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.

Questioning My Nationality

I have decided to take a break from the Petra pictures to share an interesting experience I had recently. The remaining Petra pictures are forthcoming.

A few days back, I went with a friend of mine to a local sports complex to find out some information about joining the local gym. The complex is very large and is where (I believe) the national soccer and basketball teams play; don't get too excited, apparently the locals pay more attention to the European teams than their own national team. That said, it was still very large and it took us nearly an hour and a half of walking around the complex to find the gym.

Foolishly, when we showed up neither of us had bothered to look up the Arabic words for "gym," "work out," "exercise," or "join." Stumbling through our Arabic, we finally learned the word for "gym" and proceeded to ask everyone we met where it was. Fortunately, everyone had an answer for us; unfortunately, everyone's answer was different from the last. Most people here have a very helpful demeanor and even if they have no idea what you're talking about, they will give you a very confident answer. I understand they don't want to be shamed by not helping us, but really, giving us directions to a place they had no idea about helped us much less than if they had said nothing at all. Whatever, it was a fun time walking around talking to people.

We came across one group of mid 20 year old guys who were eager to help us. We asked if they knew where the gym was and they all point at one of the guys. He takes his outer shirt off and proceeds to flex his muscles for us; he obviously worked out. Not knowing what to do, we just laughed and continued to discuss where the gym was located. We figured if anyone knew where it was, this guy would. And he did.

But before we could walk off to find the gym we had to finish up talking to our new friends. After a few exchanges of Arabic, one guy asked me if I was from Turkey. Dumbfounded, I told him that I was in fact American. Turks are lighter skinned so maybe that's why he said that. I was just kind of taken aback by it. I've been asked if I was British, German, Australian, French, but never Turkish.

A couple of minutes later, I'm now talking to his friend who must've not heard the previous conversation because he asks me if I'm Bosnian. Quite befuddled, I explain that no, I am American. "From Texas," I tell them.

Stupidly, I didn't ask why they thought I was Turkish or Bosnian, but I've come to a few guesses. I must speak Arabic with a slightly weird accent. I've tried really hard to sound authentic, so I suppose sounding Turkish is better than sounding American. Or it may have to do with the fact that I took so much French in school. Might it be that I put a slight French tinge to my Arabic? I dunno - again, I really have no idea why they would pick those two nationalities. Random.

Do I look Bosnian? Or Turkish?

What's wrong with my tongue?

This morning while doing my daily Arabic study I said something that made me laugh. Actually, it's not so much what I said, but the sound that I made that made me laugh. But in order for this post to make any sense I have to explain a few Arabic terms.

The word for "Yes" is "Na'am;" the word for "No" is pronounced either "La", "Le" or "Lu" depending on the accent of the person you're talking to. Additionally, they use the sound "Ah" to mean something like "Yeah." (This "Ah" sound causes me a lot of trouble because I find myself making this sound when I understand something, like "ahhh....oh right" in English, but my language helper thinks I mean "yeah" and that I am agreeing with him. I've learned that I have to be very concious of every sound coming out of my mouth.)

When speaking Arabic and I'm asked a "yes" or "no" question, I find that I have a hard time not speaking my initial response in English. Instead of answering in Arabic, I usually just say "Yes" or "No." It even comes out as "yeah" or "nah/naw" if I'm being lazy.

I am aware of this problem and I've been trying to quell it recently. Today I was asked a "yes" or "no" question. About halfway through my answer I realize that I'm saying "nah" and decide to rectify this. So I quickly say "La, la, la." That would have been fine, except for the the fact that I said this all so quickly that it ran together in one unintelligible utterance. What came out was a sound quite similar to the phrase from a certain Christmas carol that goes "Tis the season to be jolly, Fah La La La La." The ridiculousness that came out of my mouth was something like "Nahlalalalala."

My sudden outburst of seeming glossolalia caused an eruption of laughter by both my language helper and myself. I'll admit that there's nothing like embarrassing oneself to correct a problem. The rest of the lesson I had no problem with saying "Na'am" or "La." I'm thinking of trying out a new language program in which I just constantly embarrass myself with the hopes of shaming myself into learning.

In all honesty, language is going great and I am excited about the progress I've made, but I still have a long way to go. I will keep at it and let you know when I make a fool of myself again, because it's sure to happen.

Everyone is crazy

I have officially had my first conversation in Arabic with a taxi driver. Granted, I’m sure I sounded like a 3 year old babbling words who doesn’t truly understand what he’s saying, but even so I was very proud of myself and excited. Perhaps one of the funniest moments was the following exchange (all in Arabic):

Taxi Driver almost hits a guy running across a busy street, then proceeds to almost slam into a car and says “Crazy Man!”

I am startled, yet ecstatic that I understood that haha. So I tell him, “Yes, crazy. I understand you.”

Surprised that I spoke to him in Arabic he laughs, and I proudly smile, then he says, “There are too many cars in this city.”

Nearing my destination another car cuts us off and nearly side swipes us, causing the driver to exasperatingly declare, “EVERY one is crazy today!”

To which I say, “We are not crazy.”

And we laugh.

So there you go. That was about the extent of my hold on Arabic right there in that one conversation haha. Overall, I’m very pleased. I’ve only had 15 hours of language learning at this point and most of it has been nouns and other vocabulary. I won’t really be touching grammar until after the first 100 hours or so.

That’s not to say that I won’t be trying to learn some of it myself. I’m fortunate to have a friend in the city who lived here for a couple of years, a few years ago. He has a firm grasp of the language already and has been helping clarify things for me that get befuddled during class. I can’t tell you how great it’s been to be able to discuss with a NATIVE English speaker some of the more perplexing intricacies of the language. As with most native speakers of any language, my instructor fails to mention a lot of stuff that I would consider valuable information; I think this is because he doesn’t realize that certain “obvious” linguistic aspects aren’t so obvious to someone just starting out. But, he also might be leaving it out simply because he thinks these things are unimportant to my early language development. Either way, my desire to grasp the language makes me want to understand every detail. That’s why it’s nice to a friend who knows what I’m talking about!

I can’t think of a good picture to include with this post. I promise to make the next entry picture intensive to make up for it. Thank you all who have written me encouraging words and comments on my blog entries. It’s great to hear from you! Don’t be shy, and I promise not to be shy to reply to your comments. See you soon.

What'd you say?

On Sunday I officially started my Arabic language study. I think that sentence alone could suffice for explaining what my life has been like the past few days.

Arabic is a very interesting language, and so far my initial traipse into it has been fairly positive. It seems to me that structurally it is more similar to English than oh….say Greek. At least for now; we’ll see how I feel about all of this in a few weeks or months.

The most difficult part for me thus far has been forming and hearing the various sounds that we as English speakers either don’t use or don’t differentiate between. The hard “h” versus the “h” we use in English presents a challenge. Then there’s the “kh” sound which sounds like you’ve breathed too heavily while making a “k” sound. Oh and I’d be remiss if I forgot the “gh” sound which is similar to making a trilled “r” in the back of your throat.

That's an interesting one.

Enough of the linguistics lesson; I’ll tell a story from my first day of class. I’m sitting and listening to my nurturer (they aren’t called teachers…) point to pictures and say words again and again. After about two hours of this, he decides that it’s time for me to learn to speak. I was all for that. Unfortunately, the phrases he starts teaching me contain two different words that sound EXACTLY the same to me. I ask him to stop and say them back to back. I think he was messing with me cause it sounded like he just said the same word twice while telling me two different meanings. I laugh and say “I can’t hear a difference.” We spent the next 30 minutes on these two words and slowly separating out the sounds so that I could learn the difference. Believe me, the difference was/is minute.

I’m proud to say though, after 3 days of language, I’m beginning to recognize it. The majority of my learning at this point is just vocabulary and I imagine that I have close to 100 words by now.

These picture sheets show some of what I can either say or recognize. I’ll keep you informed as to my progress and assured blunders to come. Until next time…