Egyptian Colloquial Arabic

It is been a month now that I have taken a break from my Arabic class and it looks like the break will extend to another month since there are no classes happening for Level 3-not enough students to hold the class. I am not complaining -I need time to digest all the grammar.

Arabic is similar to French in the sense that it is an inflected language. The words change to reflect the person, number and gender. For example, the verbs are marked for person-first, second and third. But that is not enough; the verbs also change to reflect gender and number. Whew! So many things to take care of! Adjectives follow the nouns that they qualify-for number and gender! And there is more inflection but I am not getting into it here.

But the thing that has really got me in a tizzy is the “plurals”. In Arabic, the nouns do not only have a plural, they also have a dual, indicating two of the noun. For example a month is “shahr”, two months is “shahren” and three and above months is “shuhr”. But the catch is that for number beyond 10, the noun is again referred to in the singular- i.e. 12 months would again be "hadashar shahr. "

And the pronunciation is another thing-some words require you to make a gargling sound-for example work, which is transliterated as “shughl”. Apple in Arabic is “tuffaha” and the “h” is pronounced as if you are trying to blow out a candle! The letter “q” if it appears in the beginning of the word is silent; if it appears elsewhere in the word, then it is pronounced as a “k”. And then of course, there is the “Ain” letter, which has no equivalent in English-you know you have pronounced it correctly in a word when it comes out sounding as if you are choking!

There are times when I am trying to speak in Arabic and I land up using the French equivalents; I guess since both are “foreign” languages for me, some overlapping is bound to happen!