When we made Aliyah (immigrated) to Israel, almost five years ago (goodness, where has the time gone?), I said that I had "nursery School" Hebrew. What I meant was that I had the basic rudiments of the language and my vocabulary was not bad - for a three-year-old.


For my first five months in Israel, I went to Hebrew ulpan every day in an attempt to push my language skills to the next, elusive level. While I certainly learned a lot, my spoken Hebrew didn't evolve into the smooth, native-sounding dialect that I so desired. Not even close.


In time, I went so far as to postulate my own, new language-acquisition theory: the reason the younger you are, the easier it is to acquire a new language isn't because of young children's 'moldable minds', or 'willingness to learn' or any of that stuff. I mean seriously, if you spent each day in a three-year-old's nursery school, no matter what language they spoke, how long would it take you to know the 200 words that they repeat every single day? What's so challenging about that? Meanwhile, we parents with the aging, rigid brains are stuck trying to remember

How long would it take you to know the 200 words that they repeat every single day?

 the Hebrew words for "strep throat" and "carburetor" and "zucchini". For goodness sake, there are more than 200 new vocabulary words to learn in the grocery store alone. Just imagine venturing into the rest of an adult's daily experiences.


Yet, "slowly, slowly" I have added words to my vocabulary. I have read, listened, and "broken my teeth" on my new language, never abandoning my quest to speak nearly like a native. While my kids make fun of me for even thinking that my accent isn't 100% American-sounding, and I am far from fluent, at least I can hold my own in a (not-too-complicated) conversation, and get my point across when a teacher doesn't give my daughter the test grade she feels she deserves. (That just happened, and she got a 15 point increase after that - hurray!)


Apparently, though, my language skills are not nearly as good as I thought.


While my Hebrew may be good enough for the three-year-old set, it seems that I have not quite graduated to the level of a four-year-old. I discovered this when I was picking up my now-four-year old Yaakov at his nursery and some kids there started speaking to me.


I thought I was doing fine - and then a boy asked me if I understood Hebrew.


I was stunned. First of all, what would make a child of that age even think that I wouldn't understand the spoken language? Did I say - or not say - something that gave me away? Is it my accent? Is my grammar that bad? Well, that kid is just four, how good could his grammar be? I don't know why he said it, but I do know that kids at this age say exactly what they think. I guess that means I'm not quite ready to rest on my Hebrew laurels just yet. It's time to read, listen and "break my teeth" some more. And, if I'm very lucky, perhaps I will advance to kindergarten level - before Yaakov does.