tl;dr: try-lingualism, diglossia, leaps of faith I have just a couple weeks left at home before I take off for Jordan (!?), and to distract myself from considering the 24+ hours I'm about to spend in planes and airports, I'm going to write a few posts covering the basic whos/whats/wheres of my upcoming year. These will be fairly dense with information but should set an adequate amount of context so I can crack better jokes about my faux pas/learning experiences later on. This first post will be about language study, and the next two will focus on 2) the place I'm headed and 3) the social politics of cultural exchange. So why study Arabic? I don't have a single overriding reason. My elevator pitch is different every time I'm asked, and my motivations have shifted over the years as I gained a more mature sense of what extended language study really means in practice. I started Arabic with some sense of the uphill ahead of me thanks to the time I spent on Spanish in high school, but Arabic is in a whole different league of difficulties. It's also a whole different magnitude of rewards. In the broadest sense, I study Arabic because I love learning languages, period, end of story (if you've heard me rant about this before, you can go ahead and stop here). I’ve always been a mega-nerd in foreign language classes, which, from age 11 all the way to a couple classes at Reed College, were all about Spanish. It's been four years since I've formally studied Spanish, and I miss it dearly. Though in college I was lucky enough to participate in Spanish-heavy workplaces and research projects, my fluidez faded as Arabic more prominently entered the foreground. Today my two “second” languages are unneighborly tenants in the too-small living quarters of my brain. When I try to speak Spanish, some Sparabic/Arspañol nonsense comes out (much to the confusion of a Hispanic couple that asked me for directions on the subway a couple weeks ago -- "claro! lazim tamshee a la derecha... "). I loved Spanish, but when I got to college, I just couldn't miss the opportunity to try my hand at something else, since I figured undergrad was perhaps my last opportunity to start a language anew. As for picking one out, my language arts teachers had prepared me to ask a set of critical questions about a given language before stepping off the cliff of actually learning it. Whatever I chose had to be vaguely practical (large # of speakers across multiple geographies), have an alphabet (bye, Mandarin), and be atonal (goodBYE Mandarin). I knew I wanted to challenge myself beyond Germanic or Romance languages, since English and Spanish are closely related to things like French, German, Italian... Arabic was beginning to stand out. A trip to the Met’s Near East Art collection sealed the deal. I was floored by the sheer beauty of Arabic calligraphy and the intrigue that came from realizing there was a special art historical value to text in that linguistic tradition. (I later learned there’s theological significance, too — more on that later). Added to my personal curiosity, there's of course the matter of Arabic being, well, everywhere these days. I came of age in the U.S. alongside the American military occupation of Iraq and widespread post-9/11 political neuroticism about people who are Arab, Muslim, and/or brown (really anyone who isn't Christian and white). As someone passionate about getting government to look a little more like it ought to (yikes), throughout college, I often motivated myself to wake up for my 9 a.m. Arabic class by considering the ways it might help me in a journalism or diplomacy career down the road. A series of unfortunate events has since jolted me into realizing that the political sphere in America is way more screwed than I ever properly imagined, and I'm not exactly hoping to work for the State department anytime soon. (Maybe I'll teach English? Your guess is as good as mine.) I've never been the most practical type, though, so career interests have never been my primary motivation. Really it wasn't until I spent a semester in Jordan during my junior year of college that I realized that Arabic might be more than a passing interest. Not only was I getting pretty good at it while abroad, but I was coming to the realization that language study is about way more than just acquiring communicative skills in a language. I was learning about the world through the experience of people I might never have met otherwise. I was hearing takes on globally-relevant current events that quite literally do not translate into the English-speaking world. Above all, while I was Jordan, I fell in love with the humility inherent to a second language classroom. No matter how much you learn (and the gains do feel wonderfully tangible), you are constantly getting your ass kicked by all that you don't know. I think that's how learning (and life) should feel at age 22. So when I came across an opportunity to keep this going after graduation, I jumped. The truth is, I'll never be fluent in Arabic. Yes, you read that right -- even after four years of intensive study, heading into my fifth for all Arabic, all the time, I will not walk away from this experience with total fluency. The reasons for this are many. First, I started learning this language at 18, not 11, and it's difficult to truly internalize foreign languages as you get older. Second, Arabic is crazy complex. In addition to new sounds, a new script, and new grammatical constructs, all learners of Arabic quickly come to appreciate that Arabic might not even be one single language at all. Arabic is "diglossic," meaning that formal and informal registers of speech are subject to distinct rules and distinct vocabularies. Diglossia is sort of like the difference between Shakespearean English and American slang, or even old-school Latin vs. modern-day Italian, Spanish, and French. Diglossia comes with geographic variety, so this also means that Moroccans and Yemenis won't necessarily understand each other very well, even though they both speak "Arabic" (and I sure as heck won't understand either of them). One of my friends once described Arabic as a "seven year lesson in humility." In sum: my passion for acquiring Arabic skills comes less from specific career goals than from intellectual and (dare I say) spiritual curiosity about human linguistic faculties. Vague? Yes. But I figure it's best to go into your twenties with broad interests, an open mind, and, in my case, an unflappable willingness to look like an idiot in front of a lot of Jordanians next year. Thanks for reading! Next time: Jordan is the name of a famous basketball player, but also a country. What gives?
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Check back soon for three posts worth of introductory content on the following topics:
Background I: On Language Background II: On Jordan Background III: On Whiteness If these titles get you hoping I'll touch on a particular point, please let me know here! |