Slowly, I am getting into this. LiveMocha is good, though I find tutorials on learning the script to be totally absent. I’ve sent away for some books on the script, because I’d like to know it before I get to Rabat. I’m not so concerned about Arabic itself, because I know I’ll be learning Darija. For those unfamiliar with these details, Darija is a variation of a dialect. The North African dialect is one of five major forms of colloquial Arabic.
To be truly literate, I must also learn some Classical written Arabic, but I’ve been told that French is used more than Arabic for business communications. My main reason to learn it would be to impress people, and I’m not sure that’s necessary for me to be successful in my work. Respect is more important than admiration.
So for now, I do the listening and speaking exercises and ignore the reading and writing exercises. I am using LiveMocha for French as well as Arabic.
So it’s a start. A toe in the water. shwiya b shwiya (little by little).
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as someone who knew arabic prior to coming here, the advantage of knowing script and classical arabic is negligible. sure, it allows you to read signs and books and things, but the peace corps language training won't teach it to you because the emphasis is on speaking with people, not writing (and many people you will work with won't know classical arabic or script anyway!). also, you might end up learning one of the berber dialects (there are 3 main ones) instead of darija. french is handy, but it can be really frustrating because if people know you speak french, they often refuse to speak anything else. i don't know any french, i tell everyone in my site that i don't know french, i insist that they speak to me in arabic....and my post office guy STILL only speaks to me in french after 6 months.
ReplyDeleteso yeah...morocco's got a lot of languages.
Thank you, Faye, that is helpful and confirms what I've heard. Yes, I assume I'll be learning either Darija or one of the Berber dialects when I get there. Still, as an artist, I find the written Arabic very very interesting. So since I cannot learn Berber or Darija from here, I think focusing on brushing up the French and learning Arabic script is about the best I can do for now.
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