The Arabic Alphabet in Two Days

Yes, it can be done.

Not that I know what anything actually means, but for someone who didn't really want to learn Arabic at all, I've come a long way, baby. Here's how it started:

Basically, my job is killing me. For all sorts of reasons, from the fact that I was hired to teach something I have 1) no interest in and 2) no qualifications for, to the fact that the majority of my students are, well, in some respects, alingual. But they're paying me, and continuing to pay me, so for now I shall stick it out and confess that I am, in fact, a mercenary. Don't worry, there will be another post with the gory details. But the job misery prompted me into thinking about what sort of activities I'd like to take up if I did actually walk out the door, and the short list included learning, or at least figuring out, some other language. I don't really care what it is or whether it's useful (hey - for all you p.c. Americans out there who are sending your kids to Spanish lessons, do you REALLY think they're going to compete on the español scene with the gazillions of native Spanish speakers growing up in the U.S. who happen to be fluent in English as well? Maybe you are just content with the fact that they'll be able to say hola to the gardener). I don't care whether it can get me a job in the NSA, CIA, MI6, USDA, or anywhere else. And I don't really care whether I can "communicate" with people in the Arab world. I can already communicate with them, or at least with the ones who speak English, which are probably not my students.

See, I've got a particularly weird relationship with language -- I just think it's cool as grits. That's language with a capital L. And I like puzzles, so the Living Language Ultimate (last?) Arabic book that I picked up at United Bookstores a couple of weeks ago is, in my mind, the world's biggest puzzle book. I took it on holiday with me last week to while away the time while my better half was reading about whatever suicide bomber just toasted himself in some neighbouring country.

Okay, okay, I'll confess. Prior to having a look at the book, Arabic orthography was a bunch of squiggles and dots. It still is, I suppose, a bunch of squiggles and dots, but so is pretty much every other language's orthographic system, except maybe for Korean, which seems to be mostly squares. The difference between then and now is that I can decipher those squiggles. I can write them in initial, medial, final, and separate positions, complete with vowel and other diacritical marks. I can even pronounce most of them, although the pharyngealised consonants are giving me a run for my money (for those of you who know what I really do for a living, feel free to chuckle out loud). And the funnest thing is that I can read signs. This is particularly interesting when the Arabic is just a transliteration of the other word. For instance:

There's a shop in Khalidiya called "L'uomo." It means "The Man" in Italian. I don't really know what this shop sells -- you might think it's men's clothing, but it could just as easily be cakes and pastries. One never really knows. Next to it, in big squiggles, is the Arabic transliteration:

لوم و

Right. So I haven't figured out which keyboard to use to get the characters connected in the right way, but trust me, this is (reading from right to left):

ل lam /l/

و waw /u/

م mim /m/

و waw /u/

Yes, you've got it -- the word is pronounced "loomoo," which is, um, nothing like "l'uomo." Unfortunately for those poor Italians, Arabic doesn't seem to have an /o/-type sound. In fact, it doesn't have a lot of sounds, like /p/ for instance, so anyone whose name happens to be Peter will have it look something like this:

بيتر

which, as you are probably aware, sounds like "beater." Great.

The nice thing about Arabic is that it compensates for the lack of that /p/ sound by having lots and lots of consonants pronounced farther back in the mouth than even your dentist has ventured (which makes sense, since there aren't any teeth that far back). So we have the following:

ق

ع

غ

ح

خ

and those lovely four pharyngealised versions of /s/, /d/, /t/, and /th/:

ص

ض

ط

ظ

If you ask me, this is just cruel. Go ahead, stick your finger down your throat and see if you can find your pharynx. I'll wait.

There's another devilish little trick that Arabic plays on the unsuspecting learner -- only the long vowels actually show up in the orthography, at least in informal orthography. So that means that you'll only see the "long" versions of alif (/a/), waw (/u/), and ya' (/i/). All those other little short versions of vowels are mysteriously absent. I have a working hypothesis that at some point long ago an Arab went on holiday to Wales and was jealous of the fact that Welsh had managed to pare down its vowel inventory even further than Arabic had.

Right. So what do I mean that vowels don't show up in orthography? Well, here's another example, from a sign I saw this morning:

شمس

Individually, those are:

ش /sh/

م /m/

س /s/

Anyone wanna play "Find the Vowel?" I hope not, because I guarantee you will come in LAST place. The word is shams, meaning "sun." Thank you for playing.

This gets even worse yet. Words in Arabic are often triconsonantal roots, and different vowels between the consonants can make a difference in meaning. Let's take the textbook example of "ktb" or كتب, having a meaning of something to do with the concept of writing. My Living Language book has the following in its (paltry) glossary:

كاتب katab "to write"

كاتب katib "writer"

The long /a/ in the first syllable of both of these words is marked in the orthography, as you can see by closely examining the difference between the triconsonantal root form and the two words (or you can just take my word for it). But the short vowel in the SECOND syllable isn't marked! In other words, just from looking at these in isolation, there is no way to tell what the word actually means.

Like I said, cruel.