Meandering of the majuscule

Puzzle of character.

Alas I am soaking in what is my Arabic education. Dramatically suppressing the blogophilic tendencies I had developed. We study in the evening for hours, pouring over textbooks, dictionaries and notes. Classes are obviously intensive, but the studying is the all-absorbing activity of the day. There is a profound sense of commitment and altruistic streak in the greater endeavor, which spurs our learning.

We finshed the alphabet a while ago, and we can read, "sounding" words out. We accomplished basic conversational material the first week too, including lots of simple and useful vocabulary. We spent a day with numbers, which are fairly self-explanatory, with the exception of wide colloquial variations, which we agreed we're destined to stumble over someday. Bargaining, buying and negotiating are difficult when one is mispronouncing numbers, or in the wrong dialect. The students of my group all (as in any setting) bear unqiue language education experience, which only serves to be amplified in such a small class with a language generally deemed difficult. But the program's flexibilty and encouragement of open discourse and involvement in our own educations mollifies these differences. Our greatest contention resides in the classic debate of, "do we present new material in context, then explain, or do we provide the charts and frameworks, then distribute contextualized examples of it?" Fortunately, most of us have experienced both, and can appreciate their nuances. But in a program of highly motivated individuals unrestrained in advocating for themselves, the aegis of learning styles is paramount.

Arabic is a language which possesses a forboding threshhold in the very beginning. Beginning is the hardest. Between the alphabet and a very unnatural series of sounds for English speakers, Arabic is a serious challenge, but once the highly logical rules of the language are hard-wired, learning accelerates at an unfathomable velocity. Unlike English, which our (native Arabic speaking) teachers have been explaining lately, as English seems easy initially..."I went, you went, he went, we went..." in its deceiving simplicity in the beginning. However, the simplicity is seized in English's illogical complexity, which our teachers emphasize inhibit so many from grasping the upper levels of our language. There is a critical tier of comprehension most cannot conquer in English, unlike Arabic, whose groundwork is absolute.

That said, I thoroughly enjoy learning Arabic. Could it be hell for some people? Sure. But I have always found myself inexplicably attracted to the intimidatingly multifarious, which I frequently find easier than the lucid and simple. Math isn't my strongest discipline, but I consistently find more convuluted and multifacted problems easier than simple, one-step ones. If you're hyper-analytical, meticulous and over-think (in the worst sense at times) things, you very well might adore Arabic.