Learning Arabic

assalaamu 9alay-kum (Peace be upon you)

kayf Haal-kum? (How are you?)

abaa ala9allam arabee insha’ allah bas Sa9abah (I want to learn Arabic, God willing, but it is difficult!)

I am taking a class at The Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding to learn to speak Arabic. It cost 1250 dirhams (about $413CDN) for 18 weeks including the course material and teaches spoken Arabic of the Gulf region (specifically the UAE and Saudi Arabia). It started in October so we are about half way through. It is Ladies only (presumably there is a Men only class at another time) and it doesn't teach any written Arabic with the exception of numbers, which I had already learned from reading licence plates. At some point when I feel more ambitious I will start to work on the written though, even just knowing numbers has come in handy. However, for now, if I can have a basic conversation with a native Arabic speaker and be understood, that will be success.

The Many Faces of Arabic

One of the challenges of learning Arabic is the MANY different variations of the same language. There’s standard/classical Arabic which is considered the mother tongue and (I’m told) this is the language of the Qur’an; it is understood by religious scholars and academics but almost no one else. Then there’s Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dialects which are common here ... Lebanese, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Kuwaiti, et al. And then there's the North African varieties which are all somewhat different again. Even our geographically close neighbors in Saudi Arabia speak slightly differently than the Emiratis. From time to time, I will hear my Arabic-speaking co-workers switch mid-conversation to English so as to avoid mis-understandings or just to clarify what the other is saying. So when I enlist my Iraqi and Lebanese co-workers to help me with my weekly homework assignments, it is not always helpful since my Emirati teacher seems to (or just chooses to) understand only Emirati Arabic.

Wikipedia

As an aside in the category of things I did not know before I moved here: Iran is not an Arab country. They are Persians. The official first language of Iran is Farsi. Mistaking an Iranian for an Arab is a little like comparing a Canadian to an American.

The Romanization of Arabic

The other challenge in learning Arabic is that it is a very loose language when it comes to spelling and grammar. That is compounded by the fact that what I am learning is “transliterated” Arabic using the English alphabet and there seems to be a lot of latitude in the cross-over. An example: one of the first projects I worked on here (and still am!) is in an industrial area of Abu Dhabi called “Mussafah”. However, the Municipality of Abu Dhabi website spells it “Mussaffah”. When you drive into town, there are two signs along the highway within sight of each other, each with a different spelling and both different from what I was using. None are right or wrong, there are no set rules for the transcription process so me thinks they make it up as they go.

Fur Balls are Normal

The biggest challenge of all are the sounds used which have no equivalent in English unless you consider horking up a fur ball by an English-speaking person as English. Next, one must train the ear to distinguish which horking sound is the correct one as there are subtle differences:

9 … my course material defines this as “a strangling sound at the back of the throat”; think big fur ball.

kh … as in Scottish “loch”; a small furball

gh … like the ‘kh’ but in the back of the throat like a Parisian ‘r‘; small fur ball with a "roll" to it

dh … is a ‘th’ sound as in “this”

DH … is the same as the ‘dh’ sound except louder, thus the capital letters; think of thomeone thpitting with a lithp

H … a loud exhale; think of breathing in someone’s face, as in "does my breath smell bad ... HHHHHHH?"

"... blah blah blah ..."

There is an episode of the 'The Simpsons' where Bart is trying to train Santa's Little Helper (the family dog) to behave or he will be put to sleep; what the dog hears is ... blah blah blah blah sit blah blah blah blah lay down blah blah blah blah roll over.

I hear a lot of Arabic around and I feel a little like Santa's Little Helper ... blah blah blah blah Hello! blah blah blah blah God willing blah blah blah blah Thank you. The odd word pops out that I acutally understand which is kinda cool!

Hashish

In one of our classes recently, one student (a Chinese lady) was reciting a paragraph in Arabic that she had composed which talked about her family going to the park and having a pic-nic on the grass. She did not know the word for "grass". Turns out, the Arabic word for "grass" is "hashish". Once the Irish girl and I stopped laughing, we explained to our young Emirati teacher (and the others in the class who didn't get it) what hashish is in English. Not too sure what the Arabic word is for "marijuana".

"Let him buzz off"

Last week just before the New Year's break, the Manager of our Production Department was in a particularly jovial mood, full of piss n' vinegar in fact. Usually its me who's on the receiving end of his terrible jokes because he's known me for a long time and knows I probably won't get too overly offended. But on this day it was our Iraqi colleague who was in the humour-hot-seat.

Mohammed (the aforementioned Iraqi colleague) has been a very supportive and patient language tutor and most of what I know so far is because of his help. Since our boss has learned virtually no Arabic in the 8+ years that he's lived here and since he was totally asking for it and since I had just learned a new phrase the day before, I said to my Iraqi friend, "khalli walli". Those who were within ear shot who understood it cracked up immediately because in my very limited Arabic vocabulary, that phrase fit the situation perfectly ... the 'polite' translation of "khalli walli" is "Let him buzz off" or, loosely, "tell him to go to hell". Since I've known my boss for a long time too, I also know that I can say such things and get away with it. He couldn't have been too offended as later that day, he asked me to repeat the phrase so he could learn it and has since started using it himself.

shwaiy shwaiy (slowly slowly!)

So my progress in speaking Arabic is coming along. Any time I feel sorry for my poor English-speaking self trying to learn this crazy Arabic stuff, I need only think if my Chinese class-mate. She is learning a very difficult language via another language that is not her native tongue from a teacher whose English is limited and whose accent is hard to understand, even for me! She is doing very well though, better than I am actually!