Arabic Is Hard

Let’s talk about Arabic for a minute.  Please bear with me as you wander through my hastily written run-on sentences.  And hopefully this doesn’t turn into some agonizingly pedantic history lesson.

The most widely known Arabic is Modern Standard Arabic (also called Fus’ha), and this is the style most similar to that of the Koran.  MSA is generally a literary form of the language, and is used to write books, poetry, newspapers, etc. People from many Arab countries (I’ll talk about what that means in a minute) don’t necessarily speak Fus’ha, but rather a regional dialect.  Most regional dialects are pretty similar to Fus’ha, and can be understood by people from other areas, though a speaker’s country or region of origin can often be detected by other native speakers based on accent and diction.  Morocco’s regional language – known as Darija – is different from many other Arabic dialects.  People here in the streets will not understand MSA, and other Arabic speakers may not fully understand Darija.  Darija shares the alphabet, phonemes, and even some words with Fus’ha, but it’s apparent that the two might as well be different as modern American English is from Shakespeare, or as Shakespeare is from Beowulf. 

I’m not really an expert on how all of the different types of Arabic work, so you might want to google it or something if you want to understand it better than I’ve laid it out here. 

Anyway, here in Morocco, many people also speak French, in addition to Darija.  Morocco was formerly a French colony, which gained its independence in 1956(ish), though the northern coast and Tangier spent some time as Spanish and international zones.  The majority of French speakers are streets vendors (who might speak as many as six languages and often hock their wares in Darija, French, Spanish, English, and even Mandarin), upper-middle class erudites, or younger people who have grown up in a more technologically and educationally advanced, multilingual society (compared with that of their parents).  For example, in many American students’ host families here, children of all ages know French and Darija, and are somewhat familiar with English and Fus’ha, while their parents speak only Darija, “the language of the streets.”

Speaking more in generalities now, Arabic is hard.  The only thing that could make it harder would be if it was tonal (thank goodness it isn’t or I’d never be able to talk to anyone).  For someone with zero Arabic experience (i.e. me), it is difficult not only to master additional phonemes, but to learn to write with a whole new alphabet.  For example, Arabic has an aspirated, throat-growling H sound that is nowhere to be found in English or the Romance languages, though it might have a counterpart in something like Danish or German.  Some letters sound different every time I hear them – I’m still not sure if “ana daliba” (“I’m a student”) has a T or a D, or if it’s something halfway in between. 

To make matters more difficult, Arabic is written in a kind of cursive script, so each letter’s shape changes based on where it is in the word and what other letters it’s connected too.  And the vowel situation. I can’t even talk about it right now. (Mostly because I’m still kind of fuzzy on how some letters get to turn into vowels if you take away their dots, or how vowels might just be dots around the word, or something like that).

I feel like I’m in kindergarten again, learning how to write letters.

Take a look at that alphabet:

Last but not least, I’m going to do my best to clarify the distinction between Arab countries and Muslim countries, which I think is a relatively important one.  While Arabic as a language is without a doubt highly significant to Muslims everywhere, not every Muslim country (i.e. where the majority of citizens identify as practicing Islam over any other religion) is an Arab one (i.e. ethnically or linguistically of Arab origin). The Koran is most often distributed in traditional Arabic form, though it has been widely translated, and for this reason Arab and Muslim countries are often assumed (at least in the U.S.) to be synonymous.  In fact, only around half of Muslim countries are Arab. 

Morocco’s situation as an Arab country is a little shaky, because of the significant historical and cultural impact of Berber tribes here.  And the Berbers are definitely not Arab. The Arabs actually came to Morocco in the 7^th century as conquerors, but the Berbers are the original inhabitants of the Rif Mountains in the north, the High and Middle Atlas Mountains, and the southern Souss plains.  The Berber tribes played a significant role in Moroccan independence, though attempts were made to stifle Berber customs and cultural identity (which they called Amazighte) in the post-colonial period in order to promote unity, stability, and nationalism in the fledgling nation.  It’s only recently that there have been attempts to preserve and recognize Berber culture. 

So far this is my understanding of Arabic and Moroccan lingual identity.  A lot of complicated history that I may or may not have gotten right.  But there is it.  Might have to update it again as I learn more.