Classes and a Brief Arabic Lesson

I’ve gotten several requests for blog updates in the past couple of days—didn’t know I was so popular! I’ll try and keep this one light and slightly more positive. I guess I came off a little harsh on Cairo last time. But I am firmly in favor of America’s Puritan past: cleanliness being next to godliness is awesome.

I’m a week and a day into classes. I have five this semester—only 15 credits, which I haven’t carried since first semester freshman year! But it has given things much more structure, and something to do with my time. The first is Modern Standard Arabic, the same thing I’ve been learning at Georgetown (exactly the same thing—the definitive “Teach Arabic to Stupid American College Kids” book was written by three professors, one at AUC, and published by Georgetown University Press), it works out well that the lesson I ended with and the lesson we’re beginning with match up perfectly. Most people were not this lucky. The class is small, with almost exclusively semester-abroad white kids. At least I don’t stick out.

Second class is a seminar on Ancient Egyptian Religion. The class is quite small (eight) and the professor is nice and really seems to know what she’s talking about and love it. The workload for it seems pretty minimal: reading, a 10-page paper, a presentation on the paper, and an exam.

Third is Colloquial Arabic. Here’s where we get interesting. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a great language. It has strong grammar rules, pronunciation is regular, and it’s generally a nice language. Unfortunately, nobody speaks it. When the United Nations translates something into Arabic (one of the five official UN languages), they use MSA. Al-Jazeera and the other news networks generally use MSA. The newspapers and textbooks are in MSA. When people make speeches before the Arab League, MSA. Unfortunately, that’s about it. When people talk on the street, when people give directions and order in restaurants and talk with their friends and discuss politics and generally function in the normal world, they don’t use MSA. It’s like asking someone from Hawai’i to speak fluent Shakespearean English. (No, I’m not kidding! One of the oft-used particles in MSA is best translated as “verily…”) So learning Colloquial Arabic is almost like learning a brand-new language.

Colloquial Arabic differs from region to region in the Arab world (all 22 countries of it). There are generally five distinctions: Levantine (Jordan/Syria/Lebanon/Palestine…the Levant in French), Gulf, Iraqi, Maghrebi (Morocco/Lybia/Tunisia/Algeria), and Egyptian. Each of the broad categories is frustratingly splintered into its own (1) national (2) regional (3) city (4) socioeconomic dialects. No joke. Each, of course, swears that it, and it alone, is the closest you can come to pure Qur’anic Arabic—that which the Prophet Muhammad spoke. And scholars of each will tell you that it’s the furthest you could ever get from Qur’anic Arabic! When I talk about dialects, I’m not comparing things like the Deep South versus Boston versus the Queen’s English. The pronunciation is different (in Egypt, the letter “j” is always pronounced “g”), the vocabluary is completely different (at least in English when you say you “read” a book, people know what you’re talking about), and there is a whole new grammar to learn.

But the class itself looks to be a good time, so we’ll leave it at that!

Fourth and fifth are my two Political Science seminars. Both (I didn’t know this) are cross-listed as both upper-level undergrad and upper-level graduate classes, upping the workload, the expectations, and the general ego quite a bit. The first is called “The Empire of the War on Terror,” and seems to be okay. The major problem is that the bulk of the grade (70%) is based on an independent research paper of approximately 30 pages. Yikes! I had the second session today, which was much more discussion, which I appreciated. Although we ended up mostly with people just giving un-informed opinions about the War on Terror and Iraq and “Empire vs. Hegemon vs. Super Power.” I wanted to kick a few folks, but mostly did all right. The second one, “’Delinquent’ Non-State Actors in International Relations,” I haven’t had yet, but got the syllabus for. Looks like a good 200-300 pages of reading per week, with a 3-page paper on the readings each week and a final 20-page paper. The readings look interesting, at least.

Here’s a fun bit about AUC/Egypt: nobody buys the book. Books here cost approximately what they’d cost in the States, maybe $10 less or so. Which makes the ridiculously expensive over here. (Because we all know how awful textbooks are to buy…) What do people do? Copy them. There are three hole-in-the-wall copy shops in the block around AUC’s Main Campus, each of which is more than happy to take the library book you’re supposed to purchase at LE 235 and photocopy and bind it for you for something like LE 50 (and that’s steep). Most professors simply give one copy of the readings for the semester to the copy shop, indicate how many students, and the students come pick them up and pay for them. How illegal does THAT sound??? Copyright laws have no sway over folks making a buck (or pound, as the case may be). The AUC bookstore seems to have caught on. If you try and return a purchased book they give it (and you) the Third Degree to find out if it’s been copied. And if it looks like you’ve cracked the cover once, they won’t take it back. I wonder how Joseph Nye, Michael Walzer, and all the other stalwarts of International Relations that I’ll be reading would feel if they knew this was going on…

Since I blustered quite a bit about Arabic today, here’s a few good words to work into daily conversation for you:
Salaam-u Alaykum: Peace be with you. (The all-purpose greeting for every situation…seriously, use it like “Hi!”)
Wa alaykum a-salaam­: And peace be with you. (The response.)
Izayyak!: How are you?
Shukran: Thank you
Afwan: You’re welcome.
Shwayya: a little bit (as in: Do you speak Arabic? Shwayya. Did you understand a word I just said? Shwayya.)
Mumkin: Possible. (meaning: it may happen next week. Check back in ten days.)
In-sha-Allah: God willing (used to qualify any future event. So that if it doesn’t happen (or you don’t get around to making it happen), then aha! God obviously didn’t will it.)
Ma-sha-Allah!: This is God’s will! (The all-purpose benediction, which you use whenever you compliment someone, their possessions, job successes, children, etc. Used because if you don’t then you’re obviously envious and putting the evil eye on that other poor chap. This is taken seriously here. Not kidding.)
Al-hamdu-lilah!: Thank God! (Used with something like Southern Baptist-frequency.)
Mashee?: Is that all okay? Does that work? (response: mashee.)
Imshee!: Get out of here!
Yalla!: Let’s go! (Made into a verb by a few of us brilliant Americans…ie, “Are we yalla-ing?”)
Ana taaliba fa’eera!: I’m a poor student!
Uskut!: Shut up!
Khalas.: Done. Finished. We’re through.

And until next time: Ma’salaama…(that’s goodbye….literally, Go with peace.)