International Phrasebooks

Israel is a young country (60 years old) that has had a constant influx of immigrants from all over the world since its establishment. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a huge influx of (Mizrachi) Jews moving from surrounding Arab countries to Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union moved to Israel. In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of French and Ethiopian Jews making aliyah. Of course, there is also a constant smaller stream of immigrants from English speaking countries moving to Israel as well. The locations and languages of immigrants to Israel vary and so do their accents when they speak Hebrew.

There is an ongoing debate among immigrants to Israel as to what is more important to concentrate on at first - speaking limited Hebrew with a good accent, or speaking Hebrew well with a poor accent? There is no answer to that. So, what should immigrants or others who are learning Hebrew do? Whatever they feel most comfortable doing. However, no matter what you decide to focus on, you should know that there will be times, with a good accent or not, that there will be misunderstandings in communication.

To minimize these situations though, practicing speaking and/or listening to Hebrew is still essential. With this in mind, International Phrasebooks (IP) has a special Hebrew for Everyone phrasebook and audio CD package available. To make the audio clips accessible to everyone and help everyone with their pronunciation, we will periodically post different clips from the audio CD on this blog.