Vocabulary--no problem. Grammar--not terribly hard. Hearing--what's that you said? Hearing is definitely the hardest part. How many hundreds of words I've learned without hearing them used in a sentence, or at least not more than once! And you have to consider that when words are run together in a sentence they sound differently than they do separately. I don't think one of my teachers has a clue as to how hard this is. She speaks too fast, all the time. Or maybe she thinks that I have such a great social life that I can listen to Hebrew during all my waking hours. The stress that builds up in this class makes me want to quit, but staying home would be boring. On alternate days the other teacher teaches, and I can relax and actually learn something.
Speaking is also hard. I learn a verb in the infinitive, three tenses and three persons, singular and plural, and it makes sense when it's on a chart, but that means more than twenty different words for one verb, and I am supposed to instantaneously pull the right one out of the hat.
Reading is not much better, especially when I am in a noisy room. Remember there are no vowels, so there are umpteen ways to pronounce something unless you have every word perfectly memorized. Okay, so I know the root, I have the general idea of the meaning, and can guess the rest from context. This gives me a vague sense of knowing that I know something of what's going on, and a greater sense of near panic. I'm supposed to become a genius overnight. And then there's the knowledge that I am the oldest and slowest person in the class. Not the dumbest, but the slowest.
Young people, get busy and learn, while your brain waves are still at top speed. It won't last forever.
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