Mister Q

I know I said that this post would be about running from the Dead Sea to Red Sea, but due to picture issues, I'm gonna postpone that.

Instead, I am gonna share about my new found Arabic adventures. About the time that I broke my computer I was getting ready to start with a new Arabic class. This class has been wonderful. It has given me a structure to the language that I was desperately needing.

The class instruction has components focusing on both spoken and classical Arabic. For those of you unaware, Arabic has two separate forms, related but distinct from each other. It makes learning the language somewhat tricky. I want to talk a bit about this experience.

The base form of the language is the classical Arabic, which all writing is done in. This is pretty much universally understood, but not as well as the local spoken dialects. It'd be like having all your newspapers, books, magazines, and TV subtitles written in Old English. Have you ever tried to read something like Beowulf or Chaucer in Old English?? It's ridiculous. (This is why it's not used to speak everyday language.)

The day to day language is the spoken language and it differs from region to region. Egyptian Arabic is different from Moroccan Arabic is different from Palestinian Arabic is different from Lebanese Arabic, etc. Some forms are closer to others, but all are vastly different. I hesitate to call it a mere dialect, simply because there are significant gaps between each.

(For example, our Palestinian friend who has grown up speaking Levantine Arabic, hearing Syrian and Egyptian Arabic on TV, and reading classical Arabic in books and movie subtitles has an extremely difficult time understanding Yemeni Arabic. We went to eat at a Yemeni restaurant with him and he laughed at the menu because he couldn't understand what any of the food was nor could he understand our waiter.)

So that's what I'm dealing with; we spend most of our time learning the local spoken Arabic common to our area but we also study the classical written form as well. For the most part it has gone very well. I've learned much and am still enjoying learning.

I've been designated with two similar nicknames in class: Abu Su'al (Father Question, or Mr. Question) and Mr. Q (again short for question). This stems from my desire to fully understand exactly what I'm learning before I move on. Sadly, I don't always understand things right off and I ask questions until I grasp it. However there are times when it's beyond my ability to understand and we have to move on anyway. I do not like it when that happens haha.

Until next time مع السلامة (Good-Bye). I'll try hard to have the running pics for the next blog.