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Thursday, December 22, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
learning arabic - 06:51 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
my friend, ameena, has been teaching me arabic as i teach her some english (actually, her english isn't too bad, except that she took classes about twenty years ago & has forgotten a lot of it). ameena bought me a couple of children's books with which to start.
i've been learning some of the arabic alphabet first & then learning some words to go along with it. i've also been practising writing a couple of those words. the two words so far are horse & sheep.
it's been so much fun doing this with ameena. certain arabic sounds are like thing else we use in english, so my efforts at trying to replicate them with my english speaking throat & mouth have been quite amusing. ameena & i have found ourselves laughing quite a bit. we also get a bit of a laugh when some of the words in arabic sound like other words in english & are almost appropriate, such as "dick" for "husband". i'm not absolutely certain that's exactly the meaning, but it definitely meant something close to that or at least related to the male. we both found that one was quite amusing. 
ameena says my arabic writing is very good & that it would normally take a couple of months to get to that standard. i'm quite pleased. as well as being mentally stimulating learning arabic & helping ameena to refine her english, it's nice to be able to talk & learn about other things & have some good company.
g.ood luck with it. i have enough toruble with english...as you've seen.
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G.ood on ya Sheila!
Close with the words too, here's the official phonetic way of saying them and their meening:
DEEK (instead of dick) is a COCKerel!
See how ironically close it is?
Husband by the way is "Zawj", my husband is "Zawjy", your husband is "Zawjuky"
G.ood luck with the Arabic.