אני לא מדבר עברית.

English is widely spoken is Israel. Nevertheless, Hebrew is the language of the people, so I thought I would do my best to get acquainted with the basics before heading out there. I learned that Duolingo now offers Hebrew as one of their languages, which surprised me. The last time I checked Duolingo, they only offered Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Now they offer 28 language courses, including (for some reason) Esperanto and Klingon, and not including (for some reason) Mandarin Chinese or Arabic.

In any case, I downloaded the app a few weeks ago, and have been doing daily exercises since. My goal in this is not fluency, even at a conversational level. I think that would be a little too ambitious. My goals are, in order:

1. To be able to read menus at hole-in-the-wall restaurants.
2. To get the gist of conversations between two native speakers.
3. To be able to say "I don't speak Hebrew".

One down, two to go! Ok, I might have added that last one to boost my confidence a little bit.

Duolingo's lessons seem well-structured, with sentences that make sense in terms of content. That being said, I think the sentences in the "strengthening" exercises are computer generated. As a result, they sometimes don't make a whole lot of sense, and other times they...have other connotations. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are a few of my favorites:

זאת אשה גדולה.
That is a big woman.
זה בתוכי?
Is it inside me?
הפרות נגדה.
The cows are against her.
הוא אוהב ארבע עשרה נשים.
He loves fourteen women.
האישה הזאת שותה הרבה יין.
This woman drinks a lot of wine.

We'll see how this all goes. For now, להתראות!

Steve