Adventures in Trying to Learn Arabic

Let’s be clear. Language learning can (at times) turn into a ‘comedy of errors.’

Learning Arabic, in particular, is not for the faint-hearted. Trying — and failing — to reproduce some of its more challenging sounds has often made me laugh with Arabic friends as I have told them, ‘Sorry! But you must be born with a biologically different throat than mine!’

Still, I don’t give up.

This has led to a few surrealistic moments.

From the letter Ayn to callisthenics

‘Aaaaaaaaaah!’, ‘Aaaaaaaah!’…I was sitting in my apartment in Amman, Jordan, and listening very intently to my Arabic teacher as he repeated the letter Ayn (to listen to the sound please click here). He kept telling me, ‘This sound is similar to the one you make when you’re at the doctor’s and he’s examining your throat.’

It didn’t help. All I could think is that my doctor’s visits had never been graced with such amazing vocalisation. My ‘Aaaaaaaaaaahs’ were flat and boring in comparison.

So after the class, I asked a Palestinian friend for help. And he promised to do some serious research into the matter.

A few days later, he came back with an air of triumph on his face. On a Youtube video, he had found a revolutionary method to master the dreaded Ayn letter. All I needed to do is follow the steps he had memorised.

‘The first thing you need to do is stand up and bend forward so that the upper part of your body is parallel to the floor.’ We both stood up and did this. This first step was easy although I wondered what this was leading to.

‘Then, you need to place your hand around your throat.’ I followed the instruction in due course as he also did the gesture to model what was required.

‘Now, make the sound of a sheep bleating.’ This immediately led to a puzzled look on my face but I produced the appropriate wavering cry. And he immediately added, ‘Now squeeze your throat hard at the same time as you bleat!’ The throaty — should I say ‘strangled’? — ‘aaaaaaah’ that ensued from my mouth was met by an ecstatic look of approval. ‘Yeeeeah! You did it!’

I pointed out that the only problem with this highly sophisticate linguistic method was that I was doomed to speak Arabi with my torso parallel to the ground.

He didn’t seem to think this was a problem.

Muddled-up terms of endearment

A few weeks later, I was so pleased. I had finally learnt how to say ‘my heart’ قلب in Arabic (listen here for the pronunciation) and I was eager to show this off to my Libyan friend. It seemed perfect as we were both developing romantic feelings for each other.

I walked up to him and whispered what I believed to be the exact pronunciation but he immediately backed off and stared at me.

He looked at me straight into my eyes and asked, ‘Do you know what you’ve just called me?’

‘Yes…My heart?’

He explained that I’d just called him ‘my dog’ كلب (listen here for the pronunciation). We both laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks.

Confusing the letters ق (qaf) and ك (kaf) had led to an unexpected outcome: a shared moment of hilarity.

The expedition of finding the right language programme

Feeling that I needed a more structured language programme, I decided to stop my private classes and started looking for a quality language school. This proved to be a bumpy ride at the beginning.

In one class I tried, the teacher attempted to ram 56 new words into my mind in one hour. As we raced through the drills, I could actually feel my poor brain aching a bit like an overworked muscle. And the outstanding result was that I only retained one word from that lesson: al baab, the door. Mainly because it was a simple one-syllable word.

However, eventually, I found a very professional school that allowed me to integrate the language at my own pace.

The journey of learning Arabic will no doubt continue — on and off — for the rest of my life. A journey that is rich in learning and always full of surprises.