Loading ...17 Things That Happen When You Start Learning Arabic
cgueye
BuzzFeed
Learning Arabic is definitely a big challenge. But don’t worry, you are not alone! Here are 17 things that I guarantee happens to all students of Arabic. The good, the bad and the downright Majnoon.
SO YOU WANT TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE?
and Arabic is your top choice!
Then you arrive on the first day of classes and the professor (Ustaaz) is only speaking in Arabic.
and so the journey begins!
It takes you months to properly pronounce the غ (ghayn) and ع (ayn).
and you feel like you swallowed a gumball and you are trying to get it out your throat every time you practice saying it.
When you’re learning idaafa and you make the mistake of saying “your dad is a dog” instead of “the dog of your dad”.
It’s ok, we have all been there!
That look people give you when everyone around you says they’re learning Spanish/French and you tell them you’re learning Arabic.
That’s the language with the squiggly cursive letters right?
The look on your parents’ faces when you tell them you’re learning Arabic
Don’t worry, they’ll get over it.
The moment everyone dreads “Oh, so you speak Arabic? Say something.”
Umm …. Asalaam Alaikum…
When you have a reading comprehension exam and you understand 10 words out of 50.
Don’t worry it gets better!
When someone from Al Maghreb tries to speak to you, but you only learned Shami
This is basically the level of comprehension that is happening.
When you’ve been taking Arabic for more than one semester and you still can’t hear the difference between ص and س or ط and ت.
عيب عليك ….. Shame on you.
When you try to speak fusha to a native speaker and they just reply in English.
When a native speaker tells you how well you speak Arabic, but you can barely understand what they’re saying
Eventually you really will تتكلم عربي كويس! (speak Arabic well)
You’ve probably heard “YALLAH YA SHABAB” a thousand times by now.
Yallah! Yallah!
FINALS come around and you start freaking out.
Maybe it’s time you memorize the alphabet!
But when you actually take the final, it turns out you know more than you thought.
Alhamdulillah!!
You realize that everything will be fine as long as you end a sentence with “Habibi!”
Finally, no matter how challenging, you realize it is all worth it because you can now speak a beautiful and rich language that connects you with more than 450 million people around the world who speak it!!
Mumtaz!