Progress in Arabic
I’ve decided to title this post
“slowly but surely” because I think it pretty accurately describes how my
Arabic is coming along. Last weekend I went on a hike with some of the
Fulbright researchers who are currently taking 3 months of intensive Arabic
before they being their research. It was interesting to listen to their
impressions of how their Arabic is coming along as it helped me process how I
feel about my own progress. Essentially they all agreed that on a daily basis
they don’t think they’ve improved much in Arabic but when they consider their
collective time enrolled in Qasid (the school where we all attend classes) it
becomes apparent how much they really have learned. This is how I feel as well.
My sentiments regarding my Arabic and general life in Amman can be very
polarized. During some moments I almost want to cry (and have a few times) out
of frustration but in other moments I feel such an incredible high. What keeps
me going is that there is a balance and that I just have to power through the
bad times.
Classes at Qasid started about
three weeks ago. I attend a class on the local dialect on Sundays and Tuesdays
from 4:30pm until 6:50pm. Our teacher is named Hadeel and she’s a lot of fun.
Our class consists of some post baccalaureate students from Britain and the USA
as well as a few study abroad students from Britain. There are four other
Fulbrighters in my class. Each chapter at Qasid has a theme. The chapter we
just did had food related vocabulary. We are learning how to conjugate verbs in
Amiya (the dialect) as they’re slightly different from Modern Standard Arabic
which most of us learned at our home universities. Sometimes the differences
are slight and other times they are quite significant. The verb conjugations
are pretty similar thankfully. For example, “I study” in Modern Standard Arabic
(MSA) is “adrus” but in Amiya it’s “badrus.” There are also differences in
pronunciation. The q in Amiya is pronounced differently from MSA and also
differently between women and men. For women it’s a glottal stop like the
sounds you get between “uh” and “oh” when you say “uh oh.” For men it’s a g
sound. What’s tricky is that sometimes the q still sounds like that of MSA so I
have to figure out when it changes and when it remains the same. More often
than not I feel absolutely overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. By far
the most frustrating part is learning new vocabulary. I have the absolute
hardest time remembering the words I study. I can’t rely on the crutch that is
Latin like I did for French, Spanish, and Portuguese. My timeline for learning
new works is very long. I’m presented with vocabulary from the chapter at
Qasid. I go over them. I then make flash cards. Then I study the flash cards
multiple times. Afterwards I quiz myself on the original page from the Qasid
text. A few days later I’ll go over them again and maybe know one third of
them! What’s most depressing is that is just while I’m in the comfort of my own
home reviewing vocabulary at my own pace. I’ll have a real life interaction and
of course the word won’t come to me at that instant. Last night for example, I
had taekwondo practice and spent a while chatting with my coach and one of the
middle school-aged girls after practice. There were plenty of things I wanted
to say but couldn’t and I’m now getting used to having the moment, 15 minutes
later, when the word occurs to me. It’s funny because upon a few occasions I’ve
realized what I needed to say while entering my house after walking home from taekwondo.
Slowly but surely (inch’Allah) things will become more automatic. I think
what’s hard this time around is that I know what the journey to fluency
involves and knowing how long it takes is very daunting. I almost wish this
were my first foreign language and that I could be ignorant to the magnitude of
time required to become skilled in it. Alas, I had to choose the hardest for
last (?) and I just have to keep plugging away.
Weekend Hiking
Since
winter is upon us (more so indoors than outdoors due to the concrete and tile
buildings throughout this region) I’ve been trying to take advantage of as many
hikes as possible. Two weekends ago I rented a car with four Fulbrighters to
hike Wadi (canyon) Himara and last weekend I hiked Wadi Zarqa Ma’in with an
adventure tour group named Tropical Desert. Wadi Himara, which was supposed to
lead us to a magnificent waterfall, ended up being dry. We still had an
enjoyable time though. At one point we had an impromptu climb out of the small canyon
to avoid a dog we heard barking ahead of us. Although we couldn’t see it
because it was behind a few palm trees, we decided to climb around it just in
case it decided to attack us. While hiking back out of the canyon a young
Bedouin boy followed us on his donkey, approaching closer and closer until
eventually he passed us up. The dog was not far behind him and I think we were
all relieved to finally get a glimpse of the dog since it had caused quite a
change in our hiking trajectory.
Last
weekend I went on a rappelling trip through Tropical Desert Trips. We descended
three pitches including two large waterfalls. It was exhilarating to hook up to
the ropes and begin the descent without really seeing what you’re getting into.
The two waterfalls were absolutely breathtaking both literally and figuratively
since it was quite cold to be wet in that canyon. As always, hiking with a tour
group is fun (the guides are all really cool and knowledgeable) but also
requires a lot of patience since the groups are generally pretty large. It took
us forever to do a relatively short hike since we each he had to be connected
to the belay three separate times. Sadly I missed most of the game between
Barcelona and Real Madrid that night but still had a fun time at the hotel
sports bar that night. At the hotel I met up with a few Fulbright fiends and
also a couple of local friends who are fans of Barça. After the game had ended,
while I was sitting with two Jordanians (they were attempting a recap of the
game in a mix of Arabic and English), a friend of those two Jordanians comes up
and I am introduced to him. Apparently he’s the finance director of the hotel
(Le Royal) and was very upset that I already paid my bill. In an attempt to
make up for it (he even tried to cancel the Master Card charge – after I told
him it wasn’t a problem at all) he invited us all to have drinks in the lounge
at the top of the hotel. I learned a lot about the hotel and had an enjoyable
time relaxing with such a beautiful view (it’s one of the tallest buildings in
Amman).
(the photos of me (red t-shirt) are by Izzy Hendry and Andrew Fichter)
