Little Victories

Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well. 

Today I wanted to reflect a little bit on the Arabic learning process. You don't really think that 120 hours is a lot until you realize it's 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 6 weeks. That's when it seems a little daunting. 

I will have studied Arabic for 5 years in September. If you do that in some languages, you're fluent by then. Arabic is a really hard language, and it takes a lot of patience to become fluent. Especially, since most countries only use Modern Standard Arabic in formal settings. 

Darija is completely different from MSA, so it's hard to gage my growth by how well I can understand my family. It's great that I can take taxis, order food, and haggle in Arabic, but I want to be able to hold real conversations in Arabic. That's going to take a while. 

Here in Rabat, however, it's a lot of learning. That makes me really happy. It's intense, but the good kind. You know you're learning when you come out of class for break or lunch and your head hurts because it feels like you stuffed it with words so different they aren't even the same letters. 

The grammar in Arabic is complicated. I don't get grammar in any language, but Arabic, it's majnoona (crazy). Especially because all the concepts are explained in Arabic, because if you use any English, French, Spanish, colloquial Arabic, or anything besides MSA, you have to pay 1 dirham (10¢). Doesn't seem like a lot but in the last 3-4 weeks we have collected over $2 with 5 people in class. 

With that said, I actually understand the grammar concepts that I've just breezed through before. My reading skills are still slow and I'm not very good at formulating sentences on the spot, but my understanding is better when I hear people talk. 

Other things that helps encourage me is little victories. Obviously buying and ordering things in Arabic are little victories. As are being mistaken for a local. But then the victories get bigger like when I got myself home for the first time. Or when I left my phone on the checkout counter and got it back in Arabic. Today I played a game in Arabic where someone says a word and you have to think of a word that begins with the last letter of the word before that. (An English example would be "cat" then someone would say "tub" then "bank" then "kangaroos" and so on). This game made me realize that I have a lot of vocabulary. Not nearly enough to be fluent, but enough to remind myself I'm not a beginner. 

Arabic is hard. It is. But it's also the love of my life. I'm in it for the long haul, and I've made a lot of progress.

What I'm saying is: taking a summer to learn Arabic non-stop was one of the best decisions I've ever made. 

Sorry to cut this short, but I have Arabic homework to do. 

Learn something today. 

Byeeeee

Corie.