improve my Arabic

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I can’t do this now, or maybe for several years. Then we’ll see if there’s a reason or a will.

After 5 semesters of Modern Standard Arabic at the University level you’d think I’d have a bit more confidence when speaking the language- oh, let’s not forget that I spent the better part of my early childhood in Saudi Arabia and I’ve been immersed in it my entire life since it is my father’s first language.
You’d think I was capable of slipping out a sentence or two with some ease, but that’s not how it worked out.
The only Arabic I hear these days is when I go to get my hair done at Asma’s salon, or when I decide to listen to some Nancy Ajraam or Amr Diab…and every now and then when my boyfriend is on a long-distance call to one of his relatives.
I had all but given up entirely…I thought with so many native speakers around me I’d have no trouble, but that wasn’t the case. I was learning MSA, a formal Arabic, while everyone else was using slang. My father’s side of the family all speak the Egyptian dialect (I won’t get started on how confusing that can be) and most of my friends speak the dialect of the Levant region (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon…)so I was getting corrections all over the place which, can be very helpful, but when they start contradicting each other, well that’s just stressful.
Anyway, I’ve really been wanting to finish what I started, so yesterday I bought Rosetta Stone Arabic 1 & 2. It’s what we used in my Arabic classes at the University. I found it very helpful, although at times it was boring. And frustrating…I can remember the day we were working on learning directions; I must have gone through that lesson 7 times before the program let me move on to the next one.
But all the same, it was very helpful for listening comprehension. I’m expecting it in the mail at the end of the week, inshallah.
Let’s see if I can manage to set aside some time to actually work on it.

ana bidi kalam arabee ahsan…

in case that made no sense, the english translation is: i’m trying to say i want to speak arabic (and maybe learn to type it while i’m at it too lol!) better. whilst i can read Quran, understand colloquial arabic and speak to a degree, i can’t write at all, so yeah there’s need for a lot of improvement. both my parents are of arab background, so there’s really no excuse, i just need the motivation.

i think a nice trip to lebanon (hopefully, courtesy of my parentssheepish smile) would do it, don’t you? how else am i gonna bargain with the shop keepers? in lebanon, they dont have price tags. but rather, they follow the pricing philosophy of ‘i’ll charge him/her as much as i think i can’ so tourists or aussie-accent-arab-speakers (like me)...expect to be ripped off!

So I registered myself for an Arabic courses and now I am in week 4 of the class. I can now say basic conversational things and Im pretty excited about that. I actually look forward to class and can’t wait until the end of the semester to see how much I have learned.

My spoken arabic (egyptian dialect) is already pretty good… at least its enough to talk to my husbands family and my colleagues at work… even though I really need to improve my arabic reading and writing skills… I wana start with childrens books (since they write vocals) and then improve… my writing is still like childrens writing… hope to improve that too…

i have been rather underwhelmed by the help given me here to learn arabic so i have tried to do it on my own, listening and asking and trying to pick it up as i go along. i can understand more than i can say but i can sort of get along a little and, most importantly of all, i can buy goodies from the little sweetie shop over the road.

actually i love this shop as it reminds me of the sweet shops from when i was a kid; it’s quite small and jam packed with delights from chocolate to note pads to glue to cheap plastic toys. of course being an egyptian shop the owner also has a mobile phone you can use, numerous pirate cassettes and bottles of perfume with ‘slightly adjusted’ famous names. it’s an aladdin’s cave. :-)

Woohoo!! Tuesday, I get to start my four week Arabic refresher course, so, this weekend, I’ve begun to review key vocab on my own. Just getting into the swing of thinking Arab. I have two major concerns though, the course ends early November, so the last week or two of it I’ll have to deal with my mom, ex-wife and her best friend coming to visit for my daughter, Daphne’s birthday, and NaNoWriMo starts 01 Nov. Plus, I’ll be taking my test for my proficiency pay at work right at the end of the course, and I want to do better than last year and get a raise, but it’s going to be tough. I’m so short on time as it is, throwing a week-long major visit, and starting a novel into the mix is just going to kill my study time. I’m going to bo soooo socially cut-off the next two months. Ugh.

Yikes! I am really slacking off since summer classes ended. I need to get back into studying before school starts. I need to make a plan and then get moving…

I’ve slowed down a bit too much. It’s some time since I completed a chapter in my book. It may really be time that I rewarded myself with a decent grammar of Arabic. It’s so dumb that when I want to remember the rules for the endings after len, in, and lem, I have to page laboriously through my giant al-kitaab. I should be able to just look that stuff up.