Hurghada - Egyptian Arabic Classes

Ali Teaching

And another thing that kept me busy when I returned to Egypt was that Nicole had found a teacher of Egyptian Arabic and so we signed up for classes at the weekends. I was a little bit frustrated at starting again. All I ever seem to do is start again. However, I rationalized that any practice is good and each beginner’s course teaches slightly different vocabulary.

Our teacher is Ali and he works in a language school in Hurghada run by a German woman. The school buildings are on the third floor (no lift) of a building just off Sheraton Road, the main shopping street in Hurghada (although you go to different streets for different things, such as furniture, material, paint, vegetables, etc). Sheraton Road has its fair share of tourist shops, luggage shops, restaurants, some Western chains (KFC, McDonalds, Costa Coffee), and ever-present pharmacies.

Ali has been teaching for 8 years, I would guess he is in his late 20s?, and very fond of offering words of wisdom and uplifting phrases (eg “Smile in your hard time because life doesn't worth to be sad my friend. Enjoy the life as much as you can and don't forget to help the others”). He’s a very likeable guy and always cheerful and patient.

It was a bit of a culture shock going back to Egyptian Arabic because the verbs are conjugated differently from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and, as I’ve said before, some of the words are different. The one I stumbled on most was the word for “we”, which is “ihna” in Egyptian Arabic and “nahnu” in MSA. My poor brain must be a mush of confusion by now as I’ve switched from one to the other and then back again. It didn’t take long to remember how to conjugate the verbs in Egyptian Arabic, but I did notice myself slipping back into MSA occasionally.

What I liked about his course, though, is that it started off with verbs and sentences. Most books or courses teaching you MSA or Egyptian Arabic spend a lot of time with the cornerstone endings for “my”, “our”, “your [female]”, “your [male]” etc. In both types of Arabic, these endings (which differ slightly between Egyptian Arabic and MSA as well) come at the end of the word and are not separate words preceding the noun. In addition, they are used to say “me”, “us”, etc – so, for example, “see you later” will add the “you” ending after the verb for “you”, as will “how are you?” 

These endings are also used to form the verb “to have” which isn’t really a normal verb, but is a preposition followed by one of these endings. In MSA, there are three different prepositions for the verb “to have” – “with” (a general have), “for” (a lasting have), “alongside” (a with me now have) – and you conjugate them by sticking these endings on. So, “I have a house” is said as “for me house” and “I have the money to pay for the bill” is said as “alongside me money to pay for the bill”. Therefore, you can go a long way with MSA and Egyptian Arabic without learning any proper verbs (since the verb “to be” can be omitted in many cases).

The problem with the traditional approach, though, is that you don’t really learn anything very exciting to say for what feels like forever. When you start off with the verbs, you’re immediately saying interesting things like “I want to drink tea”, “I must go home now”, etc. The sense of progress is a lot faster.

I was interested to see one thing that Ali posted on facebook that didn’t translate due to cultural issues. He posted a picture of a very old lady with a cat and captioned it with something like “Mum and her cat – two loving souls meet”. Virtually all the non-Arabic readers started asking him if this was a picture of his mother and he had to explain that no, it wasn’t, the term “mum” is used to refer to any old woman. As I said in an earlier blog, old age is regarded as a positive thing in the Arabic countries, so “mum” is a term of respect. I guess at a push we may use “grandmother” in a similar way, but it wouldn’t be usual and it would have to be used in a specific context for people in the West to understand it like that. Now that I’m getting older myself, I quite like the idea of regaining a positive image for the elderly!

Our lessons are three hours in one go. We started off doing it both Saturdays and Sundays (totaling 6 hours), but then this got a bit much for both of us, so we cut it down to just Sundays. However, it’s been Ramadan and Ali has been in Cairo and now he would really like to move to Dubai, so I’m not sure how much longer these classes will last. He also does lessons over skype (therefore, any of you could also learn with him!), so actually it shouldn’t really matter. 

Unfortunately, I’ve been very lazy and not done any practice or learning of Arabic since he has been away in Cairo. Whoops. This is mostly because I’ve got my novel-writing bug again and prefer to spend my time rewriting the draft of Space Shapes than going over Egyptian grammar. I’d like to do both, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.