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.)