Actually, Alif is for Apple

So. What I haven't blogged about is my attempt to seize the opportunity for personal enrichment. Since I'm living in an Arabic country, I thought, "What better way to enhance this experience, than to speak the language of the country in which I am living?" So, I have been learning how to speak Arabic. Shway shway. (That's Arabic for slowly, slowly.) Perhaps the reason I haven't blogged about it is because I haven't felt very successful with it. Until now. I will touch on that success later.  Let me just take this opportunity to say, things have not exactly gone swimmingly. They've actually been harrowing at best. I've actually developed a couple migraines staring at the letter/characters, and I think I felt my eyes go teary a bit the first time I read a word. :)

Some random, good looking arabic script probably written by some know it all Arabic writing smarty pants... No, I cannot read it.... Yet...

Arabic is considered one of the top five hardest languages in the world to learn. The challenges are many.  For me, here's what has my hair falling out. Arabic of course, doesn't use the Greek alphabet. Arabic has it's own set of letters. At the first few glances they really look like characters, squiggly and extremely suspect. If I'm honest, when I first decided really and truly that I was going to do it, I was completely discouraged by the letters alone. How would I ever read anything, when I didn't know the letters or their sounds? I have to start from the beginning? Like a kindergartener?  Essentially yes.


My Arabic letters.

So in the first two weeks, I learned all the letters. I mean, I had them. I knew all 28 of them. I could identify them, point them out, and say their names. And if given four letters and asked to find a specific one, I could do it. (This took me 2 weeks, studying 2 hours each day.) The good thing is that most of the letters have an English transliteration. For example, Alif can be transliterated into "A" and Bah can be transliterated in "B".  Ra is "R" and Zay is "Z".  Great! So, now I should be able to read, right? Wrong. This brings me to the second thing that drives me mad about the Arabic language.  Of the 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet, each letter has 4 forms. What does this mean? Exactly what I've said. You can make each letter four different ways, depending on where the letter is in a word. First, there is the independent form which you will find if you just put the letter by itself and not inside of a word. Then there's the initial form, the medial or middle form, and the final positioning form. All of a sudden just when you thought you could master 28 little letters, you actually have over 100 letters to recognize.


This is my chart of the different forms of Arabic letters. Independent, initial, medial, and last.

 And this is an actual chart of the different forms of Arabic letters..... done by a professional.

Seriously? Yes, and now you're cooking with gas. But I'm not finished yet.

The third challenge, and possibly one of the biggest... is that there are vowels in the Arabic language...but you don't use them. You do, but you don't.... It's like they're there, but you don't really see them. Go ahead and laugh out loud here. I'm not kidding. And I don't know another way to explain that. Also, w makes a u sound sometimes... and sometimes y makes a long e sound. Which would explain why, when my Arabic teacher, Ms. Meerah asked us to practice writing our names, and she came to check my progress, the conversation went like this.

Ms. Meerah: "What is your name?"
Me: "Khadijah"
Ms. Meerah: "Why you don't make the Y?"
Me: (prolonged look of confusion) ".... oh there's no Y in my name..."
Ms. Meerah: "Yes, you have Y in your name."

At this point, I actually briefly try to think of the way my mother taught me to spell my name when I was 3 to see if I've been doing something wrong for the last 30 years, and when I realize the ridiculousness of that thought, I stutter softly..."No...No Y... really."

Ms. Meerah: (sigh and eyeroll) "Yes, Habibti. Ok, khallas, we will add a Y."

(Khallas means "enough." LOL!)

Turns out, because Khadijah has an "ee" sound in the middle, we have to add a Y when we write Khadijah in Arabic. No, I'm not kidding.


This is my name in Arabic script...

And below is my version of my name. I've put the letter sounds on top with arrows pointing to each Arabic letter. Look at the mine and then look at the one on top. Not too bad right?? Check out the random Y!!!  Lol.

What I have not found to be difficult, strangely enough, is that Arabic is read and written from right to left. For some strange reason, my brain clicks on and off into Arabic mode when it's time to read and write Arabic and I immediately go to the right side of the page to begin. Some English speakers have a little trouble getting used to this. My native Arabic-speaking students have a problem switching to English left-to-right. I'm surprised that I didn't.

   .now cringe can You  .way this sentence this reading be would you, Arabic were this if So

Isn't that just all sorts of madness and fun? Oh, I know. And I haven't even touched grammar, or singles and plurals...sun and moon words..whatever those are, etc.

But lets do talk about my success. So since I started two months ago, I can actually do these things successfully.

a. Write my first name in Arabic
b.  Recognize all letters in their independent form and most in their other four forms.
c. Read and sound out some small and non-complicated words.
d. Write those same words that I've read and break them down into their individual letters and sounds.



Words that I've made. pineapple=ananas     door=bab     bear=dab    wrote=kitabah

I think it's a big deal. My Arabic teacher is not convinced, nor is she impressed with me yet. She nods and smiles pitifully and gives me a look like I'm completely hopeless and I've disgraced the entire Muslim community.

Personally, I think I'm smarter than your average bear. Whatever.


When written by a competent person, Arabic is one of the most beautiful scripts I've ever seen.