Fellows' Reflections: Angela Pham

I met Sayeda while sitting on a bench overlooking the Mediterranean. It was a Tuesday, the last day of my weekly long weekend, and I had spent the morning cleaning and grocery shopping at the nearby farmer’s market. The day was perfect; I had recently started teaching, the summer heat and humidity had subsided, and a cool sea breeze encouraged loungers and working people alike to slow down in the area overlooking Marsa beach, called the corniche. I was eating fresh figs when a woman passing by asked if she could sit on the bench next to me. We quickly started a conversation and she patiently worked with my halting Arabic to communicate. Within thirty minutes, I had a tutor to teach me Tunisian Arabic.

A week later, I’d had my first language lesson with her and was stopping by to drop off the Vicks VapoRub she had loaned me for my cold. I expected to hand it over and leave, but she of course she asked if I would stay for tea. It was mid-afternoon, and I was about to experience a new layer of Tunisian daily rhythm and hospitality. She ushered me in, sat me on the couch, and rustled in the kitchen. She emerged soon, but empty handed. Maybe I had misunderstood about the tea? She spoke a stream of Arabic, of which I understood perhaps 50%, and I came to understand that I was supposed to lay down and rest a little before tea. She lay down on the couch adjacent to me and then looked up to check if I was laying down. I was leaning against the cushions and she immediately urged me to get horizontal. I slid further down the cushion, only to have her prod me again. Finally I laid down properly, blanket and all, and started drifting off to sleep. The call to prayer woke us both up twenty minutes later, and then she got up, prayed, and said something about tea again. The next thing I knew, she was standing by the door with her purse, looking at me expectantly. What in the world are we doing? I wondered, and followed her out the door.

The Tunisian accent combined with my out-of-practice Arabic brain makes situations like this fairly frequent, but when we ended up in a nearby park with two tea glasses, a thermos of tea, lemon slices, and a Tupperware of cookies, I finally understood what she meant by na3ml jo, which I mentally translated as “make an atmosphere,” in the jneena (something I would normally call hadiqa, or “park”). The surprise picnic with my new language tutor was a sweet experience that epitomized several of the things I fell in love with quickly upon arriving in the suburban beach town of La Marsa, Tunisia.

Fellows' Reflections: Eliza Davis

“Guys, I’ve learned something incredibly important.” We’re three women wedged in the back of a taxi. It’s 9:45am and we’re on our way to work. “Well,” I amend, “It’s not that important, but it’s my new favorite thing in Arabic.” My coworkers are both studying the language, and swapping new phrases is always a fun carpool conversation. “Do you guys know the names of the fingers in Arabic?” Bryn laughs, but Jessie, the other MENAR fellow, replies with an inquisitive, “No?”

“These two,” I say, motioning to my ring and pinky finger, “are called hunsar and bunsar. Hunsar and bunsar! How amazing is that?”

Jessie laughs. “Are you serious?”

“Yes! Hunsar and bunsar.”

Bryn chimes in. “And wasta,” indicating her middle finger, “sbabe,” for the pointer, and “ib7am,” for the thumb.

At this point, the taxi driver, who apart from “good morning” has only heard us speak English, chuckles as well. “Where are you from?” He asks, in Arabic. He turns out to have a fixed meter and tries to charge us twice the normal cab fare. We don’t pay.

Living with Jordanians and speaking only Arabic at home, I’ve begun to explore the hidden quirks of the language. In the same conversation when I discovered the lovely hunsar and bunsar, I also learned that the area between your ankle and knee in Arabic is called “bta2,” meaning duck. I was sitting in the living room with my roommate and started to laugh. “Well, what’s it called in English?” he asked. I thought about it for a second, then started to laugh even harder. “Calf!”

Part of the progress has definitely come from Mishka, the six-month old kitten, whom I adopted in October and who only speaks Arabic (or at least I only speak Arabic with her). I very quickly learned the word “3ad” meaning to bite, but more importantly the phrase “3ad 3ad,” which is similar to nibbling or intensive light biting—a constant phenomenon in my life with Mishka. From there, I’ve discovered one of my favorite features of Jordanian Arabic: two syllable repetitive phrases to denote a lightened or more familiar version of the original word: “tuk tuk” is cracking your back; “ms7 s7” is to be properly awake. I’ve also learned and now often utter the phrase “amawet omek,” which means “I’ll kill your mom,” or literally “I will cause your mother’s death.” The use of “omek” (your mother) to strengthen the meaning of a verb can be used in a negative sense (as for Mishka when she misbehaves) or a positive sense, such as “b7eb omek,”—“I love your mother,” as way to show that you really love the other person, not that a Stacey’s Mom situation is going on.

I’m sure there are so many other fun features of Jordanian Arabic that I have yet to come across, and many more mistakes that will be made before I get a handle on half of them. I’m looking forward to all of it.

Fellows' Reflections: Laura Humes

Essential Arabic Phrases from Om El Donia (Alexandria)

Arabic is one of the top five most common languages, with many dialects spoken throughout the globe. Among these, Egyptian Arabic is the unofficial lingua franca of the Arab world.

Despite walking into my year as a MENAR Fellow in Egypt with what could be described as a nearly impenetrable language barrier, I dedicated myself to absorbing as much as I could of Egyptian Arabic.

As I picked up new techniques in teaching language fluency and literacy in my role as a classroom teacher, I also saw myself undergoing a parallel journey of language acquisition.

Learning Arabic has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve made this year. I owe what I know in large part to my sharp-witted tutor, and also to friends and colleagues, as well as a multitude of endlessly patient and good-humored neighbors, shopkeepers, street vendors, and passersby who all played the role of circumstantial conversation partners.

Throughout this journey, I’ve found a new appreciation for the great meaning carried by minute details. I’ve found myself listening more closely and growing closer to people around me in the process.

Often the smallest details convey the most significant meaning. I recently made the mistake of telling someone, “Ana bakelem araby micaserat,” instead of “Ana bakelem araby micasr,” and just that one single mistakenly added syllable changed the meaning from, “I speak broken Arabic” to “I speak Arabic nuts.”

While I do sound admittedly nuts speaking Arabic, I’ve learned that letting go of perfection and my inhibitions has been as essential to learning the language as it has been to embracing life here in Egypt.

Communication promotes understanding. A little has gone a long way towards genuine moments of human connection. I’ve come to believe more than ever that intentional communication is one of the most sincere forms of care. It demonstrates a willingness to enter into new situations with curiosity, humility, and commitment to meet people on their level. Learning Arabic has opened many doors—sometimes literal ones—I’ve been invited into more people’s homes than I ever could have imagined.

Language plays a significant role in shaping people’s lived realities, and can say so much about a culture. After nearly a year of trials, tribulations, and triumphs with the Arabic language, I wrote this post to give some insight into a few of my favorite Egyptian Arabic phrases that I feel give unique insight into Egyptian culture.

Tae’shab shay!
Come, drink tea!
You might hear this condensed version of the phrase “ta3ala eshrab shay” from a number of different people. [Note: "3" is often used in writing to denote the Arabic letter "ain," which does not have an equivalent in English.] The bawab on your street. The neighbor you pass in the stairwell. The person you just asked for directions. Regardless of whether they actually have any tea or not, the important part is that they thought to invite you.

Ma3lesh
That’s a pity
There’s no direct translation in English for ma3lesh, but the meaning becomes clear when you hear it in use. You spilled coffee on your shirt? Ma3lesh. Car broke down in traffic? Ma3lesh. Don’t have any change? Ma3lesh. It’s an incredibly versatile phrase that acts as the verbal band-aid on all sorts of day-to-day wounds.

Kousa
Influence
A story goes that generations ago when farmers wanted to sell their produce, they had to wait in long lines under the sweltering sun to have it weighed by distributors. Farmers who grew kousa, or zucchini, were allowed to cut to the front of the line because zucchini withers quickly in the sun. Today, somebody with kousa is the kind of person who is always at the front of the line, a person with a lot of influence.

Khally
Keep it
It would not be uncommon for a street vendor to make your foul [fava bean] sandwich and then refuse to take any money, replying “khally,” which comes from the word for “keep” but means something more like, “no need to pay.” It is a gesture of goodwill that essentially means, “this one’s on the house.” When someone says this (after paying the right amount, of course) the appropriate reply is, “robena ykhaleek,” or “may God keep you.”

Sabah al kher
Good morning
When you say good morning in Egypt, it is always more than just good morning. It is the "morning of blessings." Alternatively, if whoever you are talking to is really going above and beyond, it could also be the morning of any number of flowers (sabah al fol… sabah al yasmine… sabah al ward…) Sometimes the exchange goes long enough until you’ve named the whole garden. Mornings in Egypt give new meaning to the phrase, “Wake up and smell the roses.”

Sousa
Troublemaker
Somebody who is sousa is a bit too clever for their own good, and uses it to cause all kinds of trouble. If you are also a primary teacher, like me, you definitely know exactly what I’m talking about.

Eshta
Cool
The key to many of Egypt’s most delicious desserts is cream, or eshta. It makes sense, then, that if we agree that something is cool we’d also say it’s eshta.

Minowar
You light up the world
Egyptians aren’t afraid to let you know that you brighten their day. More than that, you’ve just brightened up the whole world if you hear someone tell you minowar. It’s no wonder that Egypt has among the highest number of sunny days in the world.