Arabic Class is Kicking My Ass

Tuesday, February 23

Arabic class is really kicking my ass, if you must know how I’m currently doing. 

We went over the homework my professor had assigned us before she put us into breakout rooms to do some group work. Have I mentioned how much I hate group work? I don’t mind collaborating with people, but I simultaneously hate having to rely on other people to do their part. Plus, it’s harder to do group work over Zoom. It’s so awkward. 

After presenting the group work, we did an auditory exercise before my professor had us read out loud. And of course I was the one she picked to read first and of course the first sentence was the longest one out of the entire paragraph. I could feel the heat crawling up my neck to my ears and cheeks as I tripped over the words. It truly is embarrassing. I feel like I need to go back to kindergarten to learn how to read again. 

And then to top off a not-so-great class, my professor announced that we would be having our first quiz of the semester next Tuesday, so next week’s blog post will be full of pain, I’m sure. 

No homework was assigned, except to study for the upcoming quiz. Yippee.

Thursday, February 25

We started a new lesson today. There’s so much new vocab, and it’s really random, too. My professor went over how to pronounce the new words and mentioned if there was anything else we should now associated with certain words. Next, we moved onto an oral exercise with the new vocab, but I personally have to let things soak in: I can’t jump into directly using the new words without looking stupid. 

Lastly, we went over pronouns in the Arabic language. And let me tell you, if I didn’t have such a good grasp of English grammar, I think I’d be drowning even more. We went over personal pronouns (i.e. I, you, she, they, etc.) extensively. It’s kind of fun seeing how things translate over. When it comes to possessive pronouns (i.e. my, hers, his, etc.) and objective pronouns (i.e. me, him, us, etc.) in Arabic, the pronouns are attached to the end of the word. For instance, if I wanted to say “my mother,” the ending that is equivalent to “my” would be added to the end of “mother.” In Arabic, it looks like this: والدتي [waldti]. For objective pronouns, the pronoun is simply tacked onto the end of the verb. 

My professor ended class by assigning some homework and telling us to study for the quiz that’s on Tuesday. Next week’s #ArabicWithAlex should be quite interesting. 

Oh! And lastly! My textbook finally came in! I found a bootleg version of the textbook online, but the quality is horrible and pages were missing, so I bought a used textbook online, and it came in! It’s in really nice condition, too.

Arabic Word of the Week

night / layl / ليل