27 April 2007

Let’s Give Her an Applause

I have been studying Arabic for a couple months now, and our new term started a few weeks ago. My last teacher, while being a very nice person, was not patient. When one is teaching a language, the unforgivable sin is impatience. It’s simply not optional. You must be patient.

My new teacher is patient. And meandering, and hilarious, and crazy, and I like her so very much. My favorite part is her imperfect command of English, which causes hilarity to ensue. She is every encouraging. Who wouldn’t be encouraged by these phrases? But also, she is hilarious, as she actively seems to get angry at Arabic for being so hard to learn.

Quotes from our teacher:

  • Now remember, make the mistake. With out the mistake, no one is shoe to know. Mistake! {If only the shoe could know. Everything would be made clear.}
  • Very good! Montaz! Let’s give her an app-loose. That’s enough. Good app-loose. {everone loves a good applause}
  • Yes, the Arabic seems very confuse. But, you go to sleep with Arabic confuse, but then you wake up! And: Arabic! Confuse. Not to be discouraged. One day you wake up with Arabic no confuse. {Still waiting for Arabic to one day begin to ‘no confuse’. And everymorning! I wake up and there is Arabic! Confuse!}
  • Is it on the end? {referring to a marker on the end of words that should be pronounced, but aren’t used very much by the general public} You don’t always use, but sometimes you use, because while using is better, Arabs are sometimes lazy when they talk. So we don’t use. This is called “the slang”.
  • Who will be the knight in shinny [sic] armor and read? No one will be shinny armor? No? Then you will read. {Pointing to me, who never wears shiny armor to class.}
  • Read is not hard. Just sound out it! {Ma’am, sorry to inform you, but in Arabic read is hard.}
  • Oh hamza! Hamza is lazy mark! Bring him a chair! He likes to sit on a vowel. Maybe alif. Alif will make a good chair for lazy hamza. {While I know what she means here, still: then mind wobbles}


3 comments:

NG said...

Awesome! From now on, each time I use some colloquialism, I will now punctuate it with “This is called The Slang.”

Anonymous said...

Holy cow, hysterical!

Anonymous said...

My favorite (when I was taking Arabic) was when our very proper and religious female instructor said, speaking of drinking Cardommom in coffee, "Go ahead. Do not be afraid. It is a Condom."
She meant condiment and was mortified when she figured out what she had said.