Ani Emily. Me at?

The Hebrew language is interesting; it's straight to the point. For example, one of the ways to introduce yourself to someone is to say Ani Emily, which means "I am Emily." (You would obviously insert your own name.) Then you can ask the person Me at?, which means "Who are you?" Can you imagine what would happen if you walked up to someone in the US, even in New England, and asked them, "Who are you?" It wouldn't go over so well. But Hebrew is different.

Hebrew is also interesting because there is no form of the verb "to be." It's just understood. So in the example above, Ani Emily is literally translated as "I Emily." And Me at? is literally transated as "Who you?"

My teacher told us that when she moved back to Israel from Washington DC she bought the first Harry Potter book. She had seen the English version in bookstores and it was well over 500 pages. But in Hebrew it was half the size. Why? Well, as you can probably gather, the Hebrew language is very concise. It's short and sweet, which makes it easier to learn than most languages I think. It also makes books translated into Hebrew from the English language much, much shorter.

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In order to familiarize myself with the sounds of the Hebrew language, I  leave my television on a local Israeli channel while I do my homework. Yesterday I ended up watching a reality show called "Chai b'LaLa Land," which is about 6 Israeli singers living in Los Angeles trying to get a record deal. Of course, I hardly understood a word of it, but I searched the show online and found out that these singers are part of the Mizrahi music genre. Mizrahi music, which is almost always sung in Hebrew, is a genre that was created by combining music styles from Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and the West. When Jews moved to Israel after WWII they came from all over the world, brining with them elements of the culture they left. Thus, Mizrahi music was born. 

Cool, right?