 Hey guys welcome back to my YouTube channel this is Daniel Rosel here I wanted to drop in today with a video blog I think on an important subject and that is why I think that learning Hebrew is of such central importance to succeeding as an immigrant in Israel now I have done a few videos recently regarding various discoveries if you want to say I have made that of that I'm using right now to improve my Hebrew the main one was this fantastic discovery that there is a way to translate captions on YouTube so that if you have the video subtitled only in Hebrew I can still get that captioned in English and that for me is a really great way to pad out any missing vocabulary that I and that's really where my Hebrew is struggling right now a little bit in the pronunciation as someone pointed out in the comments but more than anything in the in the vocabulary and that also has kind of a secondary effect when you know your vocab is limited it really reduces your confidence to go out and speak the language and of course that's the best way to improve in language is just to go out and have fun and speak to native speakers but I think there's a lot to be said for coming into those situations knowing that you have a pretty strong basis in terms of vocab um so oh and I wanted to just say quickly I did recently upload a video um I explained this method of translating subtitles in Hebrew thought it would be fun I yesterday took the video down or made it private which I rarely rarely do I got annoyed at the errors I made in my own Hebrew listening back to that video which is also something I rarely do besides making edits I don't really I try not to watch my own videos because it just seems a bit too self-indulgent but on this occasion I wanted to listen to my Hebrew to see well how does it sound am I doing nicely am I do I sound fluent and I think it started I said I knew say um it's good and it should have been a new same maths instead of omas and I was like man so I'm sorry for anyone who commented on that video I know there were a few comments I try not to do that but there will I will do a video in Hebrew or videos in Hebrew when I'm a little bit more confident so I want to confident and competent um I wanted to uh talk for just a few minutes today here about why I think Hebrew is is of such central importance if you are moving to Israel on Aliyah as Oleh now you might be thinking well why does this even need to be a video obviously right Hebrew is the language of Israel you move to a country the first thing you do is learn the language yes but there is believe it or not a lot of people who I think really understate the importance of learning Hebrew or they say you know because there are so many English speaking immigrants to Israel because you can work in the job sector only with English and both of those things are true not just from uh from personal experience I worked in jobs in Israel where you don't don't need a word of English so those people are correct it is possible to live in Israel without really learning Hebrew or without knowing anything but the you know the bare essentials etc etc um but I think that is a huge huge mistake and I want to sort of give a few reasons if you need encouragement to spend hours per day trying to improve your Hebrew which is what I'm doing currently then here are a few reasons the first reason I think it's a really bad idea to rely upon the fact that many Israelis speak English you can get a job in Israel in in Israel with just English you can also find a community that is almost entirely English speaking in Israel believe it or not they do exist because there's just so many uh American immigrants who are here who came before etc as places like Ramat Be' Shemesh I hope they wouldn't take offense at me saying that but that's kind of its association part is Khanna to a lesser extent parts of Jerusalem to a lesser extent such places exist the first reason why I think uh Hebrew is essential in Israel is that English is not an official language right the official language is the official language of Israel is Hebrew Arabic was traditionally also a second language then the nation state law kind of demoted its status a little bit so it's kind of in between but for practical intents and purposes Hebrew and Arabic are the two languages that are kind of the official ones in Israel now the repercussions of that are pretty far-reaching in fact and it goes down to stuff like translation right so the government will publish things in the first instance in Hebrew and its second priority for government bodies will be disseminating material in Arabic to reach the whatever it is 20 percent of Israel's population whose first language is Arabic then you have this kind of secondary pool of languages which are the languages which are commonly spoken in Israel because so many immigrants speak them I would put in that pool of languages the following languages very specifically Amharic so many Ethiopian a lot of Ethiopian Jews English a lot of English speakers which are called Anglos which I think is a horrible term but uh I call them English speakers French a lot of French Jews and probably Russian so I would call these tier two languages meaning if an organization can get round to adding material translating its website offering this as a supported language in its call center it will do that but the only ones you can really the only one you can really count on is Hebrew and to a lesser extent Arabic so when you're trying to manage your affairs in Israel whether that be your tax affairs or your medical affairs or anything else you will run into obstacles it's not uncommon for instance here's here's an example Batuach Leumi Batuach Leumi as a long-term self-employed person in Israel and that's my is one of the most important government bodies in Israel for social giving social benefits if you ever need to draw down unemployment unemployment in Israel you'll go to Batuach Leumi everyone has to pay into Batuach Leumi in order to make their social contributions it to the state and get your uh get your healthcare name the helpline of Batuach Leumi the Mokad the last time I had to call them to update a credit card detail only had options for Hebrew and Arabic and that's exactly my point so you're going to be very hamstrung you're going to be more hamstrung than you realize the more time you spend in Israel you realize what a big disadvantage not having a good basis in Hebrew is so that's number one the second point is the sheer volume of Hebrew speakers versus English speaker and how much so the reason I got super excited when I discovered last week how to translate subtitles from Hebrew to English was that it basically I'm a huge fan of learning languages via unconventional methods via watching films with subtitles via watching documentaries with subtitles via translating songs is another one of my favorite methods and for as I've explained in previous videos when it comes to Hebrew you have kind of a limited pool of content that gets translated to English they're just not that many films being produced in Israel right it's a tiny country of 10 million people in the broad scheme of things but vice versa when it comes to Hebrew content that is that well that it's worth them subtitling into Hebrew it's literally like 10 times the content now as a language learner you can learn with target language audio target language subtitles but it's more inefficient because if you don't know what the word if you if there's a word in a sentence you don't know you'll see it's subtitled then you'll have to look it up in the dictionary versus when you have subtitles in your native language if there's one word you didn't catch in a sentence you can quickly check the subtitle and you learn that vocab to me it's a very efficient way to learn a language so just to give an example along this basis when I discovered how to translate there's a auto translate functionality on youtube's desktop and there's also an android app called I'm looking at my phone here zed translate it's missing on youtube on android but there is a third-party app called zed translate that will sort of bring in the missing feature so I can find a video which is in Hebrew audio Hebrew subtitles and translate it and use that video for learning and that is literally expanded the pool of content that I can learn from I would say tenfold there's just so much more of it and this is I'm not talking here just about this but this is just a specific instance of life in Israel right if you're looking for advice about personal finances pension um mortgages all these grown-up issues that as uh as if you move to Israel when I did a 25 as you go through life you start having to think about these things more you'll realize that there's just vastly more information when if you google in Hebrew than in English now I want to make a sort of slightly tangential point here my personal opinion is the most undertaught skill in Israel for people moving wanting to move here the thing no one thinks to do is learning to touch type in Hebrew as anyone who watched my video that I made private uh heard my Hebrew is not an ideal point I'd love to say I'm fluent I'm definitely not there um but something I did that I think was very smart was before I moved to Israel the one of the last prepper preparatory things I did was I taught myself how to touch type in Hebrew I've been touch typing in uh in English for many years something I learned when I was like 13 or something uh but I replicated that process in Hebrew and it's been the biggest return on investment anything any any query you have any query I have about where to buy a stationary bicycle you know it's it's it's trivial to google often a kosher and you'll find the websites but trying to find the very limited resources in English it's always going to be an uphill battle for the reason that in Israel you're going to have 10 million folks speaking Hebrew as their primary language and some people speak English so so and there's maybe a few hundred thousand English native speakers in the country but you've just you've you've opened up to a much much greater pool of uh people if you search in English an example here uh Hebrew sorry an example here would be Facebook groups right there's a lot of Facebook groups in English in Israel and they're kind of famously a big resource for people who move here now something I think a danger in English being so accessible and this kind of bubble being something that exists in other words places you can live uh to surround yourself with English speakers Facebook groups you can you can use to answer source information in English etc even phone companies you can subscribe to who have decided to serve the English speaking market so they've caused the fact that you can make for yourself kind of a bubble you can form a bubble for yourself quite easily in Israel that that that just you know allows you to rely only upon English that's a massive trap and it's only when you start seeing the bigger picture for instance talk about the the minutiae of Facebook groups for a moment every Facebook group that exists in English whether it's about personal finances or what's happening in this city you'll find a corresponding Facebook group in Hebrew and it's probably going to have five times the people and this is a whole world that's closed off to you if you don't know the language um and something else I've noticed about the English speaking world and I don't mean this is critical of anyone who stumbles on this video it becomes quite claustrophobic after a while you really realize that you're being penned in by a linguistic limitation to who you can socialize with what companies you can work for speaking of companies you can work for now I right now work in English essentially sometimes a couple I have a couple of colleagues who don't know English and we essentially speak in Hebrew and correspond in Hebrew and that's been kind of my average job in Israel now I'm in a kind of I'd say a weird situation and that I work in marketing communications which is a very linguistic centric field if you think about it as opposed to being an engineer or being a doctor and the kind of the jobs I I'm not really sure what kind of job I could guess relying on Hebrew for communication so probably a one of the larger Israeli companies doing marketing within Israel but it's actually makes more sense for me to work in Hebrew in English now I've never had difficulty finding a job in Israel with my level of Hebrew being what it is it is a question that always comes up in job interviews they usually switch to Hebrew to test you out and my Hebrew's always been deemed good enough that I could work in a company I've worked in Israel in house as in salary jobs I've worked part-time remote jobs and I've had plenty of freelance clients so I've done a lot of different variations here now again I come back to the word of this being a trap of this being somewhat illusory right something that you can carry out your job responsibilities in English but there's two issues here that I think rarely get discussed one is the career ladder if you are hired because of your language whether that language is French or English and this is a very common situation in what you have excuse me Israeli companies marketing to the US or marketing to France or marketing to somewhere more obscure like Denmark or Japan they hire a the Danish guy in Israel right there can be that many of them and they have they got a job now the problem was jobs like this and I really haven't kind of thought of a resolution to this myself is where did those jobs go if you're the Danish guy in the company who's selling to Denmark or you're marketing to Denmark and there's maybe five companies in Israel that need a Danish speaker it's a very very small realm of career opportunity second thing this is a separate point but I think an important one as well is even if you're the English guy in the company or with the international team you'll often find two things firstly that's really a separate group from the rest of the company but in order to really enjoy your job you need to still need Hebrew um what do I mean by that I mean to socialize with your co-workers to speak to co-workers in tangential departments who may not speak English so it's again it's a case of well you can do you can get by in English but to really maximize your potential and really sort of make the most out of a career opportunity Hebrew is deceptive in that it seems not some people you will find people who will flat out say you don't need Hebrew to have a job and I've heard friends say this before and I think it's just the biggest falsehood out there they'll say you don't need Hebrew you can you can get hired by loads of companies in Israel just with English and it's true again but the the the thing that never gets discussed is how much are you missing out on what's the opportunity cost of taking the easy route and that's that's why by the way seven years later I'm kind of playing catch up in that I spent a lot of the last few years working on my career blah blah blah and now in corona not working in an office and now I'm like hey my Hebrew's falling behind I really need to get back to to to working on this um the final thing I'm gonna say here at this last point I have on my uh on my notepad in front of me is regarding socializing and that it's kind of goes without saying and it's kind of a bitter bitter one for a lot of people because Hebrew is a hard language right I was in my uh in earlier days uh in my 20s um I was pretty good at languages I I managed to sort of teach myself to a decent level Spanish Portuguese Italian French um but mostly Spanish was kind of my language learning project I used to uh just mop up Spanish TV I taught myself Spanish in high school and passed a test in Spanish including Spanish government tests called uh DELE certifications anyway it took me a while to realize that you know even if even if you are even if you enjoy learning languages the Semitic languages Hebrew Arabic um Hark there's a few others in the category there are international scales for the difficulty of languages and the Semitic languages are quite high not quite as high as Chinese or I think the Scandinavian languages are notoriously difficult but Semitic languages are definitely up there and some people even then then you also have some people who are just flat out don't have a capacity to learn languages um I think mine is probably getting slightly worse as I get into my 30s I think your brain is more sponge like in previous decades I don't know if that's still scientific consensus or pseudoscience but you know you have those limitations even people who are good good at languages and inverted commas might find hey Hebrew is not that not that easy it's a hard not to crack and secondly you might have people who move to Israel in their 60s for retirement and they're older and they just say I can't learn the language I have family members who just you know they've been here for not in Israel but I have distant family members in Israel third cousins that kind of thing you know we've been here for 20 years and they know that's like as far as the Hebrew goes the real basics um so what I'm saying here is that I appreciate that while I'm saying this I'm not firstly I'm not preaching at all I'm so I'm someone who's been here for seven years I'm frustrated at the level of my own Hebrew and I'm working on it now in order to try to get to the point I know I know it can be out which is something like fluency and I don't think it's impossible I think I'll get there but I'm annoyed with myself that has taken me this long into my aliyah journey to put it back at the top of my sort of day to day to day agenda so I'm not I'm not preaching I'm not saying hey I'm a super successful Hebrew learner here's what you need to do I'm just saying I'm trying to give uh anyone who's just moved here sort of advice on why you should not make the mistake of saying ah Hebrew we don't need that let me work and getting a good job making friends and the Hebrew will come because what a lot of people say is that Hebrew comes sort of by osmosis to an extent and then you get stuck at that level and that's what I think's happened to me for the last three years is you know you kind of live here you pick up words you have some friends but then you get stuck at that kind of middle ground between being able to get by day today and have some sort of basic conversations and being really fluent with a really good vocabulary that lets you express that lets you really express yourself as you want to in Hebrew so socially yeah you know you're going to be limited to if you to be finding English speakers and I think there's more to it than there's more to English speakers and native Israelis becoming friends there's more than just a linguistic divide there's also often a very big cultural divide and folks who don't get thrown into those kind of immersion situations like the army I didn't do the army uh or university um will often find that they just never get that chance to really meet Israelis and that's also something as I work on my uh Hebrew over the common calendar year and it's kind of my objective to make significant progress by specifically next summer uh I hope to make a few Israeli friends how I'm not sure but I figure it out um so anyway I hope that those are just my thoughts on the matter about why Hebrew I was going to say why learning Hebrew is essential that was my first when I thought what what title I should give this video that was that and then I thought hmm maybe that's not the right choice of words because again for those people who really can't learn Hebrew they're just not capable of it and the fact that it's not essential because that's actually a lie you can get by in English but that's kind of the um that's the sort of message I'm going that I'm trying to drive home here is that there's a difference between getting by and succeeding and I think the more time you spend here the more you'll realize how big that uh that kind of gulf between those two points is thank you guys for listening to this semi-directional uh vlog here I do appreciate anyone who watches this youtube channel as it continues to slowly creep up in the subscriber number it's and grow uh if you have any thoughts about this at all do definitely send me a comment I'm always eager to hear from what other folks make of my uh video spills uh thank you guys for watching and have a good day. Litra out.