Ana bihki Arabi

by Cindy

We started Arabic classes this week. The honeymoon is over! They have some crazy consonant combinations as well as a lot of guttural sounds. And reading and writing from right to left, that is hard in and of itself. The University has two classes - "The Alphabet, Numbers and Writing" and "Conversational Arabic." I am taking both classes and Jeff is taking the reading and writing class. I have yet to study or do my homework for this week and class meets tomorrow night. I can already tell I am going to be a bad student. If only blogging about class actually counted as studying.

For the Alphabet class, we learned how to write and say the first three letters and how they link or connect to the other letters. There are 28 letters in the alphabet but each letter is different depending on whether it is in the initial, medial or final position or if it stands alone. In other words 28 * 4 = 112 letters. Honeymoon is over.

The conversation class is even more difficult. We are learning crazy sounds and we have to practice in class so the instructor can "grade" us on our performance. One of the first words we learned was btihki, which means "do you speak?" The issue is that there are no silent letters so you have to pronounce the b and t as well as the h and k together. It does not exactly roll off of your tongue. All in all it is a fun class and we laugh a lot. I know I will get out of it what I put into it so I need to go study. I will leave you with a joke I heard not long ago:

What do you call a person who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual

What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual

What do you call a person who speaks one language?
Answer: American.