An Introduction to my Arabic Introduction
Posted September 12, 2006One of the reasons I’m in
The ALI staff and faculty are composed entirely of women, for reasons I can’t fathom. I have three teachers, all of whom have asked me to address them by their first name, as is custom here. Ines teaches grammar; Shahira does vocabulary; and Marwa is our drill instructor. Ines and Marwa are both amicable, and Shahira is something of a slave driver, but I like her anyway. I find vocabulary building one of the harder aspects of learning a new language, personally, so I’ll need the sort of discipline Shahira provides.
There are nine students in my class, from six different countries. Most of us have had no instruction in Arabic prior to enrolling at AUC. About 85% of our class instruction is conducted in Arabic. I’m sure this will be helpful in the long run, but at the moment I find it quite a struggle to respond to anything the teachers say that I’ve not heard many times before.
Classes are quite accelerated, too. In one week, we’ve covered the alphabet, script, and voweling, and today made the transition to extremely simple sentences. If I am to believe the study abroad students, that would take half a semester in the States. I imagine that would be a really boring, slow semester. Whatever the case in the States, the instruction here is sufficiently difficult to keep me at homework more often than not.
Thus far, I am enjoying the language. Aesthetically, it can sound quite beautiful, even if my comprehension leaves much to be desired. Arabic has some phonemes that are not found in American English, so I am learning to pronounce them, which is really hard. And now that I can sound out most words, I try to read everything I get my hands on. I figure if I keep this up, when I get the grammar I’ll be able to reading anything with the help of a dictionary.
And I swear that I had only education in mind when I purchased Scrabble in Arabic. It'll help me build vocabulary!
