tl;dr: if you had any fear that this blog was just an excuse for me to *nerd*the*hECk*out, TURN BACK NOW, do not pass go، do not collect 200, c u next time The Arabic language is not your friend, and at least once, every Arabic student will meet with the associated Dementor. The despair sinks in, you feel like all the hope has been sucked right out of you, and there seems to be no reason to go on. Now, to be clear, this is not to say that Arabic is the hardest language to learn. At least it's mostly phonetic and people are friendly and encouraging about you learning it, unlike some languages I know... This Spring I'm taking an 8am grammar class (not quite as painful as it sounds) and I'm also finishing up online certification to teach English as a Second or Other Language. So basically I've been thinking waaaay too much about words. I do remembering promising y'all some more hard-hitting reflections on my coursework, culture and politics and stuff...but in the meantime, please enjoy this Harry-Potter-themed linguistics listicle (linguisticle?). It's basically what the inside of my brain looks like these days. I. HARRY POTTER and the ACTIVE ORIGIN In Arabic, as much as possible, it's best to form a sentence by putting the verb first. Not subject + verb, but rather verb + subject. Slays she, not she slays. II. HARRY POTTER and the MUTUALITY of FORMS Did you ever study Greek or Latin roots in English class? Suffixes, prefixes, etc. — they’re all a good way to guess the meaning of a word you don’t yet know. Arabic has tricks like this too, except on a whole extra level. Almost every word can be broken down into three core letters, and from those three (the "root") the dictionary branches off into dozens of words whose meaning are based on their "weight/shape." My favorite examples of this are the 10 verb structures, which all Arabic students have to memorize. Every single verb that breaks into three letters will have associated nouns (the "doer," the "done to") but also different flavors of the action itself. For example, one verb form means simply "to do x," but another "seeking to do x," another "pretending to do x," another "making someone else do x," etc. -- all from the same three letters. III. HARRY POTTER and the ORDER of the PHONEMES When I tell friends and family that I study Arabic, usually their first reaction is to comment on the "squiggliness" of it ("you can read that??"). At this point it's difficult for me to remember what it feels like to look at a word in Arabic and not immediately hear the sound of the letters. That said, every day I am reminded that Arabic is a language in which not all sounds are written out. Only some sounds (or "phonemes" if you're a linguist) are fully transcribed in a given text. The rest of the word you're just supposed to know from context. It's like knowing the melody but not the rhythm. Better yet, it's like that nerd phenomena where you frequently mispronounce words that you've really only seen while reading. IV. HARRY POTTER and the DISORIENTED POSSESSION Ask any multilingual person and they could probably tell you about the preposition problem. To speak...of? For? To? About? Is there a logic to any of this? Barely. Even more, Arabic sometimes doesn’t bother with prepositions at all. Trying to indicate possession? “Sara's friend’s father”? “The complexity of the problem”? “The love of my life”? Weirdly enough, the best way to write these phrases is to simply write the nouns back to back. Father friend Sara. Love my life. V. HARRY POTTER and ABSENCE of EXISTENCE Not only does Arabic leave out prepositions with abandon, but, to my horror back in Year One (I remember this sensation well), there’s such thing as a sentence without a verb at all. Just put two nouns, or a noun and an adjective, next to each other; there’s no need for “is” or “are.” America racist. Men in positions of power stupid. Me hungry. VI. HARRY POTTER and the SEXING of NUMBERS Let's give verb conjugations a gender! And adjectives, of course. All that I could handle, because I dealt with it while learning Spanish. What I wasn't ready for is that even numbers have gender. But of course, numbers 3-10 have a different number than 11-99. Which is different from the hundreds and the thousands. Whee. VII. HARRY POTTER and the DUALITY of PAIRS And if THAT weren’t enough, there’s a verb conjugation for when TWO people do stuff -- not only that, but there’s a difference between when TWO WOMEN do stuff and TWO MEN do stuff. 14 total conjugations for each and every verb. (Compare that to English, which is pretty chill: You walk. I walk. She walks. They walk. etc. Not you walky. I walkz. She walkt. Them two walkl.) Why do we care? If you made it this far, you're a champ. 10 points to Ravenclaw because clearly you're as much a nerd as me. All I really mean to say by sharing this info is "woah, it's amazing how the human brain learns to process this stuff without conscious thought!" (It's also amazing how much more I'd rather read a listicle than a normal article, and how I'm reading Harry Potter again for the zillionth time, and I'm still loving it...some mysteries are better left unsolved.) Will get back to you guys by the end of the month sharing some reflections on culture & translation! Cheers (& butterbeers), Jackie P.S. If you're a teacher and have recommendations on your favorite books/articles/lectures/poems about teaching, please let me know! Trying to find ways to reflect on the profession and boost my confidence that this is the right path to be walking down for me.
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