The Joy of Learning Arabic

This evening I spent a little time studying Arabic. I’ve been taking a class for the last few months, just an evening course that meets at the instructor’s house and doesn’t require much studying. It’s been a blast. Ever since right before the class started, when I received my textbook in the mail and realized it flipped open “backwards,” right to left, I was hooked.

Over the last couple months, I’ve slowly learned the alphabet. I can now sound out words, in a painful, Sesame Street kind of way. “N… N… Nooh… Yoo… Yoooorrk… New York!” is one of the many things I might triumphantly say.

A lot of the words we’ve been learning to sound out are recognizable—for example, words on advertisements, like “Dejej Kantookee” (Kentucky Chicken), “Boorgoor Geeng” (Burger King), and “Feed Eecks” (FedEx). It’s fun to sit around the computer with my teacher and classmates and slowly discover these familiar words, in Arabic font but with the same sign colors and logos that we see over here.

There are only a handful of people in the class. Most of them, including the teacher, are real linguists. They casually toss around words like “gerund” and “accusative,” as if anybody would know what they mean. “That’s the accusative tense of the word. If it were the genitive, it would sound like this.” Duh!

We have a good time, exchanging occasional stories of travels or experiences with other languages. The linguists seem to have an endless collection of languages up their sleeves. I ask them, “How many languages do you speak?” and they say things like, “Well, I grew up partly in France, and then I studied Russian in college, and then on a trip to the Caribbean I decided to pick up one of the island languages. And then of course, Spanish.”

After this list, during the next class the same person might mention offhand that he took a year of Mandarin that he’d somehow forgotten to mention before. I thought I was good at languages, but these people are wizards.

I do enjoy learning languages, though. I’m blessed with a mind that easily catches on to new words, sounds, and grammar and even craves learning these things. That craving is part of why I’m taking the class.

The other reason is my passion for learning about other cultures and exploring the way other human beings think. Just as I’m fascinated by the divide between American liberals and conservatives, I’ve long been enthralled with exploring the different worldviews of people from far away.

Back in college, when the future wasn’t yet defined by things like stream ecology, Ron, and settling in America, I used to dream of learning all the most widely-spoken languages of the world. If I learned those, I reasoned, then I could speak to as many people in the world as possible. I liked that thought.

I decided my “big languages” would be Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, and Arabic. I thought about adding French, too, but I also wanted to learn languages that were really different from each other. I decided to add Swahili to my list—a real African language, even though it’s only spoken in a few countries.

I learned Spanish in college and in my job after college, where I worked with students from immigrant families. I learned Swahili in Peace Corps. I was on my way.

But Peace Corps stalled that kind of dreaming. It made me realize that despite my love of Africa, I wanted to settle in America, and that I was in love with Ron, and that I wanted to study stream ecology. I changed course, opting for a more settled life here in this country. What need did I have for more languages?

Then this last spring, several years later, something changed in me. Maybe it was the fact that my life had finally become satisfying. Ron and I were happy; we’d found a great apartment to live in; we had two new cats to make us feel like a family. Content that most of my life’s ducks were in a row, the antsy part of my mind started itching for more.

I started wanting to write, and this blog was born. I wanted to learn about politics, and we began meeting with Scott and Carol.

And I started wanting to learn new languages again. Even if I’m not going to live abroad.

Then I heard about this Arabic class, which was unbelievably cheap, and received my “backwards” textbook in the mail, and off I went.

I chose Arabic as my next language for a couple reasons. First, Swahili is full of Arabic words, so it was natural to learn Arabic right after learning Swahili.

Swahili developed along the East African coast, where merchants on ships would ride the trade winds between Africa and the Middle East. It developed as a trade language, enabling East Africans to communicate with their visitors from countries like Yemen and Oman. Many Arabs settled in places like Zanzibar, a large island just off of Tanzania’s coast. In fact, in the 1800s the Omani capital was in Zanzibar, 3000 miles south of present-day Oman. (Zanzibar is now part of Tanzania. The name “Tanzania” comes from the marriage of mainland TANganyika and the island ZANzibar.)

Today, Arab culture is still rich on the Tanzanian coast. Living in my inland village during Peace Corps, I would vacation in Zanzibar and it felt like another country altogether. Men and women in robes, many of them with Arab features, would stroll through the narrow alleys of the city. Haunting* calls to prayer would sound from the mosques at dawn, noon, and dusk. Ancient-looking dhows could be seen sailing in the Indian Ocean.

(* “Haunting” is usually how I’d describe the call to prayer, although it really depends on who’s doing the call. Guy praising Allah in rising, otherworldly melodies? Wonderful. Guy muttering “Allah. Allah. Allah” into the microphone while jostling it around and causing static? Not the best way to be awakened at 5 am.)

Swahili is considered one of the easiest languages to learn, because as a trade language, it needed to be simple. It’s a Bantu language, sounding mostly like the languages of surrounding African nations.

But it contains countless Arabic words. Constantly, in Arabic class, my eyes are lighting up with delight as I discover more words that are familiar: pen (karamu), notebook (daftari), coffee (kahawa), and many counting words.

Aside from craving a new language, and aside from my Swahili background, I have one more powerful reason to learn Arabic. That reason is dialogue—my constant desire to ease the misunderstandings and tensions of the world that are caused by a lack of communication.

Ranking the cultural misunderstandings of the world, none is more relevant to global stability than the one between my country and the Arab world. I want to do my part to ease that lack of understanding. I’m taking it upon myself to try and better understand the Arab world, and language is the best window into any culture.

Since the outset of the class, I’ve already learned a lot about Arab cultures. Even as someone who prides herself on worldliness, the tidbits I’ve learned have been mind-opening.

Little things: Did you know that Burger King and FedEx existed in the Middle East? Or that Beirut is considered one of the most liberal cities in that area of the world? Or that in much of Northern Africa, people drink a sugary mint tea that’s the most delicious tea I’ve ever tasted? (A fellow student, who is married to a Moroccan man, brought this in and served it for us one day.)

Of course, I’ve learned bigger things, too, that I won’t go into now. But suffice to say that, as busy as I am, so far the class is worth it.

I do often feel stressed and spread thin in my life. This always happens in summer, and projects like this blog and Reach Out Wisconsin add to the stress at times. Sometimes, on Tuesday evenings before Arabic, I wonder if I should opt out, save the class for a later year when things aren’t so busy.

But then I arrive at my teacher’s home, sit down with her and classmates, and feel refreshed. What used to look like scribbles are slowly turning into letters, and every week I learn something that makes me feel I understand the world more fully. After class, I always bike home along the dark bike path feeling energized and happy, as I practice the alphabet or count to ten in a new language.

Someday, I want to travel to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco. But for now, this is all I can do, and it’s something.