The Joys of Learning Arabic

Of course it isn’t. Arabic is a sick, twisted bitch who stands in front of you like an impenetrable fortress against which you muster all of your forces in the hopes of one day finding access through its impassable walls. And all the while she laughs in your face saying, “Maybe next year you’ll be able to master me.” And at some point after you’ve unleashed all of your heavy arsenal upon her and expended all of your strength trying to conquer her, you realize that you’re no closer to gaining access than when you started. And so you give up for a while. But then eventually you look around you and realize, “Damn, but there are real people who speak this language. So there’s gotta be a way in!” And so you go again. You give it everything you’ve got and you chip away at that freaking stone wall until you’ve made a small dent and you think, “Hah, see, it’s not so invincible after all!” But after hacking away for a little bit longer you realize that this sucks, and you’ve still got four feet of solid rock wall standing in front of you, and there’s no way you’re going to ever get through it at this rate. And then you think, “Man, I should have just stuck with learning Spanish instead. At least then I’d be in Mexico ordering some authentic enchiladas and margaritas from a real Mexican right now.”

Okay, so maybe your experience with learning Arabic has been better than mine. Maybe not everyone has been whipped by this language as much as me. For those of you expats who already speak Arabic well, God bless you, and tell me your secret!

As for those of you foreigners who are just now embarking on the journey of learning Arabic, Godspeed. Your first hurdle to overcome is the fact that many Lebanese are fluent in both English and French and will insist on speaking to you in one of these two languages despite your efforts to speak with them in Arabic, since you are a foreigner, simply because the Lebanese have it programmed into their minds from childhood to never speak Arabic with a foreigner (unless, of course, they come from another Arabic-speaking country). Just forgive them and move on. Additionally, keep in mind that each region speaks their own dialect and every Lebanese person, no matter what you say in Arabic, will tell you, “No, we don’t say it like that, we say it like this.” Which will be the exact opposite of what the next Lebanese person will tell you is correct, leaving you wanting to bash your head against a wall and give up on Arabic altogether (oh wait, but I already talked about that). Keep going. If you don’t give up you’ll eventually speak all 1000 dialects of Lebanese Arabic! (This number is, of course, an exaggeration.) Despite all the time that I’ve lived in Lebanon, my boyfriend and I still have the all-too-frequent conversation about how I’m not pronouncing things the Keserwani way (our regional dialect), but rather like a Traublousi (Tripoli region) or a Syrian or a Palestinian or that I’m using the MSA word for something. God help me, my Arabic is an ugly mutt.

Nevertheless, despite my personal opinion about the difficulties of learning an Arabic dialect (in addition to learning Modern Standard Arabic), in order to help you along your journey, I’ve compiled a list of resources below that might be useful to you based on my own personal experience. If you know of any more good resources, though, feel free to pass them along to me via my contact form and I’ll add them below.