How Good is Our Arabic?

We've been asked alot, "so since you've been in the Middle East, you're probably fluent in Arabic by now, huh?"
This is a brochure we picked up from the Popeye's Restaurant here. Just to give you some perspective, if my Arabic was equivalent to this English I would be happy....very happy. I would love to have Arabic as good as this English.

The text below is copied letter by letter. If it sounds funny or misspelled, its not a typo on my part.

Dear Parents,
Now you can celebrate your little one's birthday party in one of the biggest party hall and play area n town. and that in Popeye's Restaurant which going to make your kid birthday party unforgettable party filled with fun, exciting games, music, dancing and give aways. besides of our delicious foods, ALL IN ONE PARTY PACKAGE consist of all what you can imagine to be in your little one's birthday party it is an offer full of surprises and fun. Your little one's deserved a very special party for him and his friends. We will take care of everything from party planning and preparation to excellence service and cleaning up. All you have to do is come to your own special party.

Like I said, if my Arabic was that good, I would be happy!

Apparently My Arabic Stinks

I've studied Arabic for two years. I've lived in the Middle East for two years. I should know Arabic when I hear it, right?
The other day B and I went to the grocery store and after loading up the car, it wouldn't start. Nothing! So I call the rental car company (we are renting a car until we can buy one, and we can't buy one till the residency comes in which it did, so we should be buying a car this next week insha'allah) The point is, B and Noah went with a friend to their house with all our once frozen food in an attempt to rescue it. I sat behind and waited while the car company brought me a new car.

To top it off it was 30 minutes before iftar (the breaking of the fast). So everything closed down. The supermarket closes down for an hour before iftar and an hour after. So when our friend comes to pick up B and our cold goods, the gates into the garage are shut and locked. I have to run around to the guard shack and tell him what's going on and to let our friend in and then let them out. He didn't really understand though.

*sidenote - all the manual labor jobs here are done by Indians, not American Indians, but actual Indians, so I spoke to the guard in English trying to get the gate open.

As I wait, I am sitting trying to talk with the guard and he and his buddy ask me to join them in breaking the fast, so we sat down together and waited for the call to pray. He and his buddy kept talking back and forth and I didn't understand any of it, so I figured it was Hindi.

The call to prayer goes off and we dig in and I notice that we are eating like Arabs and the soup tasted like Arab soup, so I asked him where the soup was from.
"Arabic soup"
"Did you make it?"
"Yes"
"Really? Where are you from?"
"Yemen"

they speak Arabic in Yemen

So we switched from English into Arabic, but it was really funny. Him and his buddy would talk back and forth and I would pick up maybe three or four words, then when I would talk with them and they would talk to me, it was like when a 5 year old comes up and asks you a question.
They would "squat down" and "use small words" and help me understand what was going on, but the minute I was out of the conversation, it went all fuzzy and I didn't pick anything up because they would speak in Yemeni Arab. Then I would say something and it would go back to kindergarten talk, then boom. Fuzzy all over again.
I took for granted knowing the dialect of where I was living. Gulfi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, it's all fuzzy. Here's to starting over with kindergarten Arabic

and here's to Kool-Aid, fishy crackers and nap time all over again.

Chapter 2

The Stewardess, the Dragon, and the Upset Criminal

Now, this very well could end up as one of those, “you had to be there” kindof things, but I am going to try to depict these events as they happened. First off, you must know that in order to learn a new word, you need to use it. It’s like meeting someone and trying to remember their name. It helps solidify it in your brain if you can use their name in a sentence as soon as you learn it.

So, with that said, here are the words I learned the day before or earlier in class: atonement, instruments of reconciliation, fulfillment of prophecies, dragon, and the verb “to jump.” Now, also, you need to understand how I work. I hate bland sentences. The teacher will ask, “Give me a sentence using a verb in the future tense” or whatever. Now I’ve got two choices: I can use the normal everyday language and say, “He will sit in the chair,” and that way use the verb but never learn anything new, or I can try out one of the words I learned and say, “The dragon annihilated the village and will jump on the infidels heads.” Now, of course that sounds gross, but not all of my sentences have dragons in it. Plus, if everybody says the boring sentences then no one smiles in class and we are all bored to tears. So in my opinion silly sentences work better to a) make the class atmosphere better and b) bring in new words. Of course there are people in class that view me as a stupid American that refuses to work, because if I am going to do anything I want it to be fun, so …..some people embrace the silly sentences and use them with me and some view us of the first group as …..well… stupid.

Now on to the story:
We are doing the patterns. A sentence is given and it goes around the group and you have to change the verb or the subject or whatever. So the base sentence is, “Which girl recovered? The girl who has the suit with her recovered.” (see bland) We are expected to change what the girl has with her. So my turn comes around so I say, “The girl who has the angry green dragon with her recovered.” Dead silence…….nothing. A class room of glaring faces greets my eyes. I guess no body had had their coffee. Everybody apparently was not in the mood for my antics before 9am. Fine. No problem, I’ll save it till the next class, but the next pattern in our book had instructions that read:

“Converse using any of the words in chart B or with any reasonable word in the conversation.”

Yeah, slap in the face, but then here is the conversation.
Person 1: Did you know about the stewardess that went out?
Person 2: Which stewardess went out?
Person 1: The stewardess that had an injured hand went out.
Person 2: How was she injured?
Person 1: The criminal with the missing notebook hit her.

COME ON!!! That is retarded! Use any reasonable word in the conversation? You've got to be kidding me!

And thankfully the class agreed with me. So we decided to butcher the conversation. By the time all of us finish it came out something like this:

Person 1: Did you hear about the stewardess that jumped?
Person 2: Which stewardess jumped?
Person 1: The stewardess that has the ugly, injured face jumped.
Person 2: How was it injured?
Person 1: The crazy criminal with the missing brain hit her.

Well…..

Yeah, you’re right. I guess you had to be there. But it was funny, right? Ok, that was lame. Well, just remember we didn’t have enough words in our Arabic vocab to really mess it up. Cut us some slack.

Chapter 1

The Difference Between “Story” & “Lady of the Night”

Day 65 of my imprisonment…… Just kidding. I always wanted to start off with that though. It seems only fit to try to shine a bit of light on the Arabic language for you. Then and only then will this situation/story truly bring a stitch in your side from laughter.

Arabic has several letters that, to the untrained ear (my ear), sound almost identical. Heavy t, normal t, heavy d, normal d, heavy h, and the normal h, and the list goes on. One of the kickers though is the “q.” The Q is a “k” sound that comes from the back of your throat. BUT in different dialects it changes. For instance, the Gulf Regions and among the Bedouin they pronounce it as a “g” sound. You know, like “gut.” Other places, like in the Levant and Egypt, they leave it our all together.

So the word for pen (Qalem), depending where you are, could be said as, qalem, galem, or ‘alem. Confused? Good. Now, if you use the Q sound you have to get it from the back of your throat or it comes out as a K sound and that, of course, changes it to a completely different word all together.

I spent a lot of time around a couple of Bedouin when we first got here, so I tend to pronounce the Q as a G now. So where most of my classmates say “qalem” or “’alem” I say “galem.” Well, I’ve noticed that when I say words in class some of my classmates don’t understand it because of my accent, so in class I try to switch while I’m talking from using the G back to the Q. Because of that I sometimes don’t get the Q to go back enough in my throat and it comes out a K. Make since?

Good, now on with the thing you are to be laughing at. One day we were telling stories. So I go on with my story. It’s starts of with me saying, “This is my story” and later on I say, “and in this story such and such happened” and “the point to this story is such and such.” Well the whole time I am trying to hide my Gulfi/Bedioun “G” and replace with the more widely accepted Q, but apparently it kept coming out weak and as a K, because every time I would say “story” the teacher would smirk and try not to laugh.

So I learned a new word that day. Here is what I learned from my “story.”

“Qussa” means “story”
“Kussa” literally means “whore” or the most vulgar word you can come up with for prostitute.

With that said, because of my weak Q that came our as K, go back up to the previous paragraph and replace “story” with well….you get the picture.

Funny eh? Well, yeah. It was funny.

Serial Non-Fiction

This is my attempt at serial writing. I will do my best, you hear me, my best to publish a chapter a day for the next several days. No promises, but I will try to get a new one up each day. I just waited too long and I have too much to write, so I am going to break it up so you don’t have to read a novel today in order to catch up. You can read each installment as you like.

Now when I say chapter, please don’t be expecting something well polished and/or lengthy. Are you kidding me, remember this is my blog, not some learned, grammar person who actually knows English. The more Arabic I learn, the more I realize how much English I don’t really know.

Anyways… let us begin.

My Adventures in Learning Arabic
A Novel by Abu Noah

[page turn]

This weak attempt at a book is dedicated to all the poor souls that have been attacked and killed by the Arabic Bear. We’ve shed our tears together as well as our answers to the tests, we've lost sleep as well as several appendages do to that nasty creature along the way, but still we limp on….

[page turn]

Table of Contents

1.The Difference Between “Story” & “Lady of the Night”
2.The Stewardess, the Dragon, and the Upset Criminal
3.The Conversation that doesn’t Translate
4.The Day I Hoped Would Never Come

[page turn]

Chapter One
The Difference Between "Story" & "Lady of the Night"

coming soon

Stories from Last Week

Due to the massive amount of coffee I just drank to keep awake to study for my test tomorrow, I can not stop twitching, so sleep is out of the question for another couple hours.

This being the case, I will try to wear myself out by the telling stories from last week.

Ticket Hoopla
I have made friends with a guy that works for a travel agency, so I usually get pretty good deals on airfare. Izan, (therefore) I have been deemed the "lets get everyone's ticket" guy. There are several of us headed to Kenya in a couple of weeks (be jealous) for a language conference, so I've been working on getting all the dates and tickets and money together for everyone. Thursday I finally get everything together and head off to buy the tickets and .....dun Dun DUN!! (shocking music)

Several of our ticket reservations got cancelled. Yeah, me ain't happy! Well turns out that all but two of the tickets were rebooked and paid for with no problem, but the kick in the teeth was that my ticket and another guy's ticket weren't able to be rebooked. The airline had cancelled our reservations and weren't letting us rebook. I told my friend to keep working on it and call me when it is all worked out.

I got a call this evening saying that everything with the other guy's ticket worked out, but mine is still up in the air. Yaba Yay (Arab expression for Geez!)


The Arabic Bear
Language has been tough. Language learning goes on what people call “plateaus.” You learn alot and then level off for a while. It’s normal. Sometimes you seem to hit walls and you feel like you are going backwards instead of forwards. Well, I think I ran up the hill pretty fast and ran smack dab into a big wall.

The more I study the more I forget. The more I learn the stupider I feel. Apparently the other people in my class hit it and moved on or just aren't there yet. My class it divided half and half. Half of us don't enjoy studying, but we endure it. We live for that moment when we are done and can go run outside and talk with people. The other half...well, they are really pale. They don't get enough sun. So one day last week, I was the only one from the "fun half" in class, but all the “good students” were there. Lucky for me, we were in our grammar class and I so do enjoy a good grammar discussion! Oh Boy!

Anyways, I didn't know an answer and judging by the faces of everyone else in the room it must have been easy. Truthfully, I didn't even know what to call the thing in English much less in Arabic. It was one of those reflexive, passive, direct object, niner, participle thingies. So needless to say my pride was hurt and I felt stupid.

So last week not only was the Arabic bear eating me, but he was taunting me and calling me stupid too! Yaba Yah!


It's Raining It's Pouring
I live in a city of mountains. Level ground doesn't happen here. The rain tends to match the same extremes as the terrain. When it rains, it pours, and because of the lack of flat land the water doesn't collect anywhere. It just flows. Streets turn into rivers. Small children and household pets beware!

We had just finished group and about to leave when "Noah: Part 2" came. If I had a car it wouldn't have been a problem, but since I have to walk two blocks to get to the main street to catch a cab, it was a problem. By the time I got to the street I was dripping. It didn't help that no taxi was there for 15 minutes and all the cars took pleasure in driving by and splashing gutter water on me.

I finally grab a cab and head back to the house to pick up B (I wasn't going to make her stand in the rain). I am soaked and ready for the 15 minute ride back to the house to change clothes and take a nap. Well, Arabs don't deal with rain or water on the streets very well. So many Arabs drove too fast through the water and sucked up water into their engines that there were traffic jams on every street due to stalled out cars! What should have been a quick trip took forever. Yaba Yah!


So.. the coffee is wearing off a bit. I am going to post this and get some sleep.

I Need To Wash My Mouth Out!

I learned my first really bad curse word in Arabic the other day. I didn't know it at the time. I had learned the word for prostitution. I know, I know, what could I possibly want to know that word for.

Well, I was trying to tell the story of Jesus in John 8. About the adulterous woman, so I needed to know the word for prostitute, so I looked it up in the dictionary, got the word, no problem. I was talking with a buddy about it and passed it on to him, because it was a new word for him too.

Well later that day we had a meeting with an Arab brother and my friend was talking about how some Arabs leave the middle east and go elsewhere for alcohol and "prostitution." This brother almost falls out of his chair in shock.

Apparently the word in the dictionary that supposedly means "prostitute" in common, everyday language is actually is a really, really bad word. We would use it in English to describe someone as "a son of a [insert the vulgar word we just learned here]"

So instead of saying that they leave for the alcohol and the women, we said they leave for the alcohol and the @#$*%. Wow! I am going to have to wash my mouth out with soap. Oh, the embarrassment.

Language Blooper #2456

Arabic has letters that sound the same but don’t sound the same. Does that make any sense? Example: they have a heavy “d” and a normal “d.” The normal “d” to us sounds like an English “d.” Well, to be honest the heavy “d” sounds like a normal English “d” too.

I am learning that it isn’t so much that these two sound very different; it is that they affect the vowels around them and how you say them. (Does that make sense to anyone, because that sounds completely goofy to me?)

Anyways, it kills me in conversation. I was calling a guy trying to arrange a time to go and have shyy (tea) with him, so I kept asking him, “Inta faadi? (are you free?)” He sounded really confused on the phone, so I thought maybe it was a bad connection, so I kept saying it over and over. Inta faadi? Inta faadi? Inta faadi? Finally, he gets it, or I said it right, and we set up a time.

So here was my mistake: if it’s a heavy “d” it changes the “aa” to a sound like an “o” in “cot.” The way I was saying it was like the “a” in “fat,” which is the normal “d.”

If you think you’re confused, imagine having this explained to you in Arabic like it was to me. Yikes! No wonder, I’m lost.

So the reason he was lost, was that I wasn’t saying, “Are you free?” I was saying, “Are you my redeemer?” Yeah, I can only imagine how awkward that was for him. Me, of course, being stupid, just kept saying it thinking it was a bad phone connection. “Are you my redeemer? Are you my redeemer? Are you my redeemer?

Geez, I’m such an idiot.

Arabic and I are through! I mean it this time!

Today is a good day. It is good because the LORD created it. Other than that…..nothing else is good. Arabic isn’t good today. Getting up early isn’t good today either. I am filing for a divorce from Arabic. My relationship with her is done! She is too complicated, demanding, and time consuming. She has too much baggage.

I sat through my second period Grammar class and thought, “Please, shoot me! God, I love you and I am ready to see you, let’s finish this and I’ll come Home.” As you may have guessed, God isn’t really into making deals, so I had to finish Grammar class. I realize that me telling you how awful it is won’t convince you, so I’ve included photos of my doodling from class. Enjoy!

Arabic is like being run over by a truck.


The Arabic Bear is always hungry and likes to eat foriegners.

Language Blooper #2317

Following my least favorite class, "Grammar" I have one of my favorite classes, "Story Telling." The first half of the semester we bring something for "show & tell," and the second half of the semester we are going to be telling stories from the Bible. I am pumped.

Well, today we had "Show & Tell" and a girl brought her sunscreen. She talked about how it was good for the skin and blah blah blah. We then talked as a class about it, and I was trying to use the two new words I'd learned (sunburned and "looks like") in a sentence. I meant to say, "We have a saying in English that when you get sunburned badly, you look like a tomato." Sounds simply right? Yeah, that is what I thought, but I couldn't figure out why people were looking at me funny.

So, "tish-bih" means "you look" and "tim-shi" means "you walk", I apparently mixed those up. Yeah, I said, “We have a saying in English that when you get sunburned badly, you walk like a tomato." The Europeans we looking at me really funny and the teacher was laughing and walking around the class acting bloated.

So......I hate Arabic today. :) Tomorrow can only get better, right?

Really Bad Language Blooper

I learned this today from a friend. He made this mistake and not me. Praise the LORD!

In English, when we call a place or go by a place and aren't sure if they are open we say, "you open?" In Arabic, this is the form of the verb "to open" is called the "Ism Maf9uul" You use this for questions like that, except for the "are you open" question.

If you call up a restuarant and ask, "are you open?" Somehow in the translation it means, "are you sexually arosed!" I am not kidding! You mess this one up and you could be in deep, deep doo-doo.

Instead of using the Ism Maf9uul, you use the Ism Faa9al, which makes it literally mean, "are you the ones who are opening?"

The difference between getting punched and getting a answer is this.

If you say "maftuuhiin" you get punched.
If you say "faatihiin" you get the answer you were looking for.


Just thought I should warn you.

Another Goofy Visit

So, the goof ups in language keep coming. I promise one of these days I will have really good things to say. I will tell of the joys of having a visa and continue in the praise of how the culture and I fit like a duck to water and everything will be wonderful.

But when that day comes you might as well delete this site from your favorites, because then there will be nothing to write about and you won't be able to laugh until you cry and think, "Geez, I am glad I didn't do that."

So I am in the process of meeting a new friend....

We met when he gave me a ride to the grocery store. He was really nice and gave me his number. (Isn’t that great? I go out and meet guys and try to get their numbers! I sound like a junior high girl.) I called him today to see if we could meet up for coffee/tea. He said that would be great, so we agreed to meet at 8pm.

B had been sick all day. I've noticed that on every post one of us is sick. One of these days, you know, the day when we fit in like a duck; we will be healthy and not sick, but then you won't have anything interesting to read about, would you? But B was sick, so the house was dirty, especially the living room where we hover around the heater to stay warm.

I met this guy at 8 and we hop in his car and he says, "Okay, where to?" I didn't care so I asked him to choose. He then said, "but I don't know where you live?" In Arab culture that means, "We going to your house, right?" Yah, I was freaking out! The house was trashed, B was sick, what the heck! We were two blocks from the house and by the time B picked up the phone we were in the driveway to our apartment building. I did everything to stall. I dropped the keys, I gave him a tour of the hallway, I did everything. We come in the door and the living room is clean. B is the best. She is great. I love her so much. Now on to the visit.....

Oh, wait a second the phone is ringing.

*Talking*

Okay, gotta go downstairs Mama wants to talk to me.

Be right back.

.....


........


(insert Jeopardy Music or Elevator Music Here)


...........


.......


Okay, remind me to tell you what just happened when I am done with this story.

Now, on to the visit...

Because we weren't expecting to be here at the house, we didn't have anything ready. We only had some fruit cocktail juice stuff. We served him some juice and we talked for about an hour and then he had to get back to work. He said we need to come to his house and drink coffee with his family and B can meet his wife. That is great, but I don't know if he was speaking of later on tonight or the "in the future, one of these days type of thing."


He gets off at 11! So basically we are sitting on the couch waiting till 11 to see if he calls and if so we are headed to drink some caffeine-loaded coffee and visit till probably 1 or 2, then on to school early tomorrow morning. Unbelievable! If the Arabic language doesn't kill me, the Arab culture will, and whatever is left; I am sure the lack of sleep will polish off. :)


*****
Okay, Mama just called me downstairs because she couldn't figure out her new camera. It's all in English. She couldn't turn it on or off. I love Mama, she is a sweetheart. The good that came out of that was that I can feel like I am good at something. I got to go fix a problem and I had enough Arabic to understand her. Yah!

See how the LORD works? He gives little boosts of confidence when you need it.

Culture Shock Is Like Being Pregnant

I am in culture shock. I am discouraged. I've been locked up in my house trying desperately to keep up with the amount of schoolwork that has been given to me. I had a test last Saturday. I studied a ton for it. I was prepared.

Monday rolls around and I get the results. 61. That’s right. 61. I was devastated. I am still stumbling backwards from that blow. I know, I know tests don't mean a thing. That's what I keep telling myself.

Then we have grammar. Let me tell you, I am much better at speaking than grammar. I was flippin' clueless. I just sat there looking like an idiot, fighting back tears and just praying for the bell to ring. I run home and look back on it and think, "oh, no biggie, its okay."

Well, tonight when my buddy and his wife came over. Guess what!?! I couldn't communicate. All those hours from the last three weeks didn't pay off. Nothing. I couldn't say anything. Unbelievable!

So how does this have anything to do with being pregnant?

B is pregnant, and I am learning that sometimes I have to pick my words very carefully, because what she hears carries alot of weight on how she feels sometimes. She tends to take things more personally. So hopefully this experience will make be a better husband to her.

Yeah, that how I've been. All these language/cultural blows I've taken I have taken them as attacks on me as a person. I am easily upset by comments made about my accent, or if I use present instead of past tense. The little things seem like slaps in the face.

So tonight I am looking back and laughing at myself. I am acting like a pregnant lady. Tomorrow I will be looking back and saying the same thing probably, but at least tonight I can look back and laugh and pray tomorrow is better. :)

If you are planning on learning a language, go for it. Just be ready to "be pregnant" emotionally.

Kbiir fi Sinn

The best thing about being in kindergarten is "show and tell." You always got to bring something fun from home and share your little heart out about how cool it was.

Well, guess what?!?! I am back in kindergarten linguistically speaking. So we had "show and tell." Everybody meet Hasan wa Basit. Hasan meet everybody. Hasan is a dish-dash wearin', Arabic speakin' camel. Bethany bought him in Bahrain and pulled him out for "show & tell." Hasan even has glasses, because he is "kbiir fi sinn."

You know in English we ask, "How old are you?" In Spanish it is, "How many years do you have?" In Arabic, if someone is old they are, "kbiir fi sinn." This literally means, "big in tooth." How do you tell how old a camel is? By his teeth. The teeth of the camel never stop growing, so when he is old, he is big in tooth, as well. I guess, it ran over to apply to humans also.

So Hasan has to wear glasses to see, therefore he is "kbiir fi sinn."

So check your teeth, you may be older than you think.

Yet Another Language Blooper

Yet Another Language Blooper.

Today in my Topical Discussion class we were talking about our home countries/states/and cities. We answered questions like, “It is an agricultural district or industrious?” Well I was sharing about how a lot of people in Texas have land and some of them own cattle. My grandpa, in fact, was very much a cowboy.

So that is what I thought I said. Apparently, judging by my teacher’s expression I didn’t say that. The word in Arabic for cowboy is “raa9ii baqar,” meaning, “Sheppard of the cows.” I guess the “raa9ii” part of my sentence got lost somewhere and instead of saying that my grandfather was a big-time cowboy, I said my grandfather was a big-time cow!

Well, Grandpa, I am really sorry. That hasn’t happened before and I don’t plan on it again. You actually come up quite often when they find out I am from Texas. I always get to tell the story about how I really do know a real, live cowboy, just like on TV. :)

Desert Dwellers Don't Have Water Words

We've all been there, our first geography class, the place where you learn all the words for all these strangely shaped pieces of land or water. You know what I am talking about. All those words that sound funny and you can never remember how to spell. For instance, a peninsula is a piece of land that sticks out into a body of water but is attached on only one side, i.e. Italy.

Well, imagine you grew up in the heart of Saudi Arabia. When you were sitting around the fires at night thousands of years ago making up the Arabic language do you think you would have ever thought about what to name a "peninsula?" More than likely you had probably never even seen one. So what do you do after you've made this language and then all of a sudden you find bodies of land that stick out into the water on all sides, except one?

Well, this is what made me laugh today. Arabic does have a word for peninsula, but first let me tell you the Arabic word for island, "jazeera." You may recognize this word from Al-Jazeera, the Arab version of CNN, which is strangely enough based out of Qatar, which is a peninsula and not an island.

The Arabic word for peninsula is, "Shibih Jazeera." Literally translated it means, "It looks like an island." So picture the Bedouins coming to a peninsula a thousand years ago for the first time.

It could look like this (except totally in Arabic):

Abdullah: Hey, what is this?

Saud: I don't know. Shibih Jazeera.

A: What?

S: Shibih Jazeera!

A: Yeah, Shibih Jazeera, but not on one side.

S: They'll never believe this back home.

A: How are we going to tell them about this?

S: Lets just tell them, Shibih Jazeera.

A: Sounds good to me!

So they get back to the tents and gather everyone around the fire and say, "we found a piece of land and Shibih Jazeera." Everybody goes, "yeah? What is it though?" So Abdullah and Saud say, "I don't know, shibih jazeera," so from then on, it stuck.

So for the lack of a better word, "peninsula" in Arabic, "looks like an island."

I Learned a New Word Today

I was in a taxi heading home from another day of school and a trip out to the American Embassy again, to pick another form and to fill out. Needless to say, it had been an experience. The embassy always takes something out of me. I guess the fact that they don’t let you go to the gift shop without an invitation or an employee of the embassy. I don’t know. I keep thinking, “Wait, this is my embassy. Why can’t I go to my own gift shop?” Anyway back to my taxi ride.

On the major street through our neighborhood there is a fairly big and rather nice median. It has trees planted in it and a place for you to stand to avoid the millions of drivers zooming in and out of traffic. At the traffic light the median stops and beyond the traffic light they are building one. Today I thought that maybe that would be a good conversation started, so I said, “That is going to look nice when they are done with it yeah?” Well, obliviously my Arabic stinks because I was talking with my hands and apparently the driver thought I said, “NO! QUICK PULL A U-TURN AND STOP HERE!!!!” So, of course what happened? He pulled a u-e and nearly killed us.

I wet myself and then went on to tell him that I didn’t live here and I wanted to go straight. He looked at my like I was stupid and then commenced to back down the street we just came down the wrong way until he could turn around to go the correct way. Yeah, I nearly died....... Twice!

The good news is that I learned what to call the median in the road. I still don’t know the word for it, but I know how to say “between” now. So next time I will say, “Hey, what do you call that thing “between” the two streets?” I never knew a simple word could save lives.

Shikkin Buub

I wish this was my story. This happened to a friend that I go to school with, but I am going to tell it in first person just the same.

I went into a restaurant the other day to grab some food. I’ve been learning to read Arabic, so I try to read the Arabic script first and then if I can’t do it I revert back to the English.

So I am scanning my options when I come across in Arabic, “shikkin buub.” I was thinking, “What the heck?” I know most of my foods by now and I’ve never heard of shikkin buub. So I asked the waiter, “What’s this?” He told me it was jaaj and then it hit me. Jaaj is the Arabic word for chicken. You got it yet?

This was a transliteration from English to Arabic. This restaurant wasn’t serving “shikkin buub.” It was serving, and I kid you not, “chicken boobs.” Apparently grilled chicken breasts had gotten switched and shortened to chicken boob in the translation. Haha, I love this country!

An Arabic Lesson Learned, A Good Laugh Had By All

This is another one of my Arabic mess ups:

Feel free to laugh out loud at me, all the Arabs mentioned below did and probably still are.

Arabic has a root word for nouns and adjectives. It then adds things or rearranges things for the masculine singular, or the feminine singular, or the dual tense, and the plural. So for each noun and/or adjective you could have as many as four words to memorize. So here is my mistake.

Sometimes after school B goes out with a girl or girls from school and goes shopping or to buy fruit or things like this. When I come home alone the family we live with (henceforth: The Family) always ask, “Where is Bethany?” So I’ve always told them, “Hiyyi ma9 sadiiqha (She is with her friend)” Mama always smiles and just leaves it alone when I tell her that. This has been going on for the past month.

Tonight it all hit the fan. One of Mama’s daughters that live in another town came to visit and Mama evidently told her what I would say about where Bethany was. Then they laughed and told the rest of The Family sitting on the porch. Well, apparently I’ve been using the masculine word for friend instead of the feminine word for friend. So I should be saying, “Hiyyi ma9 sadiiqitha” See the difference? A little "it" makes a big difference. Do you see where I am headed?

For the past month when people have been asking me where’s Bethany, instead of saying, “she is with her friend.” I’ve been saying, “she is with her boyfriend.”

So the past month The Family has been laughing about the mystery boyfriend that Bethany has that her husband not only knows about, but obviously approves of.

More bloopers to come. Allah kariim (God is generous)

Today was my first day at school. Arabic School. It was like being in kindergarten again. We talked about letters and how to pronounce things and had a little school assembly. Its really odd, because the school just recently moved into an old kindergarten building, so it fits.
I have three differents periods in the morning. Bethany and I aren't in the same class, so its fun to listen to her first day and her class compared to my class. We are covering the same material. We just have different teachers. Here is a picture of all my books for this semester. These are just my books. B has her own set just like this one. So for all of you thinking we have it easy, I will coin a very good Arabic phrase.."go sweep the desert!" :)