Arabic 101

I haven’t yet been able to find a place to learn it and my Rosetta Stone, I can’t install it. But Moroccan Arabic is different than Classical and has a lot of French mixed into it. I realize my difficulty with Arabic is my complete inability to pronounce 90% of the words as they have those nasal and deep sounds such as “Hra” and “khra”. At least I provide a sense of comic relief to the family who always get a few laughs from my horrible pronunciation of some French words and even worse elocution of Arabic words.  But I hear a lot of these words daily, so I am slowly building up my vocabulary (words such as, hello, how are you, yes, no, etc), even if I can’t speak at all properly. Something is better than nothing at all.

This is the frustration of not knowing the language. It has been hard for me to find Arabic classes and let alone the time. I will learn some day, adding it to the bucket list now. There is nothing more infuriating and more of a blow to your ego than not knowing the local language. You can add zero value to any conversation and feel rather helpless at times. Though many people speak French, Arabic is the main language.