Linguistic Assimilation of First-Generation Jewish South African Immigrants in Israel

We contribute to scholarship on the linguistic assimilation of migrants by focusing on the special case of Jewish South African migrants in Israel. English as an international language is widely used in the Israeli society, so immigrants whose mother tongue is English are a very interesting case because they might experience much less social pressure to improve their Hebrew skills than other immigrant groups who speak other languages. The study reveals that, although most first-generation immigrants participated in state-sponsored Hebrew classes and reported relatively moderate levels of language proficiency, it has not become their primary language. Hebrew proficiency proved conditional on age at arrival and rise sharply with tenure in the country and exposure to Hebrew (at origin or at destination). Hebrew proficiency is higher for migrants with more extensive contacts with Israelis and with higher education. Positive synergism emerged between language acquisition and reasons for migrating and attachment to the country.     

Interrogative types in parental speech to language-learning children: A linguistic universal?

The present study investigated the frequency of occurrence of various interrogative types in the language of American mothers (English) and Israeli mothers (Hebrew) to their 24-month-old language-learning children. It was found that both groups of mothers produced a similar hierarchy of the various wh-questions. The relation between these specific wh-questions and concept development in the child is discussed. It was also found that American mothers produced significantly more questions that required the child to respond with a yes-no answer, while Israeli mothers produced significantly more wh-questions which placed the cognitive burden of the verbal interaction on the child.This research was supported by a grant to the University of Minnesota's Research, Development, and Demonstration Center in Education of Handicapped Children (OEG-09-332189-4533-032) from the U.S. Office of Education, Bureau of Education for the Handicapped.     

Shift of visual field preference for Hebrew words in native speakers learning to read

Lateralization for Hebrew words was tested in both the visual and auditory modalities in Israeli children learning to read their native language, Hebrew. A left visual field preference for tachistoscopically presented words was found in the second graders in contrast to a right visual field preference for the same words in the third graders. Children in both grades showed a right ear dominance for similar words presented dichotically. These data suggest right hemisphere involvement in acquiring reading skills of a native language.     

Resetting the rules of the game: Language preferences and social relations of work between Russian immigrants and veteran professionals in an Israeli organization

Workplace is the main site of the cross-cultural encounter between majority and minority groups in multicultural societies, yet there is paucity of research on workplace language practices and their influence on the social relations of work. The current qualitative study focused on the patterns of language use and their links to social identities, inter-group attitudes and work relations between recent immigrants and veteran employees in a white-collar organization in Central Israel. On-site observations and interviews with the workers—Israeli-born, veteran Soviet immigrants of the 1970s, and recent arrivals—were conducted in Hebrew and in Russian. The findings indicate that language use indeed serves as the key marker of social identity and signifier of work status and group boundaries. The common use of Russian by recent immigrants is a trigger of conflict and mutual antagonism, as Hebrew-speakers perceive it as a sign of their separatism and anti-Israeli outlook.     

Predictors of Soviet Jewish refugees' acculturation: differentiation of self and acculturative stress

The authors investigated the acculturation of 108 Jewish young adults who had immigrated to the United States between the ages of 9 and 21 from the former Soviet Union as a function of differentiation of self (M. Bowen, 1978) and acculturative stress. One aspect of differentiation, the ability to take an "I-position" with others, uniquely predicted greater American acculturation and less Russian acculturation, indicating that participants who reported an ability to act on their own needs in the context of social pressure tended to be more assimilated. Russian acculturation was also uniquely associated with more frequent perceived discrimination (one aspect of acculturative stress) during adolescence. Participants who had spent a greater proportion of their lifetime in the United States were more American acculturated and less Russian acculturated, reflecting assimilation rather than biculturalism.     

Shift of visual field preference for English words in native Hebrew speakers.

Lateralization for visual verbal material was tested with Hebrew and English stimuli presented to Israeli adolescents in their second, fourth, and sixth years of study of English as a second language. Seventy-two children, 12 male and 12 female subjects in each class, were tested by means of a target-word recognition task. Laterality scores derived from reaction-time measures resulted in: (1) a left visual field preference for the English stimuli in the youngest group which decreased with increasing age, becoming a right visual field preference in the oldest group, and (2) a significant and equal right visual field preference for Hebrew stimuli for all groups. The data suggest right hemisphere involvement in acquiring the reading skills of a new language.     

Languages, scripts, and the environment: factors in developing concepts of print

Preschool children bilingual in English and Hebrew were investigated for their understanding of concepts of print by means of two tasks. In the first, children had to understand that a printed word did not change its meaning if it moved to a new location. In the second, children had to make judgments about word length and ignore the size of the named objects. Previous research had shown bilingual French-English and Chinese-English children to excel in the first task, but only older Chinese-English bilinguals had an advantage in the second. The present study extended those results by investigating the effect of writing system in more detail. The study also examined the effect of the language of the environment by conducting parallel studies in environments in which either English or Hebrew was the community language. The results show that the bilingual children in both settings were more advanced than the monolinguals in both tasks and in both settings.     

Tel Aviv Mizrah

Before immigrating to Israel, first-generation Iraqi Jews were deeply attached to their identity as Mizrahi Jews. Their mother tongue was Arabic and they had grown up in an oriental environment. Therefore, it was not easy for them to adopt the Euro-Israeli identity that the dominant Ashkenazi-European stratum in Israel compelled them to accept. Despite strong Westernizing tendencies in Israeli society, the first generation of Iraqi Jewish immigrants maintained strong links to the Iraqi customs and traditions they had acquired in Iraq, particularly with regard to the musical folklore and oriental cuisine. On the other hand, second-generation Iraqi Jews were more familiar with Israeli society than their parents; they grew up in Israel and learned Hebrew in Israeli schools along with Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic groups. This paper establishes connections between the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish immigrants and the literary representation of their world in the trilogy Tel-Aviv Mizrah (Tel Aviv East) written in 2003 by the Iraqi Jewish author Shimon Ballas, through a comparison of Ballas's literary vision with the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish identity in Israel over the course of two generations.     

A NEW VISION FOR ISRAELI HEBREW

A language is an abstract ensemble of idiolects – as well as sociolects, dialects and so on – rather than an entity per se. It is more like a species than an organism. Still, the genetic classification of Israeli Hebrew as a consistent entity has preoccupied linguists since the language emerged about 120 years ago. As a consequence, Israeli Hebrew affords insights into the politics and evolution not only of language, but also of linguistics. The author of this article maintains that the language spoken in Israel today is a semi‐engineered Semito‐European hybrid language. Whatever one chooses to call it, one should acknowledge, and celebrate, its complexity.     

An Hebrew language version of the Stroop test

We present normative data from a Hebrew language version of the Stroop color-word test. In this sample of college-educated Israeli young adults, 18 women and 28 men with a mean age of 28.4 yr. completed a Hebrew language Stroop test. When compared with 1978 English language norms of Golden, Hebrew speakers were slower on color-word reading and color naming, similar on naming the color of incongruently colored names of colors, and showed less interference. Slowed color-word reading and color-naming may reflect the two-syllable length of the Hebrew names for one-syllable length English language colors; reduced interference may reflect the exclusion of vowels in much Hebrew printing and subjects' ability to provide competing, nonconflicting words while naming the color of words in which the hue and the lexical content do not match.     

EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUAL RICHNESS ON WORD RECOGNITION IN POINTED AND UNPOINTED HEBREW

Forty Israeli adults, fluent readers of Hebrew, and 40 Israeli children, age 11‐12, participated in two studies which investigated the contextual facilitation and word frequency effects upon word recognition accuracy and reading rate while reading two types of Hebrew texts (pointed and unpointed). In the first experiment pointed Hebrew text was read more accurately and rapidly than unpointed text by both groups, but only the children's performances were significantly different on the two text types.

In the second experiment both groups displayed significant effects for context richness, word frequency and type of Hebrew text based upon an analysis of errors made when reading experimental sentences. These results challenge Levy's (1943) contention that unpointed Hebrew text is superior to pointed text and add support to the universality of contextual facilitation effects upon word recognition.     

Listening with an Accent: Speech Perception in a Second Language by Late Bilinguals

The goal of the present study was to examine functioning of late bilinguals in their second language. Specifically, we asked how native and non-native Hebrew speaking listeners perceive accented and native-accented Hebrew speech. To achieve this goal we used the gating paradigm to explore the ability of healthy late fluent bilinguals (Russian and Arabic native speakers) to recognize words in L2 (Hebrew) when they were spoken in an accent like their own, a native accent (Hebrew speakers), or another foreign accent (American accent). The data revealed that for Hebrew speakers, there was no effect of accent, whereas for the two bilingual groups (Russian and Arabic native speakers), stimuli with an accent like their own and the native Hebrew accent, required significantly less phonological information than the other foreign accents. The results support the hypothesis that phonological assimilation works in a similar manner in these two different groups.     

Identification and classification of words and drawings in two languages

American and Israeli bilinguals were presented with Hebrew and English words, as well as with drawings of concrete objects. They were timed as they named and classified these items in either their native or non-native languages. The pattern of response times suggests that following reading, semantic processing is conducted in a language-independent mode. Specifically, the patterns exhibited by the two subject groups were almost identical, and neither native-language advantage nor advantage due to a match between language of input and language of output were found.     

Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew

Letter names play an important role in early literacy. Previous studies of letter name learning have examined the Latin alphabet. The current study tested learners of Hebrew, comparing their patterns of performance and types of errors with those of English learners. We analyzed letter-naming data from 645 Israeli children who had not begun formal reading instruction: a younger group (mean age 5 years 2 months) and an older group (mean age 6 years 2 months). Children's errors often involved letters with similar shapes or letters adjacent to one another in the alphabet. Most Hebrew letter names are not very similar to one another phonologically, and there were fewer phonologically based confusions than in English. We found both general frequency effects and frequency effects that reflected the letters in individual children's names. On average, girls knew more letter names than did boys. The results suggest that letter name learning follows similar principles across languages.     

Cultural differences in mothers' developmental goals and ethnotheories

The influence of ecocultural context on parents' image of the adaptive adult is explored via a comparison between the child‐rearing goals and ethnotheories of 20 immigrant mothers from the former Soviet Union and 20 Israeli‐born mothers. It is assumed that parents' socializing practices are premised on developmental ethnotheories reflecting societal child rearing models and expectations for children's development. The image of the “adaptive adult” in parents' country of origin is so fundamentally ingrained in their beliefs about child rearing that it is retained after immigration, and is integrated with aspects of the image of adaptive adulthood which prevails in the host culture. The current study explored (through semistructured interviews) mothers' developmental ethnotheories concerning the nature of development, how it can be influenced, and why it should be influenced, with regard to cognitive competence, autonomy, emotional regulation, and social understanding and behaviour of their 3–4‐year‐old children. It also explored their goals and expectations for their children as adults. Analysis of the interviews with Israeli‐born and immigrant mothers lends support to the main thesis of this study. Mothers of both groups would like their children to grow into intelligent, joyful, and independent adults, to be well educated and to hold prestigious occupations. All of the mothers assume, moreover, that much of child development should be promoted through the active involvement of parents. Israeli‐born mothers, however, place a greater emphasis on social competence, autonomy, and leadership, whereas the emphasis of the Soviet‐born mothers is on achievement, emotional control, efficiency, and organization. The differences and similarities between the two groups of mothers are discussed in the context of their respective ecocultural backgrounds. It is proposed that each group's ethnotheories, developmental goals, and aspirations for their children reflect their respective values, perceptions, and understanding of the reality in which they raise their children. These values and perceptions seem, in turn, related to the respective ecocultures in which they were raised, as well as the one in which they rear their own children.     

Residential concentration and participation in local politics: The case of immigrants of the FSU in Israel

Studies on immigrants’ residential concentration have reported mixed findings. Some have argued that immigrants’ residential concentration is a necessary step in the process of their social integration because there the newcomers find housing and employment opportunities as well as social support. As they learn the language and improve their socioeconomic status, they move to neighbourhoods where they share space with the native population. Others have argued that the ethnic neighbourhood delays the process of social integration in the new society because it nurtures informal ethnic social networks that provide incomplete information and retard the process of language acquisition. Less is known on the relationship between immigrants’ residential concentration and their participation in local politics. The study reported here investigated the effect of residential concentration on participation in the local election and on the likelihood of voting for an ethnic party. Data for the study were collected in 1999 through a survey of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who had settled in one northern city in Israel after 1989. The results show that a relatively high percentage of new immigrants (60%) had participated in the local elections. The likelihood of participating in the local elections is positively related to acculturation variables. The longer the residence of the immigrant in the country, and the more positive the immigrant attitudes to the country the more likely it is that they will participate in the local election. Regarding the vote for a Russian party the findings show that, as expected, the effect of spatial concentration is positively related to the likelihood of voting for a Russian party. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Content and predictors of the ethnic identity of Russian-speaking immigrant adolescents in Finland

The content and predictors of the ethnic identity of Russian-speaking immigrant adolescents ( N =170) in Finland were investigated. The ethnic identity of immigrants was found to be composed of two dimensions, one reflecting the cognitive, evaluative and emotional components of their Russian identity and the other reflecting those of their Finnish identity. The ethnic and linguistic self-identifications of adolescents were strongly related to the extent of and the value given to the Russian and Finnish identity, but neither to the frequency of using nor to their proficiency in the respective languages. The immigrants' perceptions of the relationships with parents were strongly related to their Russian identity. This association was, however, very different for girls and boys. In addition, the Russian contact orientation and Russian language use were strong predictors of the adolescents' Russian identity, whereas their Finnish contact orientation and Finnish language use strongly predicted their Finnish identity.     

Soviet Patriarchy: Past and Present

The myth that women had equal rights and were emancipated in the Soviet Union masks the reality that the Soviet state, like all totalitarian states, is a manifestation of patriarchal ideology. The true democratization of Russian society requires the rejection of masculinist ideology and constitutes one of the most important social and cultural challenges.     

Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Performance: A Cross Language Comparison

The study examined two questions: (1) do the greater phonological awareness skills of billinguals affect reading performance; (2) to what extent do the orthographic characteristics of a language influence reading performance and how does this interact with the effects of phonological awareness. We estimated phonological metalinguistic abilities and reading measures in three groups of first graders: monolingual Hebrew speakers, bilingual Russian–Hebrew speakers, and Arabic-speaking children. We found that language experience affects phonological awareness, as both Russian–Hebrew bilinguals and the Arabic speakers achieved higher scores on metalinguistic tests than Hebrew speakers. Orthography affected reading measures and their correlation with phonological abilitites. Children reading Hebrew showed better text reading ability and significant correlations between phonological awareness and reading scores. Children reading Arabic showed a slight advantage in single word and nonword reading over the two Hebrew reading groups, and very weak relationships between phonological abilities and reading performance. We conclude that native Arabic speakers have more difficulty in processing Arabic orthography than Hebrew monolinguals and bilinguals have in processing Hebrew orthography, and suggest that this is due to the additional visual complexity of Arabic orthography.