Synaptic Plasticity: Learning Arabic (Clumsily)

One of the things that I am most embarrassed about - and, let's face it, there are many of them - is that I don't speak a foreign language. And this is even more hard to believe when you factor in that I created an international educational network. I suppose there are lots of "reasons" why I don't, ranging from the fact that I grew up in the intellectual wilderness of southern Indiana (and learning another language or travelling overseas was considered to be such an east coast thing) or that in high school I took two years of Latin, a year of French and a year of Spanish (which meant that my guidance counselor was absolutely inept or that my parents had already completed checked out of active parenting [and, to be fair, there were three other little ones behind me to take up their time]) or that Franklin College, where I did my undergraduate, was such a lame school that it didn't require foreign language. That said, in the end it's entirely my fault for not knowing another language, and it's something I seriously regret. For graduate school my two languages were French and Russian, and I did receive official credit for both (which should be explored in depth on shows that specialize on inexplicable mysteries such as Easter Island or the chupacabra [I can see my friend Steve Wehmeyer commenting upon it now). I think for French I read a book called Reading French in the Arts and Sciences and it gave me enough foundation to pass the Princeton exam in French, and I took a year of Russian and the requirement was waived. Over the last several years as I've done a lot of travelling I've been thinking about forcing myself to learn one, but the Global Module network covers dozens of countries so I could always make the argument to myself, which I found eminently believable, that it would be impossible to choose one language. However, even then I began to think that Arabic would be the best choice, mainly because my dream from the very beginning was to establish a network based in the Middle East (to allow American students to actually talk to Arabic students). Plus, it's a part of the world that I've come to love, and it is a fascinating (if brutal to learn) language. Now, my great friend Cyndi Brandenburg would opine that one of the best ways to fight off the mental decline that age brings - and facilitate synaptic plasticity or something like that - is to learn a foreign language. All of this is prologue to my decision to, finally, learn Arabic. Ironically, one of the things that is making this possible is my decision to step down as Assistant Dean for Global Engagement, which, while reducing my travel, is also freeing up time for projects such as this. I used the last third of my professional development funds (the other two-thirds going for books for my epics project) to buy the complete Arabic set from Rosetta Stone. I'm about two months into the adventure, which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit (even if it makes my head hurt and just re-enforces what a dolt I am). I envy folk like my friend Wes Donehower who have a natural facility with languages; I simply don't. I can usually begin to grunt my way through reading another language, but hearing and speaking it are more of a challenge (although I suspect that's true of most folks). I'm enjoying the Rosetta Stone experience, which features a series of CDs featuring total immersion - by this I mean that at no point is someone in English saying something like "and now we're going to talk about pronouns." Instead, it takes a bit of detective work, wherein you might find yourself thinking, "hmmm, I think this might be about pronouns." The goal is to get you to learn a foreign language like you learned English - by listening to it being spoken and associating new words with images (as compared to translating the Arabic word into English in your mind and then continuing). One of the biggest challenges is, not surprisingly, the Arabic script. Not only is it completely different, but it is written right to left. Plus it has these fascinating/maddening little peculiarities like the vowels appearing as signs above or below the consonents. All Arabic consonents naturally have a long a, but if there is a little dash above the consonent the long a becomes a short a, and a little dash below the consonent turns the long a into an i, and a little loop above the consonent turns the long a into a u. And, actually, I find this wrinkle really cool, although in regular Arabic they then turn around and don't include the marks, assuming that you already recognize the word. So, a real challenge, but I actually like reading and writing the script very much. Another interesting/agonizing wrinkle is that there are a couple different ways to create plurals, and one of them is internal. So, you'd replace a short a in the middle of a word with a long a, and this makes it plural. Sometimes this is really simple. For example, bintu (one girl) becomes banaatu (many girls). Other times, however, the difference is much more subtle: sayaaratu (car) becomes sayaaraatu (many cars). When it is written it's much more obvious because the long a stands alone and the t is rendered differently, but hearing and especially saying the difference is a lot tougher (at least now). Oh, and there's also a form where the plural relates to just two people - so two girls would be bintaani - but that looks different and it's easier to figure out. I'm easily amused so I'll make these little discoveries and be quite pleased with myself, and bore all my friends by sharing the stories. Last week I learned six new words for colors, all of which started with an a (which is sometimes dropped and sometimes stays depending upon what word it is linked with), which had me frustrated. And then I realized that asfaru (yellow) contained the foundation consonents s-f-r that you could see leading to saffron, which was introduced to Europe by the Arabic word - or that azraku (blue) probably related to azure. So, baby steps. I've been swapping countless emails with my friend Trish who is going to be spending the next year on a Fulbright at the University of Jordan, and who is also embarking on the Rosetta Stone Arabic experience. This allows us to trade horror stories. I have a slight lead on her now, but she'll be passing me by in a blink of an eye, not only because she's twice as smart as me, but also because she knows Swahili and they share a lot of similarities. I don't know if my brain is actually working any better, but I am enjoying the challenge.