We’re in the Big Leagues Now
Tuesday, February 9
We officially started our new textbook this week… and I don’t have the textbook yet (oops). I scoured the internet the week before classes began, looking for PDFs of my textbooks since it would have been somewhere in the $500-range to rent all of my textbooks for the semester. I had found a PDF of my Arabic textbook, but it wasn’t in great quality and some pages were missing. Finally, I ordered a used textbook earlier this week, and I’m hoping it gets here soon.
It’s a little nerve-racking starting this new textbook. We as a class know our letters, and so now we’re on to the big leagues of grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. During our first day in the new textbook—which is aptly titled Al-Kitaab [The Book]—my professor went over the new vocabulary and pronouns. It was a more oral-based class, which makes me really uncomfortable. My reading skills are the worst among the students in my class, and I always turn tomato-red when I have to read aloud during class. I know it’s something I need to work on, but I don’t want to put the work in, even though I should.
Towards the end of class, we were sent into breakout rooms, and another student and I were supposed to ask each other questions in Arabic before writing a paragraph about each other. It went as smoothly as you think it did, and then class mercifully ended.
Thursday, February 11
Class was actually good on this day. Yes, it was somewhat boring as we were learning a grammar concept, but I always enjoy it when professors lecture and I can sit back and take notes instead of having to read anything.
The grammar concept we went over was the Nisba Adjective, where adjectives are taken from a noun. In Arabic, this is seen most with nationalities (France; French) or origins of place and professions. In the words we looked at, the ending of the word was changed and a new suffix was added to indicate if it was masculine or feminine, since Arabic is a gendered language. For example, in Arabic, the noun Lebanon looks like this: لبنان. However, if I want to describe a man as being from Lebanon, the masculine form of Lebanese would look like this: لبنانيّ. And if I wanted to describe a Lebanese women (such as my professor), I would use this feminine form: لبنانيّة. It’s definitely a mind workout, but I enjoy it.
We spent the rest of class in breakout rooms working on describing some pictures. I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself! The homework assigned was minimal, and I had it completed and turned in before dinnertime. Now I just need to look at my vocab daily and read the chapter for next week’s lesson.
Arabic Word of the Week
nationality / jinsia / جنسية