Tag: Arabic language

New essay: “’Ghayn is for Ghazal” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

“The Arabic Alphabet” website (written by Michael Beard, illustrated by Houman Mortazavi) – http://alifbatourguide.com/

Ghayn is for ghazal – https://alifbatourguide.com/the-arabic-alphabet/ghazal/

Excerpt:

Shahrazâd’s opening story, the one which initiates the story-telling marathon, famously, keeps replicating itself in miniature. Shahrazâd is telling stories to save her life, but it’s not just her: time after time, in the manner of a fractal, characters in her stories are saved by story-telling too. (There is a beautiful essay by Tzvetan Todorov which says it plainly – that, in the Nights, stories are life. If you’re a character in a fiction, tell a story. What else keeps you alive? The plan is working for Shahrazad.)

In her, by now, familiar opening story, where the merchant, traveling on business, sits down to eat lunch under a tree, it’s familiar ground of traditional story-telling. The self-sufficient individual out alone on the road runs into an obstacle and encounters a challenge. Stories of chivalry in European tradition open that way; they hardly open any other way, with the knight setting off on a quest or perhaps just wandering. The reader is likely to imagine a context where the merchant’s business has taken him to the margin, the غایة , ghâya, limit of human society, a غابة, ghâba, a forest. In that opening scene, when he reaches into his pack, takes out lunch, and eats, innocently throwing the date pits over his shoulder behind him, he is the picture of vulnerability (not a knight out looking for adventure). It suggests (at least for me) a secure world where merchants can travel alone, settling down to غذاء, ghadhâ, food, without fear. When the ‘ifrit appears, huge and menacing, to say the merchant must die, it is enough of a disruption to be horrifying, but it’s funny too, and probably less familiar ground for a traditional story. The monster has a motive for being غضبان, ghad͎bân, angry, though the fact that a flying date pit has killed his son doesn’t register as tragic. We know that sons don’t always resemble their fathers, but an ‘ifrît’s son so fragile that he is killed by a date pit seems an extreme case. (Is this son legitimate?) We also know that we aren’t going to be very frightened by what follows.

The text tells us that everything we’re reading is a spoken story, since we are hearing Shahrzâd’s voice, but the truth is that we are reading it rather than hearing it. This has some advantages. Readers of a story can skip from episode to another, free to speed things up or slow them down. Such is the advantage the alphabet gives us over a listener like King Shahzamân. We can freeze-frame the story, knowing what will happen, and we can be surprised each time we read it (or imagine ourselves surprised, which may be just as good). When the merchant asks for a grace period to settle his affairs and say goodbye to his family, promising to be back at the beginning of the new year, a whole unexpected social world opens up because the‘ifrît accepts, immediately, without an argument. His hyperbolic trust is perhaps as funny as the date pit which kills his son — funny, but it is also, surprisingly, to me, moving. The `ifrît‘s surprising trust is one thing; then when the new year arrives and the merchant actually shows up (thus demonstrating that we can trust him too) we are at the extremes of trust. Exaggeration is funny, but I wonder if it also tells us something about the respect the culture shows for travelers. We expect them to keep their word. It is a world where traveling salesmen are positive figures.

Does everyone know the sequel? While the merchant is waiting to be executed, an old man walks by (the kind of respected mature individual referred to as a shaykh) leading a غزالة, a ghazâla on a chain. (Why just then? Don’t ask. No story, the Chinese proverb says, without a coincidence.) Later there will follow two additional shuyûkh, one with a pair of dogs and one with a she-mule, but it is the ghazâla we remember. In part, of course, the reason is on the surface: a ghazâla is synonymous with beauty.

غزالة is a beautiful word both in its Arabic form and in its guise as a loan word in English, gazelle. In European narrative tradition we are more likely to use the gazelle to characterize elegance of motion, but in Arabic its beauty is in the eyes, which are likely to resemble what Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes when he describes the title character in “Ligeia”: “They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad.” (In the interest of scrupulous accuracy – Nourjahad doesn’t exist in our world; a note in the edition edited by Hardin Craig notes that the phrase comes from a novel, History of Nourjahad [1767] by Sidney Bidulph, pseudonym of Mrs. Frances Sheridan. Poe almost makes you want to read it.) The esthetic of big eyes is everywhere. Cartoon figures and stuffed animals meant to appeal to our sentiments are often portrayed with oversize eyes. (Over the years Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse evolved eyes which hardly seem to leave room for brains.) I wonder if pandas would still have their reputation of cuteness if they didn’t have those big patches surrounding their eyes, looking as if they were eyes in reality.

New essay: “’Ayn is for Arab” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

New essay: “Ẓâ is for Ẓarf” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

New Essay: “Ṭâ Is For Talisman” on The Arabic Alphabet website

Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 2

Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 1

The first authentic (not classroom) Arabic I understood was in a grocery store: an Omani man asked a clerk “wayn shokolata?” (where’s the chocolate?). I think it was very fitting that my first identification involved candy. It is also fitting that there wasn’t a verb.

Arabic is the fourth foreign language I have studied and, given that I am dyslexic and didn’t really start learning it until I was 42 years old, I am stuck at an odd mix of linguistic abilities. I have inadvertently created my own pidgin.

I know hundreds of Arabic nouns. From teaching literature and metaphors, I know colors, animals, birds and geographical features, but I never remember the words for parts of the body such as arm, foot and ears. I know “eyes” because you need it for metaphors of love, but I have no idea about nose or fingers. I know many words for furniture, types of food, rooms in the house and clothes, but I don’t know the word for “fork.”

I know pronouns and lots of adjectives and thank heavens you don’t need the verb “to be” for basic Arabic sentences: just give a pronoun or noun and a modifier: I happy/ he sick

I can rarely conjugate the verbs ‘to go’ and ‘come’ as fast as I need them so I make do with a pronoun, preposition, noun and time-markers: I to store yesterday. It’s incorrect but I can make myself understood in most situations.

After I had been in Oman for 7 years, I paid for an intensive, 6-week, Arabic language summer school in Muscat. All the students lived in an apartment building and took the bus to school every morning – it was like being in summer camp.

When I got back to Dhofar, the first time I met the research guys I ended up (I can’t remember why) explaining the story of Joseph from the Bible. It was the first time I could do an extended story in Arabic and from then on, I gained more and more confidence telling stories and having long conversations and arguments. I paid for another 4-week Arabic language program at the same school the following year and solidified my low intermediate status.

Now I can talk for hours in Arabic with the research guys, but our communication has aspects of a personal language. For example the verb for “talk” has the root of t-k-l-m, and I grasped that as tatakeleum not conjugated, not inflected for gender or tense – whenever I needed to express anything to do with speech, I throw in that word and they extrapolate the meaning.

And then there is learning in the opposite direction, when you are a native speaker of English on the Arabian Peninsula, you are always relearning your own language. When I bought a slice of “coffee cake” I was surprised that it tasted like… coffee. “Coffee cake” is not supposed to taste like coffee; it’s supposed to taste like butter-sugar-flour-eggs-cinnamon.

When female students said: “My mister told me” I assumed they meant husband or father, but they meant teacher. And I had to grit my teeth at being called “Miss,” not “Miss” with my last name, just “Miss.”

And I had to reexplain English to my students, such as the fact that that they could not use the fun cuss words they heard in movies and songs in the classroom. It was so amusing when a shy, quiet student who never wanted to speak in class would yell “#&*)!” when their books slid off the desk. “No,” I would say shaking my head, “you can’t say that at the university.”

We also a lot of time delineating bear/ bare – profit/ prophet – fair/ fare – merry/ marry/ Mary. I clarify that “I’m sorry” in English means “I am not happy to hear your bad news”; in Arabic it means “I am entirely responsible for the negative event that occurred.” So in English if you tell me your father is sick, I say “I’m sorry” but if I say that to someone in Dhofar they will respond, “Why? You don’t make him ill.” And “How are you?” in English means “I am not planning to slap you in the next five minutes,” not “please tell me all the details of your life.”

But with all my efforts to translation words and meanings, I am often happy to have a language barrier. Sitting in cafés amidst a swirl of languages is relaxing; I don’t have to focus on what someone else is talking about. On picnics, the research guys chat in Gibali, and I could just admire the stars. A few times one of them would offer to teach me Gibali, but an unwritten language is a bridge too far for me.

Adjusting to Oman: My Dangerous Taxi

New Essay: “Ṭâ Is For Talisman” on The Arabic Alphabet website

Practicalities: Managing a Short Business Trip to the Arabian Peninsula

Bibliography for ‘Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula’ (2025, Palgrave Macmillan)

Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 1

My favorite depiction of language learning is in the movie The 13th Warrior. Antonio Banderas’ character, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, picks up Old Norse in a matter of weeks by merely listening. Once he understands the words, he begins speaking fluently with conjugated verbs and perfect accent! I wish it were that easy!

I started learning French in middle school, then switched to German in high school. After I got my BA in German literature, I started on Ancient Greek when I was doing my PhD. After graduation, I got a teaching job at a new university in the Emirates.

During the weeks before I moved to Sharjah, I sat in cafés in Bethesda, Maryland practicing my Arabic letters in a beginner’s language book. Sipping lattes and writing out the shapes in my new calligraphy pen, I felt like I was quite the woman of the world.

During my first year of teaching in the Emirates, it was all I could do to keep up with my own students, but at the start of the second year I was part of a group of expat faculty and staff who requested that the administration create an Arabic class for us. I gradually realized, as we jumped through hoop after hoop, that no one wanted the expats to learn Arabic. English was for whatever needed to be said in public; the real decisions were made in Arabic.

We finally got a Westerner who knew Arabic to teach us and we soldiered on twice a week at lunch time for 4 or 5 months. I could transliterate, say simple phrases and bargain in stores but not do anything really useful.

I went back to the States for a few years, then returned to the Middle East. The first semester I was in Oman, I was simply surviving and getting over my culture shock, then I finally got to the point where I was ready to start learning Arabic again. There was an official class but the teacher was not very pleasant, so I asked a Lebanese co-worker if we could met once a week for lessons.

He was a kind man but it took a long time to find the right level for me. He started me on children’s stories without diacritics. Short Arabic vowels are not written as a letter but as a small mark above or below the consonant it is pared with; in regular writing such as in a newspaper, you will see “ktb” and if you don’t know the word, you can’t know if it is kataba, kitibi, kutubu, katibu, kituba, etc. I would sound out the consonants painfully slowly, then make random guesses as to the consonants. Total speculation.

He finally moved to an easier children’s book with diacritics: the mean mouse and the friendly turtle who rescued him. But it was rough going. And at the end of the semester the professor moved away.

In the fall, another American woman happened to remark that she had studied Arabic. “Can you teach me?” I asked and I started my next attempt. She had a young son who she was trying to teach Arabic to, so it worked out well; she would read him baby books in Arabic, then hand them off to me to struggle through. It is amazing to work out a language from the beginning, like a child. Amazing meaning, of course, frustrating.

I am a grown woman. I have navigated foreign countries and unruly students; I have a car and an IRA, and what is that papa hedgehog saying to baby hedgehog – ‘come here’ or ‘I will come’? Is that a past tense verb or a preposition? Where’s the vowel? I read with perfect interest and concentration about Shelly the Shell who got a grain of sand stuck in her mouth, would she recover? Why is that squirrel crying? Will the frog help her friend the turtle turn over? If the painter put blue over the cat’s yellow leg, what would happen? Drama! Tension!

I was happy to pay for the teaching and many Arabic children’s books, but I was always hoping to find a class so I could learn with other students.

One chance was an Arabic class that was offered at a local language school. I went to the first meeting which was difficult as I kept getting stuck in cultural chasms. Most of the other students were expat teachers so they kept articulating their needs (I would like interactive speaking exercises, I would like to have graduated listening activities, etc.) but our Arabic teacher had never taught before, so it was unlikely that they would understand, much less be able to produce what the students wanted.

The second issue was the choice of vocabulary. When our teacher asked us what expressions did we want to know, I said, “You are a brilliant student!” The woman next to me said with scorn, “Oh, you just want someone to say that to you!”

I thought, most of us are teachers, wouldn’t we want to have something positive to say to our students? But no one else was interested in being positive. We did not  learn “please” or “thank you”; we learned third person commands: “Sit! stand up! read! repeat! listen!” as if we were in a dog-training class. We did learn, “Excuse me” but only because one expat wanted to know how to say, “Get out of my way!”

The third issue was the teaching style. During the third class, the teacher presented us with a list of 16 sentences in Arabic. He read them aloud, then we had to put the sentences in the correct order to make a conversation. As I was working on it, I asked him the meaning of one word. He said, “You can figure it out” and said the word slowly.

I said, “No, I don’t know that word, can you please tell me?” As the teacher was fluent in English, I knew that he knew the meaning.

He repeated the word again in Arabic and I said, “I am sorry – repeating it doesn’t help, I don’t understand, could you please just tell me in English what this word means?”

He said, “If you think about it, you will get it.”

I said, “This is not really effective. I am lost here, can you please tell me what this word means?”

He said it again in Arabic.

I didn’t return to that class, but I eventually found an Arabic language summer school to attend, and with the help of Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar’s books, I got to a low intermediate level.

Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 2

Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Using the Arabic Language

New essay: “’Ayn is for Arab” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

Selected Books on Dhofar in Arabic

One Year Away – Missing Oman

Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Using the Arabic Language

Some guides to Arabian Peninsula countries include word lists. In Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula [ https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-96-5326-3 ] I don’t have word lists for a few reasons.

First, I am not a linguistics person. Second, daily phrases like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ vary widely across the region. Thirdly, writing Arabic using English letters is not a task I want to wade into. For example, the standard greeting/ response can be written as: Salam alaikum, Alaikum salam or As-salamu alaykum, alaykum As-salamu. One way to say goodbye is: Masalama/ Ma’assalama/ Ma Salama/ Ma’a as-salāmah.

A more over-arching issue is that I have not found many expats who are in the middle, linguistically-speaking. People either have learned Arabic or they never pick up anything. I have known people who lived on the Arabian Peninsula for years and never learned how to say “please” or “thank you” in Arabic.

That being said, here are some helpful words to recognize:

  • Marhaba – hello/ welcome
  • Bismillah – in the name of God, used at the start of something such as a meeting or meal
  • Wallah – vow/ oath, “I swear by God”
  • Khallas – something is done, over (important as it is used to end a negotiation or discussion)
  • Yallah/ Yallah Shabaab – let’s go/ let’s go guys, used to get someone moving, one of the very few things that can be yelled in frustration, like when you are stuck in a traffic jam
  • Min fadlik (please)/ Shukran (thank you)/ Afwan (you’re welcome)

It’s hard to say but I like: Astaghfirullah, used when you see something horrible (the exact meaning is ‘I seek forgiveness from God’ but in Dhofar it is used as ‘I take refuge in God’, when you see a mean person and say it, it’s a kind of protection and very effective for expressing dislike in a pious way)

But the words that are used most commonly are:

  • Alhamdulillah – praise be to God
  • Inshallah – by the way of God, may God allow this to be, God willing (express hope for the future)
  • Mashallah – what God has willed/ that which God wanted (express gratitude for what is)
  • Subhanallah – glory be to God

Alhamdulillah is used as celebration/ I am so happy to hear this good news/ what a wonderful thing has occurred, but it is also used in the face to something terrible as a way to remember that God is present in everything. I have heard people say “say Alhamdulillah” before giving bad news as a way to help the receiver of ill tidings not give in to despair.

Inshallah is used for any future plan, as in “I’ll see you tomorrow” – Inshallah.

Mashallah is used for praise, anytime you say anything positive about anything or anyone, you need a Mashallah to show that the good come from God (if you know Greek myths, you understand the construction of humans not taking the credit)

Subhanallah – in Dhofar, this is used often as an expression of surprise, wonderment, relief, sudden good fortune

Yet knowing these words is less than half the linguistic battle. To go off topic for a moment, when I studied at the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn for my junior year of college, I took a class on Russian drama because I had never read one. German universities give collective exams after 3 years of study, but since I was transferring back to Madison, I had to go to the professor’s office and have an oral exam at the end of the semester. One of his questions was “What is distinctive about Chekhov’s dramas?” I answered the best I could, but I did not get the right answer which was the pauses between when actors speak. I had no idea about this feature as I had only read the plays; I had never seen one performed.

That’s somewhat similar to trying to use these words correctly, it’s not just knowing when to say which word but that the words are often repeated back and forth.

If someone tells a story and ends with Alhamdulillah, often someone else will repeat the phrase. Then someone else might say Alhamdulillah, or the original speaker might say Alhamdulillah again. In the same manner, Mashallah might be said back and forth. If you are not used to this pattern or to a call-and-response verbal culture, it can get confusing.

If you will need a professional level of Arabic, you might be using the Alif Baa (Brustad et al. 2019) series. For learning on my own, I used the books by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar (2021) which are more fun and practical. Their Arabic language learning books have everyday vocabulary and realistic practice conversations with a wide variety of reading, writing, speaking, and listening exercises. They also have beginning- and intermediate-level texts specifically on Arabic grammar, writing, conjugating verbs, etc., which can be used for solo learners.

Ethnography – Finding the Middle Ground, part 1 of Discussing Photographs

New Essay: “Ṭâ Is For Talisman” on The Arabic Alphabet website

Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Navigating Public Spaces

Leaving Oman: Grief, Grandeur, Museums and Bringley’s ‘All the Beauty in The World’