How long will it take me to learn Arabic?
By Emma Sandvik Ling
The saying that time is relative somehow rings especially true in Hebron. If someone tells you to meet them in five minutes it usually means an hour. Even if you are told at 6 pm that “We are leaving in an hour” you can find yourself waiting patiently at 8. If someone promises to do something ‘bukra’ (Palestinian Arabic for tomorrow), it will probably be done sometime next week, if ever. Coming here you quickly learn to just go with it. With a healthy dose of patience and a smile, you find that things work themselves out in the end.
Learning Arabic follows the same fluid time schedule. Time works differently when studying Arabic than other (slightly more accessible) languages. Even after two years of studying Arabic, I find myself struggling to grasp the language. After tackling the first seemingly enormous task of learning the alphabet, I remember feeling so proud. “I can do this” I remember thinking: “Yalla, let’s go!” It is of course at this point you understand that the alphabet is the easy part.
This is my fourth time studying a new language. I am already very familiar with the experience of studying new sounds and systems. Comparing my progress in Arabic to my experience learning European languages is sobering. After learning the alphabet, I delved headfirst into verbs and adjectives, plurals and conjugations. Coming to Hebron, I should at least be able to use Arabic in daily life, right? Maybe not. When telling the taxi driver where I want to go one morning I tell him Dajaj Saha rather than Duar Saha. The latter being a roundabout in Hebron, the former meaning something along the lines of ‘healthy chicken’. Close enough. He laughs, I blush, we drive together to whatever the roundabout is called.
I ask Ruby, a fellow volunteer and Arabic student at the Excellence Center how long she thinks it will take me to learn the language. She responds with charming Scottish cynicism: “You won’t.” I empathize with her. It feels like a monumental task. I force the muscles in my mouth to express foreign sounds and wonder how I will ever have the same effortless fluency as the people around me. There are something like four different Arabic letters related to the Latin ‘H’. In addition, there are letters and ‘glottal stops’ which have no English equivalent at all. Still, nothing beats the sense of accomplishment when you successfully manage to stutter out a few sentences.
Hugh as well as feeling the weight of the task we have taken on. Teaching English at the Excellence Center has illustrated to him exactly how complex a task it is to learn a new language. In his opinion, you can be “operationally fluent” after five or six years, but he thinks that truly learning a language takes a lifetime. Right, Power on, then… I guess?
Luckily, I find a ray of optimism when I ask Lucy. She is two weeks into her time volunteering and studying Arabic at the Excellence Center. Lucy has studied Arabic at University in the UK and finds that she is learning more and faster here. Living with a host family lets her immerse herself completely in the language. The teachers at the Center are also really helpful and always willing to answer any questions we may have. We find ourselves in an environment and a community which really wants to see us succeed. Friends and teachers wait patiently while I try my best to formulate a sentence.
For some inexplicable reason, we have decided to study this beautiful, frustrating, incredible, complicated language. We stutter and struggle, ask and annoy. We are met with patience, smiles, and maybe a few good-humored jokes on our behalf. It is easy to get discouraged, but like with any language, realizing that you can say slightly more today than yesterday feels like an enormous victory. Learning Arabic is a big task and we are in the best environment to improve as much as possible. So how long will it take me to learn Arabic? I’ll tell you bukra, Inshallah.
