הי

אגב "חוצפה ישראלית" קבלו לינק מומלץ

The Israeli Chuzpa Workshop

http://www.websense-media.co.il/eatbigfish/eatbigfish_minisite.htm

You've made my day! (Which is a good language block to use in response to a compliment rather than just saying "Thank you") Another block could be "You're too kind" which roughly translated into Hebrew is הגזמת

Lola

You're absolutely great teaher

One of the important considerations when seaking English is what your relationship is to the person you're interacting with.

The problem for Hebrew speakers is that in Hebrew this aspect is not a feature....we address almost everyone in the same way whether they are older than we are, have a more senior status, whether we know them or don't know them etc.

So the options you suggested: "Great"  Awesome" "Nice" may all be OK in a certain setting ( where we are and who we're speaking to) but totally inappropriate in another.

Age is also a factor when choosing which word to use.  I think it's the same in Hebrew. There are words which 'young' people might use eg דרווינים which wouldn't be appropriate for an older person.

"Great" and Awesome" may fall into that category. Probably few people use the word ' nice' any more to evaluate something like a presentation.....it's a bit like 'interesting'.

If the person is more senior you may choose to say: I really enjoyed your presentation / your presentation was very instructive (the words in bold lend a positive feeling)

There is of course a hidden minefield in complimenting someone.  I'll try a general post on that subject.

BTW, your suggestion about typing direction worked. Many many thanks. I'll try to edit previous posts.

Lola

PS When I accept your offer to be on my list of friends, does that automatically put me on your list?

ומה היא המילה הנכונה להביע הערכה על מצגת מעניינת?

nice? great? awesome  ?

צטט: גנאדי 2007-09-01 16:22:58

אני גם שמעתי על  let's have lunch ו-very interesting (או משהו כזה) שמשמעותם הפוכה בדיוק.

APOLOGIES THAT MY ANSWER IS IN CAPS BUT I CANT GET THE LINES TO WORK BY TYPING IN ENGLISH ESPECIALLY IF I ADD HEBREW WORDS. IF ANYONE CAN HELP I WOULD BE THRILLED.

ANYWAY ABOUT THE HIDDEN MEANING BEHIND THE WORD INTERESTING....THERE'S THIS JOKE.....SIMON WENT TO A MEETING AND WHEN HE GOT BACK TO THE OFFICE HIS FRIENDS ASKED

? HOW DID IT GO.

HE ANSWERED.... INTERESTING.

..?AND THEY SAID.....THAT BAD.

SO IF YOU HEAR SOMEONE TELL YOU THAT YOUR PRESENTATION WAS 'INTERESTING' YOU MAY WANT TO CHECK  IF THAT ISN'T  JUST A POLITE WAY OF TELLING YOU  על הפנים

צטט: אייל טרזי 2007-09-01 01:20:16

לולה שלום

 

רעיון מצוין לבלוג שיכול להתפתח בעתיד ללימוד מרחוק עבור אנשי עסקים ואקדמיה. אפשר להביא דוגמאות רבות

 

לא הבנתי לצערי את השאלה הבאה

 

“Are you enjoying the conference”

 Response

?????

 

מה צריך לדעתך לענות  ?

 

Eyal..or perhaps you spell your name Ayal...it's often difficult to know.....and English speakers have a lot of difficulty with Hebrew names that have no similar equivalent in English.

 

But that's for a different posting.

 

Let me explain why the response OF COURSE to any question  needing information is

 

 

Many Hebrew speakers think OF COURSE means בטח.

 But in fact if we translate OF COURSE into Hebrew it means מובן מאליו

So every time an English speaker asks a question when wanting to get some information and s/he hears the answer “OF COURSE”, the ‘hidden message is

“What a bloody stupid question. Isn’t it obvious?”

In the example I gave, no great harm has been done by this response.

 But imagine the potential damage if a businessperson were giving a presentation in English and someone from the audience asked a question to get some information and the presenter answered “OF COURSE”?

So you ask, What would be a better response? When I’m training, I tell clients to use a magic word “ABSOLUTELY”. Some of them say “That’s only UK English” or “They only say that in American English”. They couldn’t be more wrong.

 Do yourself a favour. Listen to any interview program on TV in English. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. It could be sport, politics, health, education. You name it. Within a very short time you will hear someone answer “ABSOLUTELY”.

 

לולה שלום

רעיון מצוין לבלוג שיכול להתפתח בעתיד ללימוד מרחוק עבור אנשי עסקים ואקדמיה. אפשר להביא דוגמאות רבות

לא הבנתי לצערי את השאלה הבאה

“Are you enjoying the conference”

 Response

?????

מה צריך לדעתך לענות ?

אלה

צטט: גיא חיים 2007-08-25 22:34:44

Hi Lola, Yoy get a kochav/star for this great post.

 

It's a very interesting post and a fine example of how careful hebrew speakers have to be when communicating in english. But aren't English speaking anglosaxons  already used to the israeli "dugri" attitude and speaking style? Don't they make exeptions?

 

Guy

 

 

Thanks for the star Guy. Because it's my first blog, I'm really happy to get that from you.

Now you also asked a question that I'll answer in true Israeli style by asking another question. Do you mean English speaking anglosaxons living in Israel or English speaking people from abroad ? 

Those who live here may not know enough Hebrew to understand that  Hebrew speakers speaking English are only transferring the dugriut of Hebrew into English. Unfortunately they make value judgements too quickly and interpret this dugriut as 'rude' . I wish they would make exceptions or allowances but unfortunately, people aren't tolerant.

 If you were asking about English speakers from abroad, even though they may have had some cross cultural training and may expect Israelis who speak English to be direct, they may still take offence when someone responds to a question by saying "of course'" or "why  not" ( see the items in my self quiz  ).

Their reaction is תגובת בטן and not rational.

And that's the problem when you are communicating with someone you need to impress. One wrong word can mess  up everything or " put  a spoke in the wheel "

Lola

 

צטט: קיפוד בערפל 2007-08-25 23:21:07

im sorry about my spelling

 

Almost no one pays much attention to spelling these days.

So if you write ment when it should be meant, that doesn't matter too much. But of course there are words that sound exactly the same and are spelt diffrently and the problem is a spell check doesn't pick that up. e.g: meet and meat.; see and sea. That sort of mistake just looks bad especially if you are sending a business letter. These similar sounding words are called HONONYMS and you can find lists of them on the internet.

TIP: the word  MEET and SEE both have the letter 'E' twice....that's for 2 eyes so you won't mix those up.

im sorry about my spelling

dear Lola

with the icon  i ment that enjoyd alot your post!

im aware of those small politics betwen the lines in conversations.

Hi Lola, Yoy get a kochav/star for this great post.

It's a very interesting post and a fine example of how careful hebrew speakers have to be when communicating in english. But aren't English speaking anglosaxons  already used to the israeli "dugri" attitude and speaking style? Don't they make exeptions?

Guy 

צטט: קיפוד בערפל 2007-08-25 17:11:20

i had mostly

is it good?

.  Hi Yuli,

  I'm afraid all the responses that I listed are

   So if you had mostly

then you need to check more carefully the meaning of what you hear and say

when you communicate in English.

If we look at the first example

Perhaps you'd like to move to the front rows

When someone who is in charge of something (e.g. an organiser of a conference or a professor at a university ) uses  the word PERHAPS

 אולי  you need to hear it not as    

but   עשו זאת  .

The reason for this is that people who have positions of authority don’t like to ‘give orders’. They automatically expect that the people they are speaking to will ‘hear’ their request as an order.

 I plan to talk about more of this sort of misunderstanding in my blog.

Lola   

i had mostly

is it good?