Fun with Arabic

Learning a new language requires an incredible amount of humility. Jordan has reduced us to helpless, blathering idiots.

So far I have accused a shopkeeper of insulting wife (he was having a religious discussion with friends), identified myself as "a bed" (I meant to say "I'm happy"), and inadvertently had the water cut off from our apartment for a good part of one morning. This after about four days of formal language instruction.

5y, on the other hand, has had one day of class and comes home singing songs in Arabic about how things are big and small and runs around the house calling out the names of zoo animals.

I guess we all learn at our own pace. Wife is doing pretty good. The other day, when we were at her uncle's house, she sat with her aunt who taught her how to make a special dish of stewed meat and okra. The lesson was in Arabic and, if the meal was any indication, wife understood things perfectly.

Maybe that's why we get such a kick out of the way English is slaughtered around here. It makes us feel better. Many Jordanians, like others in the Arab world, are enamored with American culture, particularly the young people. You'll see them wearing t-shirts with slogans in English. This, along with rampant piracy, can be amusing.

Some slogans seen:

Impossible is Nothing

ddibds (an Adidas knock-off)

The Scorbion (graffiti- there is no "p" sound in Arabic)

No Faer (more graffiti)

The people of the Arab world also really seem to like pictures of hearts and anything with the word "love" in it. We've seen bumper stickers, clothing, and even tattoos of hearts and love everywhere.

Part of our difficulty in communicating lies in the fact that the language we are taught in school differs significantly from the language that is spoken in the marketplace. We are studying what is considered "classical," or "modern-standard" Arabic, the language of academics and religion. This is also the form of Arabic used in newspapers or in broadcast journalism. It is very refined, not at all the stuff of the streets. The equivalent might be if you were to go out and buy your groceries asking:

"Pardon me madam, but if it should please you, I would like to inquire about the price of bananas?"

Rather than:

"How much are these?"

Sometimes people stifle a chuckle. Sometimes they don't even know what you're saying. They almost always ask where you're from because regular folks just don't talk like that.

But all in all, we're getting more comfortable handling the basics. We can take a cab into the city, buy tomatoes, things like that. Wife even said, "I'm starting to like it here."

That's a very big deal.