Language Battles

As would be expected, many friends from my extra-Morocco life ask me, “How’s your Arabic?” And I reply something the effect of, “It’s passable.” It’s true; I can communicate basically everything I want to say. It may not be said prettily, and I still have trouble pronouncing the ع and most especially the غ—but otherwise I’m mostly alright.

It gets curious, however, when having conversations in Arabic people ask me “Do you speak Arabic?” “Umm… excuse me? What (the expletive) do you think we’re speaking now???” have been the immediate thoughts that used to run through my head, but I’ve (embarrassingly recently) come to the realization that when asked this question the may be referring to Standard Arabic, not our merely conversant Darija (Moroccan Arabic). And the answer to that question would be a resounding “No.”

But I’m lucky. In the Berber languages and cultures, it is a common to hear volunteers recount tales of woe after being told that they “know nothing” because apparently, anything short of fluency equates ‘nothing.’ Although the offenders will likewise say that they know no English, French or whatever the case may be, there’s still something quite jarring about being expressly told that you know nothing. Nothing? That’s just offensive. But that’s also just a cultural difference. It’s honestly not intended to be rude. Which is at times even harder to comprehend, for me anyway. Especially when they’re laughing when they say it.

French has also been giving me grief. I’ve had an interesting history with French language. I started studying it by myself in high school but stopped when I thought I was getting too far because I didn’t know how anything was pronounced. Then, the summer after sophomore year, and after I had completed all the Spanish my high school had to offer, I went off to Switzerland to study at French camp. My teacher was French and life was fabulous, and I returned to school and enrolled in French 2 and had a teacher with the worst American accent ever. But I was still doing my side studying because I loved French. But over the next two years, my accent never got that great and when I graduated I didn’t touch French again for two years, until the summer I went to the Ivory Coast. That was super intimidating at first. I carried my huge French dictionary with me everywhere and a note pad and would communicate a lot in writing and look up words I didn’t understand. Then eventually, with help of an incredible and loving host family and boyfriend and best friend, the dictionary began to rest at home and by the time I left I was pretty conversational in French. I wasn’t constructing any beautiful lyric prose but sentences would come without hesitation and I understood what was going on around me.

And as Chloé’s mom told me after my stay in Côte d’Ivoire, “I had a cute accent,” which probably only meant that I never learned how to pronounce my ‘r’s properly… but I liked the bone anyway, hahahahaha !

I returned to university and took a couple of French classes but never a whole year’s worth for a variety of weird reasons, but it was still something I enjoyed and something I understand when I hear… which made for a (surprising) world of trouble arriving here.

Everyone wanted to speak to me in French before I knew Arabic if they knew I understood the language (I tried to hide it but sometimes it’s difficult to not act on what you hear). I constantly implored people to speak to me only in Arabic, but some people refused because it was easier for them to just say it once and me comprehend than helping me learn Darija. And I get that, but it’s super frustrating when it’s your host family who is supposed to be helping you learn who is the biggest offender. Whoops! Did I type that??

Anyway, in order to demonstrate that I was serious about speaking Darija, whenever people would speak to me in French I would make it a point to reply only in Arabic. And I succeeded in that task quite well. Unfortunately, I succeeded too well. My French comprehension is still miiiiiiiles beyond my Darija comprehension, but I have become afraid to speak French. Afraid isn’t the right word… I have become so out of practice my hesitation to reply in French makes me still default to Arabic replies. And a lot of good that is going to do me when I leave here. What I need to do is sort them out in my mind and perhaps studying French some more so that I can feel comfortable answering first in French.

Part of my language problem here is that if something isn’t on the tip of my tongue, if I have to search for it in my mind, I see it as it was entered into my memory. Was it in a notebook, was it in a textbook, which side of the page, how is it is set up? So when I think of conjugations, I think of my 2x3 charts that have the verb/pronoun forms for the appropriate function and move things around, quickly, before I shoot out the word. And it’s been a while since I have bothered to study these things in French.

I feel my Arabic would be better if we studied Arabic in Arabic script, we were taught it here in transliteration which is the worst shit ever. Sure, it facilitates speaking more quickly, but I work better reading and writing (in every language, it’s almost a curse but I tend to treat it more as a blessing). I can read Arabic script and write it, both slowly. Ha. But it’s never been really reinforced. I took six weeks (two accelerated quarters) of summer study at Northwestern before I went to Israel and that was fabulous. I learned a lot, most of which I have forgotten, and I made one really good friend, and had a lovely summer. But it was six weeks. And at its conclusion I arrived in Israel and was dumped headfirst into 7 weeks of intensive Hebrew study (totaling more hours per week than I had been studying Arabic). I’m not used to reading Arabic. So, sure, I should/ought to be more proactive, but since I haven’t been, the way in which I usually connect with language has been denied me/I’ve denied myself. WOMP.

Although, for those of you who are wholly unfamiliar with the Arabic language, this is a very important part: Modern Standard Arabic (aka FusHaa) is the language of the news and of most literary items. The spoken varieties of Arabic have been mostly unwritten until fairly recently-ish (decades ago, but that is to say most written things except really contemporary literature and a few newspapers here and there are in FusHaa) and as I do not know FusHaa, that also presents a particular challenge with really getting to the heart of the language. Being able to read script is great for traveling and giving a cursory perusal to a document, but to really understand it, that requires a language I’ve only had six weeks of study of two and half years ago. Time to bust out the books.

My study of Moroccan Arabic started off super well. I got it. And then I got bored because other kids in my group hadn’t studied it before. And then I stopped studying ahead because that was increasing my boredom in class (which was alllll day). And then we mostly leveled off. And then I became complacent. Oooh, complacency kills! I’ve learned that if I’m not the best at a language, or if I am not the one playing catch up (I often find myself between levels and I’d much rather opt to be the one catching up than bored at the top a level below a challenge) then I stop engaging. Talk about some kind of backward, nearly self-defeating, superiority complex! Feel free to also toss in that list my absolute love of being ‘the youngest’ (and doing x, y, z wonderful thing).

For the new year I am not making resolutions; I never make new year’s resolutions. I don’t make them because I don’t make promises that I don’t intend to keep and it seems to me our culture views resolutions as good ideas that we should probably follow through with but likely won’t. So I save myself the trouble and don’t even get to step one. But this year… this year is different. There are a lot of things I want to change. And I have warmed to that verb quite a lot, it’s better than ‘do.’ Even when you’re not doing you are, in fact, (not) ‘do’-ing. In my own private musings I’ve come up with a slew of verbs I want to incorporate into my new year, but title them resolutions I will not do, but trust among the list there is a definite mention of sorting out these language woes of mine. Mostly, I want to fix my replying to French in Arabic issue (I mean, I can’t leave here with my French in a worse state than when I arrived) and begin a serious undertaking of Hebrew again to prepare for my return to Israel.

And what of Arabic? Yes, it would be nice to improve that too. But for now, it is still ranking only third on my list, and that lack of priority has been its biggest problem in my life. I don’t really care enough to study it more. I do get by and who am I going to need to speak the rarely understood Moroccan dialect to after I leave this place? I’d be happy if I spoke to ten people for the rest of my life (barring any return trips).

So… to French and Hebrew I run!