Uphill Arabic
We have been spending our Saturday mornings learning Arabic this fall. Why? Because it's a challenge, it's spoken in a part of the world we're interested in and have enjoyed visiting, and it's not inconceivable that the we could find our careers leading us to the growing financial markets in the gulf. I started to learn Egyptian Arabic when I was posted to the Sinai, but since this course is teaching modern standard Arabic, I find I'm tripping over what I learned before as often as I'm helped by it.
Our professor is a very capable instructor, who teaches at Rutgers University as well as our NYU Continuing Studies course. He's not as fierce as he looks in this picture; in fact, he can be very funny. But he's a taskmaster too, and since we wanted a challenge we signed up for the intensive course, which is filled with very motivated people: many are taking it for career reasons, there's an archaeologist, and at least one person who married a native Arabic speaker. In other words, they make us feel like dilettantes, and we're struggling to keep our heads above water. Well, you know what they say about the brain: use it or lose it.
posted 11.11.07
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