Say Whaaat!...

Look at these road signs. Don't you think it's fascinating? 

This is one of the first things I noticed while being in Israel. Notice the words are in Hebrew (obviously), Arabic (say whaat?!) and English (expected). I was fascinated by this so I grabbed my Encylopedia and... who am I kidding? So, I looked it up on the internet of course and found this. About 20% of Israeli Citizens are Arabs. And a VERY long history affiliated with this fact.  

In addition to Hebrew, Arabic and English, you'll also come across pamphlets like the picture below. What language is that?

It's Russian. Why? Because there was a huge immigration of Russian Jews to Israel in the 90s. Click here to learn more. 

Anymore? Oui madame, miss, et monsieur. Francais! Lots of Frenchmen in Netanya, the city we live in. In fact, I was asked once if I was from France in French. I have also met a few people living in our building that are vacationing from France and my current GP here is French who works in a French affiliated medical center/system. 

More? why yes. There is Yiddish, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Persian, etc. Many Jews desire to have a piece of land in this holy land. And so you have Jews from all over the world visiting, congregating and/or living here. 

With these many languages, there's still nothing like knowing Hebrew. I often find myself wishing I am fluent in it so I can really immerse myself in the culture and know exactly what's going on around me. And it will definitely make life here less complicated. 

But I'm grateful English is the major foreign language. So yes, you can get by with just English. But it surely helps to know some Hebrew. More on that later. Shalom. Yom tov (have a good day).