Arabic

Not much new, most of my time has been spent learning Arabic and teaching.

The format of the class turns out to be the same format that was used during the Samoan training for the Peace Corps, except that my students are more advanced in English then I every dreamed I would be in Samoan. I like to think that they have a bit of a head start having grown up with English all around them which I didn’t hear my first Samoan words until shortly after I discovered the existence of the country.

Here is some of the Arabic that I have learned:

صبح الخير! أبا كم
أبا أمريكية
أسكن في اليمب الآن
أتكلم أانجليزي, و ادرس عربي

Hello! I am Kim. I am an American. I live in Yemen now. I speak English, and I am learning Arabic.

OK, so I have a way to go. But I am learning pretty quickly. It’s actually been really tough not being able to speak Samoan. Very few people on the street speak English, and I have found that in my head I have two languages: English and “not English”. Imagine if you suddenly couldn’t use 90% of the words that you had in your vocabulary. It’s pretty annoying! But the other teachers here speak quite naturally and quite fluently and I so I have hope. Also, Arabic is a lot more constant rich then Samoan, and I find that it’s easier for me to pick out the words that I know.