Writing 101

Reading through other language logs and looking at the comments on my previous posts sparked my interest in researching heritage loss in Israel. I learned about it in high school history class, but I did not approach the topic back then the same way I do now. Hearing about language and cultural loss in America got me thinking about my Israeli roots. Do immigrant families lose their languages over the years in Israel like they do in the US? In my own family, there are descendants of immigrants from all over the world. My mother immigrated from Iran with her three sisters, my grandparents from my dad's side immigrated from Central Europe after WWII, and my cousin's wife immigrated with her family from Russia. One of my cousins (her dad has Moroccan roots and her mom is from Russia) that is now about to turn 7 years old grew up speaking Hebrew with her dad and his side of the family, and Russian with her mom and her side of the family. When she grew older, she was able to understa

After almost a year of living and going to school in the US, I noticed that the hardest part about not speaking in my native language is not grammatical errors or even lack of vocabulary, but rather not understanding slang. Slang is a huge part of speaking a foreign language and it plays a key role in informal environments. Often times native speakers use it without even noticing that they use it and non-native speakers (like myself) may find themselves very confused.  Slang is used everywhere in American culture and any other culture for that matter. I noticed it mostly here in US media; in any popular TV show, movie, song, and everyday conversation. Through my experience, without having even at least a very basic understanding of slang words and phrases, pop culture and most conversations can be very confusing and not make any sense for a non-native speaker. Slang words, especially in many social situations, can help you express your emotions, thoughts, and feelings bette

Being an SIS major, I have to take classes in a foreign language of my choice. While considering which language I should study, one of my main considerations was what language should I take and if it would be a hard language to learn. Every new language is hard to learn for different reasons but is it actually true that some languages are harder to learn than others? The answer to this question depends on many variables and it is something that each person experiences differently. One of those variables is one's native language or any other language they already speak. The language/languages you were surrounded by while growing up is a big factor in how you learn other languages. Languages that share similar characteristics to one's native language or other spoken languages will be easier to learn, while languages that have very little in common if at all will be harder to learn. Some of the similarities can be the same/similar alphabet, similar vocabulary (I had to learn Ara