مع السلامة يا درس العربية

original

I spoke my first Arabic words in a room with a view of the Dome of the Rock. Our class was casual--a quirky supplement to a summer in Jerusalem--but the language made an unforgettable first impression. I remember pronouncing the letters of the alphabet slowly and in sequence, exaggerating the خ and stuttering over the غ. At that point I could not have fathomed that choosing to take this class seriously would change the direction of my future. I could not have imagined the way I would spend hundreds and maybe thousands of hours poring over the spidery script, the way I would so easily leave my lifelong dream of a medical career to compose sentences and paragraphs, to memorize verb forms and decline participles. But maybe my subconscious knew more than it let on.

After diving into an intensive first semester with the language--and long before any thought of changing my major crossed my mind--I wrote, "Arabic has catalyzed my intellectual expansion for the first time in years." I detailed my ecstasy at discovering I could read, my ongoing frustration with speaking, and the pieces of artwork (!) I made to describe my feelings. And throughout my two-and-a-half-year struggle to read, write, speak, and listen, this blog assumed its true form. It is, passionately, a love letter to the Arabic language. Nearly a full twenty percent of my five hundred and eighty-six posts mention Arabic, chronicling my frustrations, challenges, successes, and failures. This is why I was so sad this morning after walking into the last Arabic class in which I will participate for eighteen months. We translated an article from al-Jazeera, reviewed the حال construction, ate my goodbye donuts, and then I left the JKB, beginning to understand just how much I will miss all of this. "Because Arabic is my first second language, my oldest child. And I love her more fiercely than I can explain."

"Well, I hope you come back to Arabic after your mission. You're really good at it."
--Dil Parkinson