Friday, October 12, 2007

Sh'wiya Darija

After regaling the other volunteers with our adventures in the mdina, the need for sleep soon pressed down upon us. The next morning dawned with a fresh perspective: it would be our first day of language. Sure, a few volunteers versed in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or "Classical" as they say here had to date given us a few lessons in script, but for the most part none of us had a clue about Darija, or the Moroccan dialect, apart from a few basic sayings.

sbaH L-xir (TSba La-kher) - Good morning

salam u 3likum (salam oo áhleekoom) - Peace be upon you (or "hello" or "greetings")

By now you're easily confused by some of those letters. Don't worry, so were we! There are more letters in the Arabic script (which is used for MSA, and all Darija words are written in it as well) so simply you have to substitute letters that in English we can understand. Below are a few more examples, with my best attempt at a phonetic conversion.

3 (áh) - This is kind of like a double "A", or "A'A," but there is a stress there. Use your diaphragm emphatically when pronouncing the first of those two "A"'s to get it.

3G (ghr) - In script, this letter is written exactly the same as the one above, but with a dot on top of it. I find it easy, since the pronunciation sounds like it has a "G" in there, to write it thus in English. The sound of a "ghr" is kind of a mashing of a "G" made further down your throat combined with the "R" in Paris if you were pronouncing it like a Frenchmen. The best way to try this letter is to gargle. If you imagine the sound you make gargling as a syllable, that's pretty close.

x (kh) - There is no "X" in Arabic, but the pronunciation of the character itself comes kind of close. Throw some phlegm from way down your throat at a "kh" sound to get it. The easiest word I can think of to do so is ankh.

H (hu`h) - This letter is literally the sound you make when you sigh audibly. Go ahead, try it. *sigh* It is an "H" made without vibrating your throat. Try to say hat out loud. Now say it with a whisper. See the difference? A lot of the time when you're speaking fast, you won't even hear it, especially if it's at the end of a word.

Sound fun yet? There are plenty more letters that form their own category, including a few above, which I'll get into later. The really important thing is that yes, we started in earnest to try to master at least part of a foreign language. Starting at the end of our first week, and running for five of the next seven weeks, we would be having four hours of language per day six days per week (and for four days a week the other two weeks.)

Our first class was simple. "Hello, how are you? I am fine. My name is...what's your name? Nice to meet you." And so on. And then after our first break, we got to nationality. And then to age, and occupation. It was a bit to digest, you might say.

After our brains were more fried than the chicken at KFC, the cannon sounded and it was time for L-ftur. A few people went exploring, but for me it was straight to the cyber. I'd had a seemingly brilliant idea to take my laptop and just plug that into their network so I could use my QWERTY keyboard and actually get something done. After failing miserably to get my laptop connected, since apparently only one side of the room was technically able to allow outside computers on the network (don't ask why, I've been at this for weeks with others to try to explain it), I pounded away in frustration on the AZERTY keyboard. It took me two hours, but finally I had sent a half-dozen e-mails, updated fantasy sports for the next few days, and finally got news of the outside world via CNN and ESPN. Apparently you all can survive without us, so that was good to know.

Sunday we would have off, so I spent the rest of the night relaxing, and promptly decided to host a viewing of "The Man Who Knew Too Little" in my room. Laughter abound, though I realized that a few more nights of such activity on my laptop and I would blow the speakers out. Luckily, I had heard of a place nearby that just might sell speakers...

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