From right to left

Among the incentives I considered before going to Kuwait, one of the most meaningful and enjoyable is learning Arabic. Few years ago I checked some Youtube videos trying to learn at least the alphabet, but I abandoned it quickly. Now I am taking seriously this language, which I hope I can master some day and I could add to the list. 

These days I am meeting Mohammad, a local friend, twice a week for a language exchange, Spanish-Arabic. Besides this, I study on my own the materials he gives me when I have some time. I also started to use an phone app called Madinah Arabic during the trips from my apartment to the school, and sometimes I watched “Árabe Fácil”. an Arabic course in Spanish in Youtube. In order to complement my learning, I try to practice whatever I can with the school staff, specially, of course, with the teachers in the Arabic department. Here there is a very kind man who tries to motivate me every time he sees me and he gave me a book which Primary students use. It is very good for getting used with the alphabet indeed.

 

 

At the moment, according what I studied already, I see it easier than Chinese, although the grammar is much more complicated, in a level even more complex than the Spanish one. The alphabet, at fist it looks dizzying, but it is a matter of getting familiar and practicing. It a very phonetic language and it is relatively easy linking each sound to a concrete letter. About the pronunciation, there are just six sounds I have never seen in any other language and, except this letter,  ع, I can say the rest without troubles.

 

The Arabic Alphabet

Let’s see how I can progress. The point is that, even if for me it looks easier than Chinese, the chances for practicing Arabic are not so much since the language I use the most in my work is English. In the streets, almost everything is written in Arabic and English, and people who work in shops speak this language very well, therefore there is no such a urgency to learn the local language as it happened in China. Anyway, I keep constant in one of my main goals in this new life experience.

  وَداعاً

(wada'an)