The Education of Hyman Kaplan     by Leo Rosten Original language: English Published by Harvest Books Pub. Date: February 1989 Format: Paperback ISBN: 0156278111 List Price: $12.00 Buy online from Amazon.com for $9.60

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An hilarious look at both teaching and learning the English language, this book manages to convey all of the frustrations, contradictions and misnomers of English through the lens of Hyman Kaplan, the enthusiastic immigrant student who, with his thick Middle-European accent, somehow contrives to learn without making progress and in so doing turns the tables by rendering his long-suffering teacher, Mr. Parkhill, speechless.

Rather than a sequence of events, the plot follows Kaplan and his classmates through an academic year, each chapter acting as a single lesson on the elements of language: vocabulary, pronunciation, tenses, verbs, comprehension. It is Hyman Kaplan’s numerous interjections and enthusiastic suggestions, however, which turn what would be an ordinary evening class into a study in consistent misunderstanding and malapropism. Hyman Kaplan’s charm is that, while his answers are not always correct, an essential hysterical truth which it is hard to deny lies behind his mistakes.

For instance, when asked to name the opposite of new, Kaplan replies ’second-hand’. When asked to decline the verb ’to fail’ his reply is ’fail, failed, bankrupt’. His refusal to be interrupted which infuriates the bewildered Mr. Parkhill point to a casual indifference on Kaplan’s part. Why should he follow the usual maxims of conversation? Kaplan has his own plans for conquering America!

Every new idea introduced by Mr Parkhill is examined in fine Talmudic detail by the unsatisfied Kaplan. When learning about homonyms he interrupts his distraught teacher to inquire ’how eet ees possible thet Mary’s littel lemb hes fleas as white as snow?’. Kaplan takes on the full moral force of the language he is learning. In one memorable episode a fellow student’s life story is interrupted by Kaplan’s polemic against citizenship and the U.S. immigration service. Although presented as the immigrant everyman, an unmistakable Jewish pattern lurks in Hyman Kaplan’s thought patterns. Even his comments on history are attempts to Judaize American icons. On the Gettysburg Address he remarks: ’Abram Lincohen vas soch a schlemiel telling all the pipples ver he liffd!’.

While it remains a classic of linguistic anomalies, the book is actually about a relationship; between pupil and teacher and the simple fact that both, in the end learn from each other. The former begins to understand the glorious complexity of the English language, while the latter learns that communication between human beings relies more on passion and positive intent than just plain speech. As for the reader, it is an adventure back into the classroom and a reminder that while we take the mother tongue for granted, many of our immigrant ancestors could not. Hyman Kaplan is an undoubted link to those ancestors and a delightful rejoinder to those who forget we all have to start somewhere.

’Mr Kaplan rubbed his chin. "In voibs, vhat does de beginnis cless nid? Just de prazant tanse, de pest, an’ de future. Dat’s enof for a lifetime!"

Mr Parkhill tried to repress his dismay. "You mean you would erase all of the tenses except past, present and future?!"

"Mit’ plashure."

"But so many of the other tenses and moods — are so valuable!"

"Bendages are weluable too," mused Mr. Kaplan, "if you are bliddink. But if you are not bliddink, iven in a finger, vhy bendage op de whole hend?"

Mr Parkhill gazed with falling affection and failing pride upon that impressive aggregation: the staunch "shall have’s, the bold "shall have beens". He felt awful.’