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September 03, 2005
How To Speak Arabic
Friends,
Fair warning - this is a catchy title for an email not all of you will want to read. You see, I find that I [Chris] really like the challenge of learning Arabic so, if you've ever wondered what all the little squiggles mean. . . read on!
First, we were dismayed to find there are many different dialects of Arabic. In Sudan, there are three: classical, colloquial, and Juba. Classical is very "high" Arabic - quite difficult and strict on all the pronunciation. The other two are sort of "rural" or "spoken" Arabic. Some of the more difficult sounds have been simplified or changed.
That's good for us because, in Kurmuk most people speak "colloquial".
However, our teachers are classically trained. The first phrases that Mohommed [my teacher] taught me [Chris] were useless to most Kurmukians because no one could understand me. So, we learned that we have to ask. Is this classical or normal, regular or Super-Size!
Just like in English, it's best to learn to speak properly, then you can always switch to 'redneck' mode if necessary.
Next, the alphabet. Phew. Twenty-eight characters. Some have different forms depending on position: start, middle, or end. Two of them have four different forms. Six of the characters have to have a space following them. It looks like a new word, but alas it's not.
Here's the thing that really helped me - notice I call them characters, not letters. That's because there is a certain sound that goes with the character. "B" is not just the consonant sound, it's also the vowel sound "ah". I started thinking of it as a phonetic alphabet and that helped big time.
There are no vowels in Arabic per se; the vowels sort of live in the spaces between the characters and get modified by whatever is around them, including these diacritical marks that just sort of show up sometimes (still have not grasped all I fail to understand about them, but am trying to be patient ;-/ )
The word for door is "bahb". It sounds like the name "Bob". To make the word you write two "ba" characters back to back. That's it, no vowels or anything.
Then, a more serious one - my name "Christopher" would be spelled as the characters "ka + ra + sa + ta + wa + fa + ra". There is no way to write the "topher" part, so we put in the "ta + wa" to create the "to" sound. Somehow, speakers of Arabic know to run the sounds together to say my name.
So, speaking is not too hard, but the reading and writing is a real bear.
Bev made a funny one day when we were telling people our Arabic was not good. She said "Arabiya ma kwais", which is darn close! The name of the language is "Arabi" (Arabee). The word for truck is "Arabiya". So she said "The truck is no good".
With just three words you can have entire conversations:
"fee" = means exists OR present OR here
"ma" = means not OR negation
"mooshkullah" = means problem
Someone shows up looking for Gabriel:
Gabriel fee? (is Garbriel here)
Ma fee. (he's not here)
Mooshkullah? (is there an issue which needs attending to?)
Ma fee Mooshkullah. (no problem here, man.)
Which is the other thing about Arabic, like most Arab people, it is a blunt language. It seems almost rude because there are no niceties. You don't say "please" very often or "may I" or anything like that.
I asked my teacher how to say: "I'm sorry but the hole is not deep enough." He grunted: "Hoofrah ma amirq" (hole not deep). I tried to say, yes but I am speaking to one of my workers, I want them to know I am politely asking that the hole be dug deeper. "Yes", he said, "Just say 'Hoofrah ma amirq' ". So, I'm learning that you can phrase Arabic like a Neanderthal and it will be correct.
Anyway, that's probably enough for now. The really rewarding thing is when you can say what you need to. After Garang's death we had learned enough to tell people how sorry we were and that we were sad it had happened and that God's love was there in Kurmuk.
That's when the language learning is all worth it.
His hands and feet in Sudan,
Chris and Beverly
Published at September 3, 2005 07:45 AM
