תקראי. תקראי. מה? מה הבעיה? תקראי

My Chilean roomie (well, former roomie....) wrote on my facebook wall in transliterated Hebrew, and it just reminded me how people with different languages as a native tongue transliterate Hebrew differently. For example, what I might write as "ch" or "kh" she writes as "j." Where I would write "ha" she writes "a." Stuff like that. I find it really interesting.

Also really interesting was something that happened at "army camp." Dunno if I wrote about it when it happened, but here it is, maybe for the first maybe for the second time. Our mfakedet handed us slips of paper, in English, to read aloud. And she said in Hebrew to my Chilean roomie, "Read what yours says." And my roomie explained in choppy Hebrew that she can't read English. And the mfakedet was like, "What does that mean, OF COURSE you can read English!" And then everyone from the ulpan jumped in and was like, no no no, she speaks Spanish, she doesn't speak a word of English and so she can't read English.

And I'll never forget what happened next. The mfakedet adopted the most incredulous expression on her face, and blurted out as if the answer were so simple: "But it's the same alphabet!"


Which I just thought was priceless. It seems like such an obvious answer. "But it's the same alphabet." It makes total sense when you hear it, but then you realize that just as I can't read Czech, my Spanish-speaking roomie is going to have a hard time reading English. Even if it's the same alphabet.