El Andalous - Learning Egyptian Arabic (Up to Chapter 9)

El Andalous, as Seen From El Andalous Beach

I’m almost settled enough now to have a routine, although things can be very flexible. I get up somewhere between 7-9am, have breakfast on my balcony, check my share news at around 9am (7am in the UK). After this, it gets a bit flexible, although whatever happens, my whole day is spent outside. Recently, my shares have been quite exciting (I was expecting a lot of good news but nothing ever happens quite as planned), so I’ve been riveted to my screen for most of the mornings, reading the bulletin boards and staring as the share price fluctuates wildly (again, while sitting on my balcony). However, if I can contain myself, I should really be spending 90 minutes of the morning learning Egyptian Arabic. In the afternoons, I go to the beach for a swim, but nowadays I’m quite fussy so if there is a hint of a cloud, I don’t bother and postpone my Egyptian Arabic learning for then. And then in the evening I cook, watch TV, and work on my writing (“Time Tells” at the moment).

So, I thought I’d tell you how I’m getting on with the Egyptian Arabic. I’m relieved to hear many people say that it’s a difficult language to learn. I used to be relatively good at languages – it was what I originally went to university to study – but I now feel a bit of a dunce, because I just can’t seem to get some of the words to stick in my head, no matter how many times I repeat them to myself.

When I look back to my school days, I felt I learnt languages fairly effortlessly. However, if I really think about it, it took a good two years or more to study for an O Level (yes, I did O Levels, not GCSEs or whatever you have today!) and I’ve only been learning Arabic for a few months (I’ve now reached Chapter 9), so maybe my expectations of myself are too high. After all, even an O Level is still only a fairly basic grasp of any language. I really want to be able to read a book and watch Arabic TV effortlessly straight away!

I’ve noticed that the words stick in a lot better if I listen to the recorded dialogues in my book umpteen times (rather than through reading and rote learning). Sometimes, I can retrieve the words only by recalling the sentence in which I learnt it (I can “hear” the actor speaking), but it surprises me that it has actually sunk in.

I went to reception the other day to ask if they had any spare paper that I could use for my printer, but the guy there didn’t understand the word “paper”. I suddenly recalled that I had learned the word for “paper plates” in one of the dialogues in my book and from that I was able to extrapolate the word for “paper”. Not only that, but I said the word for “paper” and the guy at reception understood me! It was quite empowering and motivating.

I’ve also taken to watching a bit of Arabic TV in the evenings. I got sucked in one night when I understood the sentence “I am your father”. It was the crux to the whole film, as far as I could gather, so then I was rooted to the TV trying to work out what the rest of the film was all about (but since I have a vocabulary of about 400 words, I was doomed to fail).

It’s quite fun trying to spot words I recognise, though. Most of the time I suddenly hear something I recognise, but it might take me another ten minutes to remember what it actually means. It’s a slow process! Advertisements are the best, because at least you get several attempts, but if you don’t know any of the vocabulary in the first place, it’s a bit redundant.

I’ve tried writing down words that I hear on the TV phonetically and then searching for them on the internet, but it hasn’t been very successful. Recently, I’ve tried writing it down in Arabic script. Although this hasn’t been successful either, it’s been a good way of seeing whether I’m getting the hang of the spelling and identifying the letters.

Anyway, I haven’t even finished my book yet, so maybe I need to wait until I have a better starting vocabulary (and knowledge of the whole Arabic alphabet might be a help!). When I’m watching films in English on the television, I also see if I can make out any of the words in the Arabic script in the subtitles; I need to focus on one word only as it goes far too fast for me to decipher more than that and I don’t even know the whole alphabet yet.

Another thing that makes it difficult is that I am learning the Egyptian Arabic dialect (for obvious reasons), so I’m finding myself with the same problem I had with Swiss German. It’s a spoken dialect, so when I’m watching TV, I don’t even know if the language is Egyptian Arabic and then the subtitles are likely not dialect and so may be different words from the ones I have learned. I try not to think about it too much or I will feel completely defeated.

It is a bizarre language, and I’ve already mentioned several things before that I’ve found strange. A key element to Arabic is that rather than sticking things on the end of words, like you do in many European languages, Arabic tends to like to stick extra vowels right slap bang in the middle of a word and/or to reverse some of the letters about for good measure.

Take plurals, for example. In English, you usually just stick an “s” on the end. My book says that for Arabic it’s easier to learn the plurals for each individual word, but in my current chapter it’s just given 9 different plural patterns. One of these is to change the letter after the first consonant into an “i” and reverse the last two letters. Thus “badla” (suit) becomes “bidal” (suits). Another pattern is to insert “aa” after the second consonant and an “i” before the last consonant. Thus “matHaf” (museum) becomes “mataaHif” (museums). It’s enough to drive you nuts!

Another example of sticking extra vowels in the middle is with comparatives. In English, you usually just stick “er” on the end (sooner, later, smaller). In Egyptian Arabic, you put an “a” in the front and another “a” between the second and third “root” (ie, non-vowel) letter. Thus “kibiir” (big) becomes “akbar” (bigger) and also looks like a completely different word in the process. Waahh!

I’ve finally started to learn verbs. To my immense relief, the verb is the same for the present and future (they don’t have infinitives, so just use the male singular form wherever an infinitive is needed) and you just preface all present verbs with bi- and all future verbs with Ha-

Another thing that makes learning the language difficult is that until you can read Egyptian script, you need to use the phonetic script, but it’s not always obvious. For example, “gh” represents phonetically a rolled “r”, so I have a tendency to start off learning words written with a “gh” by pronouncing them in my head with a g or k sound and then get totally confused when I listen to the recording.

Generally, the recordings sound like gobbledygook for the first five or six times. It probably takes me fifteen times of listening before I can identify each word that they are speaking. I’m not joking when I say it’s a slow process! Learning the Arabic script is enjoyable, but sometimes there are up to four ways in which a letter is written, depending on whether it’s on its own, at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word, or at the end of a word. At this point, it gets a bit daunting! However, they don’t have capital letters, so that’s something.

Anyway, this is probably all a bit dull if you’re not so interested in languages; I’ve always found them fascinating, so the whole process for me is, on the whole, enjoyable, despite the frustrations!