The Arabic Language
***NOTE: This blog has no pictures. It is text only. But
interesting, I think.***
Back in the early 1990s on my first visit to the Middle
East, we spent 10 days or so in Egypt. It was our first stop on an 8-week study abroad. I had learned the importance of being at least “travelwise”
in the language of the place you’re visiting a couple
years previous, and so I asked our Egyptian guides to teach me a few Arabic
words. Yes (aiwa), no (la), thank you (shukran), a
response when someone asked me how I was (kwai-yayz), an endearing term
(habibi), and a term I still can’t find the direct translation to (zarif).
Though there wasn’t much call to use the language, the day before we left
Egypt, I managed to order my lunch in Arabic (hobes wa eroz). I felt
empowered, but forgot most of it soon after leaving.
Side note on writing Arabic words
with Latin letters:
Arabic script is flowery and
beautiful. It also has several sounds that we don’t have in English. And,
unlike Chinese, there is no standard way to transliterate it. So, one person
might spell the name of our neighborhood Umm Uthaina, and another person
might spell it Umm Ozania, while a third person might spell it, Umm
Udhayna. It all means the same thing, but depends on how you transliterate
the word. In this blog post, I transliterate words how I hear and speak them,
even though others might write them differently.
On that same study abroad program, we visited Jordan for a
few days as well, though I don’t remember using any Arabic when I was there.
Still, I always thought I’d like to pick-up more Arabic and visit the region
again. Well, here I am. In Jordan. Learning more Arabic. And I have to say,
while completely different than any other language I’ve tried tackling, it is
very peaceful.
For example, a proper “hello” is sahlam – the word
for peace. The formal greeting, al sahlam al laykum, means “Peace be upon
you” and the response, wa al laykum es sahlam means, “and upon you be peace”.
And these are not for special or formal occasions. Everyone uses them.
All the time. If you walk into the grocery store and say, sahlam,
everyone responds automatically with wa al laykum es sahlam.
Granted, some sounds are tough to make – or even hear – but I’m
getting better. What gets me though is the flowy elegance, the poetic sound of
the language. It used to be that when people asked me, “you speak Spanish?”, I would
respond with, “of course, it’s the language of the Gods…” Mostly to get a
smile, but also because I found Spanish kind of Romantic at the time. Now, it
seems I was mistaken. Even when a taxi driver is on his phone jabbering away in
super-fast Arabic, there’s a poetry and rhythm to it. And the call to prayer?
Wow. Mumtaz (“excellent” and/or “amazing”).
The crazy neat thing about Arabic as well, is there are lots
of dialects. The Qur’an, Islam’s Holy Book, is written in Fusah,
or the dialect that Mohammad learned from the Angel Gabriel while in the
wilderness. (Remember, Mohammad was basically illiterate when he went into the
desert, but came back speaking a higher class dialect of Arabic, and the Qur’an has never been altered since its inception). The thing is,
that dialect is like Old or Middle English would be to native English
speakers. Think Chaucer: “Wyth an understondinge and a savoyr-faire / No folke
yn the universe entire / Wil evir compare”. Yes, you can probably make sense of
it, but it sounds really weird. It’s still used in religious sermons, poetry, and sometimes newscasts though, so it is still taught. Even in language programs, people usually
learn Fusah, or “Modern Standard Arabic”, which is heavily based on Fusah, even though it’s not really spoken in everyday use.
Get on the ground, however, and things change – from country
to country, yes – but even from region to region within a country. A
Bedouin tribe may use an entirely different word for something than a native
from Amman. Just like Egyptian Arabic sounds different than Iraqi Arabic. And people can often tell where you’re from (or at least that you’re
not from where they are from) by your accent. Yes, we have that in the US with “southern”
and “mid-western” and “Boston” accents, but in the Arabic-speaking world, it’s
much more distinct.
Two other words that are used a lot in Arabic, no matter the dialect
or region, are Alhamdulillah (“praise be to God”) and the almighty inshallah
(“God willing”). Alhamdulillah gets used in everyday conversation. It
can be used as a response to “how are you”, as an “everything’s fine”, and even
as an after-statement (like, “I drove through Amman without an accident, Alhamdulillah”).
It’s also kind of like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: a good word to say
when you don’t know what to say.
The other word, inshallah, is used a lot. Like a lot
a lot. It’s seemingly added to every other sentence. “You’ll visit tomorrow,
right?” A typical response: Inshallah. Ask a taxi driver to drop you off
at the mall, he responds, Inshallah. Even at the fruit stand, wahid
kilo mos, min fad lak (“one kilo of bananas, please”), inshallah,
replies the shopkeeper. It’s ubiquitous. And though some people use it as a “maybe”
or “probably”, I think of it more as a “strong hopefully” or “most likely”. Inshallah.
I could ramble on and on about languages. They’re one of my
hobbies. We were in Pammukale, Turkey, eating lunch on that same Middle East
study abroad, and my undergrad professor, Deon Greer, spoke to the waiter in
German (since Deon didn’t speak Turkish very well at the time). I’d previously
heard him speak a couple other languages, and I asked him, “Geez, Deon! How
many languages do you speak?” Without hesitation, and quite seriously,
he said, “I speak four fluently but can get by in a dozen or so”. His fluent
languages included Finnish, Russian, and German – not your “easy” languages to
learn. But, taking his lead, I decided then and there I wanted to become at
least Travelwise in a language if I spent more than a week or so in a country.
And I’m getting there in Arabic, inshallah. I like it!
