#alternitavely invent a way to magically switch to fem terms without having any implications or whatever

[agam-shel-barvadim]

Broken language rant below the cut, I have no idea where this is going but it's gonna go somewhere

Edit: This turned out very, VERY long.

"If you like Hebrew so much, then why are almost all of your posts in English?"

I ask myself the same a lot. It does feel like I throw the "Hebrew is the most beautiful language ever" card a lot without actually, yk, showing it? Standing by my words? Ironically enough I can't figure out what the right English term would be here

I joined tumblr a couple of months ago, with the sole purpose of escapism. Life was... difficult. I needed a way of escaping reality. Before that, I was in several Hebrew-speaking spaces, but as time went on, I just kinda didn't want to stay there?

And it's really hard to explain, even to myself. It's like I made a seperation between my day-to-day Hebrew and this picture of the language itself in my head (which is pretty easy in Hebrew because in day-to-day people very much do not use the language to its whole potential).

I still held the view of Hebrew as the Most Beautiful Language Ever ™, but at the same time, it reminded me of reality. Because it's the language that I speak every day. It reminded me of trauma. It reminded me of endless screams and of doors that have to remain shut. It reminded me of how impossible life was looking. And English, being the Language Of the Internet ™, distracted me from that. It was almost as if I forgot that English is a real language, with real people who speak it and that includes many people who would rather have me dead than alive. I'm saying "almost" but I think it's safe to say that's percisely what it was.

Add to that the fact that Hebrew handles gender absolutely terribly. Absolutely terribly. There's little to no room at all for gender-neutral terms. And I really needed a way to refer to myself in gender-neutral terms at the time. Or at least a non-masc way which when I say it like that does exist in Hebrew but

I... don't think I'm ready to explain that one properly, even to myself. Tho in a sense I really do want to, but I also really don't. The way I described it here feels very underwhelming and slightly incoherent but I'm afraid that's the best I can do. Bottom line is, I even started thinking in English because of that.

This all blew up in my face, obviously. And I was so frustrated with myself for that. I took it hard. I had two little personal projects that I wrote in English. I abandoned them. Physically erased one of them from paper, page by page. I wanted to stop consuming any type of media in English at all.

So in that case, why do I still post mostly in English? I don't know. I don't post for anyone else I do it for myself. To try and make sense of things. Tumblr exposed me to a lot of diaspora Jews. Who have this different perspective to a lot of things. It's like a sense of optimism I used to see here in Israel when I was a kid, which slowly faded away as time went on. Maybe that's why I keep using English?

I really don't know.

Eli'ezer Ben-Yehuda made himself think in Hebrew for the aim of renewing the language. Meanwhile I still catch myself thinking in English from time to time, despite natively speaking Hebrew and never living in any English-speaking environment, and despite Hebrew being the most beautiful language ever made. I hate myself for it. Every. single. day.

I suppose that at the end of the day, I'm a big fan of Hebrew only as long as I don't have to use it to refer to myself.