At the end of my first Modern Hebrew class on Monday night, I decided to ask the teacher a few questions. She was pretty impressed with my ability to reproduce the Hebrew alphabet and read things phonetically, so I wanted to explain why I could do that but still definitely belonged in the beginner class. I told her how Jewish children in America are sent to Hebrew school, and how those schools are almost always a monumental waste of time. I told her that, once or twice a week, I was instructed at copying the letters, reading the letters, memorizing prayers, and doing other useless things that weren't doing anything to help my mind absorb the language—and given that is the age when children's minds are absorbing all the language they can get, I find it absurd that Jewish children in the US aren't taught any Hebrew in Hebrew school. In any case, she assured me that next week, we will finish learning the alphabet and start learning to speak, which means that we will have about 11 more weeks to complete beginner's Hebrew.
Perhaps it's because I teach language at the university level, or because I have learned 3 foreign languages now, but I do not find this setup sufficient for language acquisition. Let me tell you how the course began. Once we were done wasting 20 minutes (of the 2 hours) finding a room where the lamps had light bulbs (yes, even the Grandes Écoles seem to be poorly funded in terms of classroom supplies), the professor decided to spend an hour telling us about the philosophical stakes of the Hebrew language. We discussed the difference between ancient Hebrew and modern Hebrew and how the latter came about. Then, we discussed the notions of "spoken language" and "mother tongues." This is apparently crucial to understanding Hebrew, which was primarily a written language used for religious purposes all throughout the middle ages and Renaissance, was then considered a literary language that could be analyzed by philosophers such as Spinoza, and which was then finally resurrected by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who seems to be some sort of mythical figure for the Hebrew language. This man took the dead language and revived it, adding new words, simplifying the grammar, and finally raising his son in complete isolation, surrounded by only people who would speak to him in fledgling Hebrew so that he could be the first native speaker. I wonder how that kid turned out psychologically speaking. At least nowadays he would have one killer college admission essay, but he wouldn't be able to write it in English.
Anyway, this discussion was interesting, but there was one major problem: it was in French. How can we learn Hebrew like this? Then, another hour of learning to draw symbols I already knew and the class was over. So, back to the beginning of my post. I was walking out of the ENS with my teacher, telling her that I was going to have to miss two classes for a conference I was going to, but wouldn't miss any more after that. Then, she told me that she is always impressed by students like me. I asked why, since she doesn't really know anything about me except that I can draw the Hebrew alphabet letters after years of rote memorization. She said that she could never imagine learning a foreign language in a foreign language. Alternatively: she couldn't believe I wanted to learn Hebrew in French!
I thought about that for a minute. What an interesting thought! Yes, that was interesting! I mean, when I learned Italian, I definitely relied on my French knowledge to give me a head start on the grammar (which is more or less analogous), thought in French, and then translated the sentences into Italian. That type of reasoning made sense, since Italian is syntactically much closer to French than to English. But, I didn't learn Italian in French. In fact, I only learned Italian in Italian! My teachers almost never spoke English, which is more or less the way I teach French to my students as well. At first, sure, you speak a bit of English so they don't get overloaded, but the longer the course goes on, the closer you get to speaking to them 100% in the target language. I never would have spent an hour of a two hour class speaking to my students about the history of the language, then the second hour explaining the alphabet also in English. That would have been a waste of time, though now that I look back on it, at least we have time to waste in American language classes. 5 hours a week is much more than 2, and the fact that the students hear the language five days a week is already much better than one.
All that going through my head, I didn't even know how to respond to the professor. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I found the very nature of the course insufficient. So, I just said I was always up for a challenge, and really wanted to learn about the relationship between the Hebrew letters and numbers and numerological interpretations (Kabbalah).
So there you have it: language classes in France. Now I guess you all see why French people don't speak English very well. I suppose it's not their fault—who can learn a language one day a week?
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