Arabic

There is nothing much funnier than studying Arabic in the Jewish Center on campus. I found out later that the girl I studied with was actually Jewish. Last year she studied Hebrew, now Arabic. She has an easy laugh, and we laugh at the same things, and we make each other laugh. We weren't studying, just preparing a skit for class. I pointed out how strange it was that I was going to introduce her to my "professor," and then she and the professor (who missed this study session) would have a short conversation, and then I would ask my professor how he was, and then I would turn and ask her how she was, even though we knew each other and had clearly spent time together before meeting up with the professor. When your Arabic vocabulary is limited, that's the best you can do. "Ahlaan wa salaam." "Ahlaan biik!" (Looks at watch.) "Maa salaama!"

We know more words and phrases, but the conversation amounts to little more than hello and goodbye, since nothing of substance is said in between.

The girl I sat next to in class today is from France and wears small red glasses. She and the girl from England sport a similar irresistable hip and homey look. They are quiet and sweet, and I prefer their intonation in speech to the flaky sounds I hear around campus. Where were American girls trained to talk the way they do? Why do they add strange dipthongs to their vowels and speak like they have congestion in their naval cavities and potatoes in their mouths?

I like the way my young Arabic instructor Amime, from Morocco, and his TA from Bahrain (can't recall her name) get a kick out of us trying to converse in Arabic. They look on eagerly and laugh when we change dialects and get excited when we pronounce impossible consonants correctly. I suppose that's how I'd act if I was teaching English, like I did when I taught ESL at church last year. It's gratifying to be encouraged by native speakers.

Wa salaam alaykuum.