Arabic Class

In the last two weeks I have had a little over six hours of Arabic instruction. Let me tell you about learning this new language…

I should start with our teacher, a crisply, well-dressed proper man named Khalil. He has been employed to help the Americans here learn Arabic. If you have ever seen what Arabic writing looks like, you know this will not be an easy task! I think I wrote in an entry a couple weeks ago that the first time the beginners class met, the resident KA Arabic teachers joined us to talk about how one goes about learning this language. I had looked forward to the first instruction, figuring I would come home singing the Arabic ABCs. Instead, the meeting was highjacked by a debate as to how one ought to go about learning Arabic.

Some Arabic teachers advocated that we should focus on the writing of classical Arabic, and other teachers who had taken some Arabic before clamored for simply good conversational hints. Poor Khalil tried to moderate the spirited debate, while all of the true novices sat and stared. And worried. At the end of the hour of discussion I went home with no more Arabic knowledge than when I went in.

But then last week the real learning began. I don’t know who picked the time for our intensive class, but I think they forgot to consider how a teacher feels at the end of a week. Remember, our work week is Sunday through Thursday (which has led me to adopt the new phrase: TGITh—not really as exciting sounding as the old stand-by, TGIF, but psychologically it works!) and so we have Arabic on Thursday afternoon from 4-6:30. Yes, that’s right! Even though our eyeballs feel like lead leadballs, there is a hardy group of 8 of us that meet for this long session. We meet in a classroom, and I wish there was a hidden video to capture some of the hilarity of watching us attempt this language.

It is hilarious, not because we teachers suddenly turn into our worst-nightmare-as-students—no, no, we are a group trying to master the sounds and the writing of this dense, difficult language. I wish a camera could capture the attempts we make at copying the letters, trying to memorize and decode the diacritical marks of the letters, and of course, record our noble efforts at emulating the sounds Khalil is making.

So after that odd, hour-long debate a couple weeks ago, where should Khalil begin at opening up this mysterious language to us? Khalil is a master of compromise. He says he will satisfy both sides of the debate—we will learn some of the classical Arabic writing, as well as learn phrases to say at the market, in a taxi, and in an elegant conversation.

Think about how interesting it is to start teaching a language—what are the first words you would teach? Would you do the alphabet first? Or some polite phrases? Khalil opens with an interesting choice: he teaches us the word for ‘mulberry.’ Hmmmm…a colleague turns to me and sardonically says, “oh, sure that’s the first word I would teach! Isn’t that the word you were dying to say to someone one the street??!” But Khalil has a good reason—the word ‘mulberry’ sounds like our word ‘toot.’ Hey! That’s an easy sound—I can make that sound—listen, everybody! Toot! Hey, I’m talkin’ Arabic! Now that may not be a word Condoleeza Rice has learned in her high-level diplomatic talks with Arab leaders, but it does give you some confidence in speaking this language. Okay. Toot. The next word Khalil teaches us is ‘dandy’—as in the kind of effete fop dandy that we all think of with Oscar Wilde. Hmmmm…another interesting choice, and another chilly comment from my sarcastic colleague. Why this odd word choice? Because it is a sound that is hard to make! I can transliterate the word ‘dandy’ into English and write “ghandour.” But pronouncing it correctly is hard.

Imagine you are gargling in your throat. Gargle away, and that sound is the “gh” sound of ghandour. It reminded me of a student of mine, named Ghaida, and she has been helping me pronounce her name correctly. It looks pretty easy, but it requires this harsh gargling sound. When I couldn’t say it to her satisfaction, she said, “Oh, Mr. John, just call me Ida. That’s easier for you.” I said no, “you deserve to have your name pronounced correctly. Just help me.” Ghaida said, “Okay, Mr. John, pretend you are strangling me and you are saying my name with force.” Oh my. In all my 20 years in education, I had never had such an unusual suggestion for saying someone’s name. I pretend. I exaggerate the gh- sound. I am improving. I am getting more guttural and harsh, and she smiles at my improvement.

So Khalil began with a simple sound and a difficult sound. He is such a patient man, this sartorially splendid man saying such simple things with these bird-like imitations coming from these adults. The sounds improved. One woman said that she had been in a store asking for hummus, as you know, a staple here, and no one understood her. She demonstrated how she had said the word. Khalil said, “well, you didn’t aspirate the ‘h’ long enough. We pronounce it as hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhummus.” Okay. The subtleties of language! Later on he showed us how close words were by comparing the word for swimming, and the word for farewell. To us it sounded exactly the same. He said to watch his tongue on his palate as he demonstrated the slight change from the syllable ‘tis-‘ to the syllable ‘tiiss.’

After our sound-making venture we moved on to writing. As you know, Arabic does not use our alphabet. I miss it! Since I was in 7th grade I have taken six years of French, three years of German, Latin and Spanish, and learned a smattering of some other languages. Arabic does not use our alphabet (I know I just said that, I am repeating it for emphasis, and maybe a little sympathy!). There are squiggles, lines, and things that go above and below lines, and of course there must be a system to it. You just have to crack the code. Khalil just starts in and has us write some sounds. He writes the sounds, we say the sounds, we write the sounds. He comes around and checks our work (how smart he is to have a red pen to write big, red, check marks over your work, offering lovely compliments (“ahhh…mumtaz John”) along the way. I turn to Meera across the table, and say, “I only missed one. How did you do?” To which my esteemed colleague, a highly regarded scholar at Brown University said, “You really are competitive, aren’t you?” Well, I guess my squiggles beat her squiggles.

Khalil turns to us after we wrote our first 8 sounds: “You have just written Arabic!” I reminded him that we had copied Arabic—not quite the same thing. Good thing to deflate the class’s sense of empowerment Johnny!

So we meet from 4-6:30 on Thursdays, and then for about 70 minutes on Monday.

As we left the first class, and this was at the end of 12 solid days without a single break in supervising students, I turned to my bleary-eyed Arabic learners and said, “It will never be so new again!” That was an exciting feeling.

Yes, Arabic is hard, but in my six or so hours of instruction, there are several things I have come to admire:

(1) Allah, or God, makes His way into many comments. Many of the greetings one makes to another involve God’s blessings in your life (remember the word “inshallah” we all like so much.)
(2) The Arab world loves their sweets so much, that when you talk of beauty, it also involves the sweetness like in honey, or the Land of Milk and Honey as we know from the Bible—an interesting connection between beauty and sweetness of taste
(3) When you make greetings, there are appropriate responses, and it reminded me of music, especially call-and-response chants in various churches. When you say “good morning” the answer literally is “may the morning be bright for you, too.” Isn’t that nice?
(4) Yes, the sounds are hard. You just have to practice.
(5) Many greetings also involve the word, “peace”
(6) There is great drama and flair in the sonority of the language. Maybe Khalil is just being dramatic, but it certainly goes in your head easier that way with the drama. I do well in that part, by the way.

I guess the hardest part is that Khalil does not want to write the colloquial Arabic on the board for us in transliterated English. It makes sense, since he would just be making it easier for us, and that is not really Arabic. So he will say a phrase, and you say it, and then try and write down what that sound is like in English. That makes for some interesting marks on the page. For example, you might ask, “What do you do for a living?” and in transliterated English, I wrote it as: “Shooob dish trrrrreyel?” I did try that question on a student of mine the other day, and he turned and asked, “why did you ask me what I do for a living??”

Triumph! One guttural sound at a time! One squiggle and dot and hash mark at a time!

As dawn comes over the United States, I offer a hearty “Sabahhhh El Khhhair!” to all of you.