Learning Arabic

Friday, September 16, 2016


One of my life goals is to be proficient in Arabic by the time I'm on my death bed, but preferably within the next several years. I have a microscopic vocabulary and listen to music and poems in Arabic to help me out since I'm not really interested in a formal education at the moment and don't mind just working on Omani Arabic and slang. Lucky for me, my boyfriend is a Muskateer (lmao I hate that, but couldn't help myself) so I pester him multiple hours a day with "how do you say *** Arabic" and "what is *** in Arabic". So I have my personal tutor. 😉

So don't ask why, but yesterday we were talking about toilets and 💩.. I probably shouldn't be admitting that since he is shy, but it's me you know. So anyways, I was trying to do the Arabic "hahaha" as a response (ex. Mexico has "jajajaj" or Brazil has "kkkkk"). I'm still trying to learn the alphabet, but on the phone keyboard it's much easier because you just press around until you get it.
What I mean by this is Arabic is like cursive, it's connected. The letters will change shape and form depending on the letters that do or don't surround it. You'll see what I'm talking about a few paragraphs down.

 So I tried هرره which actually cracked him up because it turns out it's slang for shit? (& apparently cat too.) I'm not sure I typed it properly now because used online Arabic keyboard and it's hard to see the letters properly. But it was my perfect, unintentional reply. 🙀💩

This: ههههههه
Is actually their hahaha, or in Latin alphabet they'll do "hhhhh." By me just clicking around the keyboard, only knowing the shape of the word, you would see why I would get the initial (vulgar) "هرره" confused with (the appropriate) "ههههه". You want to know why even more?? Because ههههه is actually just one letter (multiple times of course). ONE LETTER. . . . . I DARE you to tell me it doesn't look like three different letters.

So this goes back to my earlier point on how they change form.
Same letter:  ه
And different form depending if they are in beginning, middle, end, or its position with another letter: ههه



A few days before that. he was teaching me a phrase I asked for.. ..  something along the lines of:
"I was calling for you earlier."
& it goes something like: "ana knt anadeek qabl shueye"
but I kept saying: "ana knt anadeek KALB shueye"

We were on the phone and I am a visual learner so I had a hard time grasping it (I got it down once we were texting) THE POINT IS, kalb in Arabic means dog. And calling someone a dog is definitely insulting. And he was making fun of me saying I offended him. Of course he was joking because given it's context, kalb wouldn't make it through as an insult. .. . . unless of course my bad grammar bad accent combination made it seem as if I was saying "I called you a dog earlier" or "I called you dog".

I also have a few words that I can confuse with each other and it could be very dangerous. 😛 I'm probably cracking up more than anyone reading this every will, but hope anyone learning a new language gets it.

In conclusion learning a new language is dangerous 😜.

You Might Also Like

0 comments