebrew grammar. Suffice it to say, though, that as Americans, our familiarity with foreign language does not extend much [if at all] beyond our Germanic roots or Romance neighbors. This means that many of the fundamental concepts of Hebrew will be new. This is to say that in most cases, you will have a much greater head start in your foreign language experience (learning an Indo-European language) than this project will present, and it's one area in which we've decided to stack the cards against ourselves.

The Spiel

There were a few criteria in mind for exactly which language we were going to use for this little project.

It came about as a result of my study of Italian. I was going to try to finish all 90 lessons of Italian in 90 days before I left. I leave in 13 days and am about .... 35 lessons behind. Ouch. But in my defense, there's a plethora of other study materials and things I've looked at online that have been able to pinpoint more closely what I feel like I'll need to know. I took Latin for four years in school, which serves as a wonderful foundation for any language really, not to mention one it's very closely related to.

In any case, I got to thinking about that kind of highly compressed, learning-in-a-bubble approach to studying. Instead of something 'methodical' that borders on slow, monotonous study, could one reason that a blisteringly fast, haphazard approach would in some ways work better? We will find out. I emailed Andrea and Kimberly about it, and they jumped onboard, and we finally arrived at Hebrew. Some of the other contenders were Korean, Hindi, Greek, Tagalog and Ojibwe. For a number of reasons, we chose Hebrew. Most of the reasons were because of the distinct disadvantages it would present, but there were one or two advantages to Hebrew, for the purposes of this undertaking. In the next few posts (possibly amongst others regarding various things), we'll outline what these reasons are and what strategery led us to these conclusions.

The Scoop

It's been 36 days since the inception of The Hebrew Experiment (HebEx), and it's high time I describe what all's going on.

One of the things I made reference to earlier was Parkinson's Law, which states:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

This brings up issues of goals, procrastination, motivation, determination and the like. Even with a task one would like to complete, without structure, it can be difficult to do. So we're adding some structure (and mishegas [okay, it's Yiddish]) to our approach to Hebrew. A blitz attack can sometimes be inspiring and frantic enough to be productive. We'll discuss advantages to this approach later.

In short, though, the Hebrew Experiment is an attempt to become as fluent as possible in Modern Hebrew in 60 days, using Pimsleur's first two Hebrew courses as a basis for study, and supplementing it with anything else we can get our hands on. Aside from Pimsleur as the constant with the three of us, we are all taking our own approach to what we learn and how. With only 60 days to get as far as we can, we certainly won't be fluent, but I expect enormous strides to be made. Again, more later about the benefits to this approach.

I skimmed over a few online message boards and blogs where people discussed their experience with the language. They ranged from people studying/working in Israel to people whose in-laws only spoke Hebrew to people who were ethnically Jewish and were exposed to the language from a young age. The shortest time in which someone claimed to be "fluent" [which is the vaguest of benchmarks] was about a year (a woman whose in-laws spoke only Hebrew), and she claimed to think in it. A gentleman in Israel said he'd been there about two and a half years and his Hebrew was only passable.

We picked Hebrew for a number of reasons; these will be discussed later, but suffice it to say that it's not an easy language. It certainly doesn't lend itself to be learned easily by native speakers of any language that isn't Semitic.

So there you have it.

Modern Hebrew

60 Days

60 Pimsleur lessons (half hour each = 30 hours of "instruction")

and whatever else we can get our hands on

Begins May 1, 2010.

The phantom third participant speaks...at last

"MUCH madness is divinest sense." Never has that old verse wrung truer than on the afternoon of January 21 of this very year. Picture the scene: a young man is hunched over on his futon while the strains of a melody (no doubt sung by some red-headed maiden) drift through the otherwise still air. His focus is singular; his determination is unwavering; his goal is clear: learn Italian. He clutches in his hands those ancient instruments of scholarship—pen, paper and Blackberry—as he tirelessly divines where the language of the ancient Romans connects with the tongue of the modern Romans—the living language of that linguistic motherland. Unwilling to turn away, his beard has grown in, his clothes remain unlaundered and his only vittles are head cheese and stinky tofu, nourishment completely unsuitable for the task at hand. Near fatigue, but manic, he fires off an email to his trusty cohorts almost 12,000 miles away.

Ok, I may have taken some creative liberties with that last bit, but this I know for sure: In the wee hours of the morning (my time) on January 21, I received an email simply entitled, “So excited!” Later that morning, after settling into the waking-coma I call “gainful employment,” I clicked on the little flag alerting me of a new email. Rousing a little, I wrestled through a paragraph of pure Italian (greatly helped by my own trip to Italy not three weeks prior) before learning that my dear friend, polyglot and professional enthusiast had stumbled upon a project of great interest—and I was invited to participate!

I was eager to get on board: I already speak two languages fluently, and have about three others in constant rotation. And this would be far from my first time taking up with a language on the fly. But this time, there would be rules. And, well…

I am not so much a book learner as a street (?) learner. I am supremely fascinated by the way people live with their languages. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the theory of language actually interests me quite a bit; but my retention is directly related to how I learn the word. Flashcards…meh. Workbooks…warmer. The Holy Pimsleur...much better. But hearing two children fight over a toy? Watching on as a mother feeds her kids? Hearing two workers prattle on in a fish market? This is how language breathes, grows and moves. This is how language survives. How can I bring that living element into my experience?

Hmm…this is going to be interesting.

Calling all...

current/former/aspiring/self-proclaimed/potential/compulsory/involuntary linguists and/or language students:
I am the creator of the Hebrew Experiment.
There's something I'd like to share with you. It is Parkinson's Law. Many people don't know it by this name, but it states that Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. This principle can be true of many other resources, but we are certainly interested here with time.
The time, or lack of it, is one reason many people feel they cannot successfully learn another language. Time concerns take various forms:

• It takes too much time out of my day/week/month to dedicate to studying a language
• It takes too much time and effort before I can even use what I'm studying.
• I don't have time to continue to use what I've already studied, and I end up forgetting it.

and on and on. These are valid concerns, but do not mistake them for excuses.
I have been asking some of my friends about their reasons for not starting a study of foreign language, not continuing, etc, and there are some consistent answers. Throughout the course of the Hebrew Experiment, I'd like to see, against many intentional and preconceived disadvantages, how many of these can be dispelled. One we will certainly be addressing is time: reducing the time it takes to complete a task without sacrificing the quality of the final product.
I don't mean to stand on a soap box. I do enjoy foreign language study, and it is not my intention to flaunt anything. It has proven to be one of the most enjoyable, rewarding experiences I've ever had; that being said, instead of calling people on their excuses or sounding dogmatic or elitist about anything, I'm hoping to make it clear how it can be done enjoyably and more efficiently for those that have ever had any desire to do so. To de-foreignize foreign language. Speaking a second (or fifth) language doesn't have to be an elitist accomplishment.
That's it. I'm excited to get this going, and we're waiting on the third participant to come forward and introduce themselves, but after that I'll be sharing all the gory details of the project. We'll start discussing why we're doing it the way we are, how it came to being, etc.
I also mentioned earlier (I think) that it would be great if anyone were interested in trying to recreate the results on their own or start up a project themselves. This obviously isn't possible until you know exactly what's going on, but if you've ever wanted to learn another language, and feel like you could take a couple of months out of this year to get a good head start, then ask around and see if anyone else you know wants to play along, and look out for the details of what we're doing. They should be up within the next week or so.

One Test Subject Speaks!

It began with a burst of enthusiasm so typical of the originator of this most unorthodox experiment. It was both a unique and intriguing offer. A linguistical endeavor with very...interesting variables to say the least. Would I be agreeable? Why ever not? In fact, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I found this whirlwind of a linguistical journey a bit thrilling. However, to understand why I would jump at such an undertaking ( for which details will be later revealed) with such abandon, you'd do well to know a little about me.

The year is 2001. By day, you'll find me in a high school classroom with three others, tenacious enough (or, one might argue, insane enough) to take on AP Spanish, by evening, at the local school for the deaf and blind, studying American Sign Language with the resident interpreters, and some nights, reading books on linguistical theories at the local university library or B&N whenever I had the chance.

Fast forward, and you'll find me at my first job as a secretary, studying languages during the frequent lulls of that job and jotting down tragically unrealistic language goals I wanted to achieve by age twenty-one. I admit, if language, in all it forms were a disease, I'd be writing this from ICU.

This having been said, I also have focus problems. No, correct that, linguistically speaking I have full-blown ADD. At different points I have resolved to learn a number of languages, and these resolves can last anywhere from one hour to several years. As a result I'm not nearly the polyglot my history would suggest. I'm only fluent in Spanish. I can carry on basic conversations in American Sign Language, I'm well on my way in Arabic (but the road ahead is long and I am nowhere near fluent), and I know a smattering of salutations and phrases from various languages. Who can say where the tide will take me next? A visit to another country or a chance meeting with someone from a distant land in a random Wal-mart can set me off in another direction. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

This is my linguistical background, in my own words. Apparently it qualifies me to be a test subject in "The Hebrew Experiment." Keep following along and decide for yourself.

Fully Debriefed

As of early this morning, I have been given full disclosure of the details of the Hebrew experiment. I can't spill the beans just yet because I do need to wait for the other two participants to get up to speed. I can, however, say that they'll soon be posting their own introductions here, so look out for information about them. Back to that in a second.
What I can say, for now, is that, as some may have supposed, the project does involve a linguistic endeavor. Those of you that know me personally know that I've always got a linguistic project in the works, no matter how serious. This one will be unique, though. The other participants are vaguely aware of the nature of the project now, and it's obviously been established that we're talking about modern Hebrew.
Back to the participants. They'll be on shortly, but I'll jump in with a little information about myself (the relevant parts, anyway). I didn't take any foreign language classes until the 8th grade. I was placed in a Latin class that fed into Latin 1 my freshman year. My junior high Latin teacher was well intentioned, but not spectacular. In high school, however, I loved it. Took it for four years and it became the basis for my interest in foreign language.
After high school, I started studying things on my own, beginning with Russian. I studied it passive/aggressively for quite a while, but only in a vacuum; I never had a chance to use it much. After that came cursory studies (to varying degrees) of things like German and Turkish, and out of necessity, stretches of a few weeks to a few months studying other languages, which I've managed mostly to forget. I was encountering lots of foreigners at the time and able to make use of these opportunities to study everything from Turkish to Swahili to Persian, Urdu, Albanian, Romanian, Hungarian, Azerbaijani and Telugu. I've managed (unfortunately) to forget most of it since it was for such temporary use and such sporadic study, but some of it stays with you, mostly being the general across-the-board concepts present in so many (even unrelated) languages, along with a desire to learn more.
I've never taken any classes or had any formal training in anything I (claim to) speak. I've studied Chinese now for almost three years, and currently live in Taipei, Taiwan. I speak Mandarin with little problem, and it's given me opportunity to study and attain varying degrees of ability in Cantonese and Taiwanese as well. I was also studying Thai very rigorously last year, and plan to pick that back up in a few weeks. I'm currently trying to learn Italian within the month I have left before I arrive in Rome. After that I have a few weeks before I'm back in Bangkok and hopefully able to communicate comfortably.
In any case, I always have some kind of linguistic iron in the fire (be that good or bad), and really do enjoy those kinds of pursuits.
Aside from Chinese, though, saying I've studied or spent time with a language is by no means to say I claim fluency. I haven't such delusions of grandeur, but even a cursory study isn't fruitless. I might be able to decipher or understand written text or fight to keep my head above water in a spoken conversation. In any case, that's kind of the starting point for language.
The other two participants should be posting shortly, and we'll be talking more as we get off the ground with this. All information will hopefully be out by the end of next week or beginning of the following week.
Other participants, your turn!

86 Days remain

I'm told that as of today, all the starting materials have been collected, but that more may be introduced or deemed necessary as it progresses. Each individual participant is going to be responsible for this if and when it happens. Wondering how that will work.
The participants are soon to be briefed on the remaining details of the study. As soon as we all have everything, we'll be able to share some more with you. The other two test subjects have been added as contributors to the blog, and you'll hopefully start seeing some information from them as well.
Personally, I was quite excited about the whole thing, but starting to think now about what it may involve makes me a bit more anxious. I have my notions. Excited (but slightly nervous) to see how it goes. Once we actually have more information, we might have a little Q&A, but that probably won't be until we've started in May.

Countdown: 100 days

.... I think.

The Hebrew Experiment: 21 January, 2010.

Current Facts:
Start date: 1 May, 2010.

Undisclosed location

Test subjects: 3. Names yet to be released.

Procedures and hypotheses still undisclosed.

Information will be shared as it becomes available. Please stay calm, and thank you for your patience.