Arabic the Hard Way

VERSUS

It's easy. Just pretend you're swallowing the base of your tongue. Then let out a strangled cry. That's 'ain, one of the handful of letters in the Arabic alphabet which don't exist in English.

I read this advice in a text book years after acquiring colloquial Sudanese Arabic by rough and ready means. With neither a teacher nor the structure of an ordered syllabus to guide me, I attained a basic fluency in the language - by pestering people.

A most unscientific approach to language acquisition, it was certainly effective. Life in a foreign country is hugely enriched if you have a working knowledge of the language.

Two factors in Sudan helped me achieve a high degree of success. I had lots of spare time. But most importantly, I was in the perfect place to become a linguistic sponge. For four years working as an English teacher, I lived in small Sudanese communities surrounded 24 hours a day by Arabic speakers.

There was only one book on colloquial Sudanese Arabic available which I only glanced at after my first year in the country. My habit from the outset, was to carry a small notebook in the

breast pocket of my shirt wherever I went.

Sitting in the market, lounging as a guest in someone's house or perched on top of a desert lorry, I would produce this book on hearing any unfamiliar word or phrase. My victims were usually happy to repeat what they'd said and spell it out to me with a definition in English.

It took time to build up the ability to conjugate verbs and embark upon the heady business of constructing sentences! But I always had the advantage of hearing exact models of pronunciation from my Sudanese friends and colleagues. I didn't have to negotiate around the extra layer of language in text books which trys to explain at second hand, how things should be said. There was no tongue swallowing for me.

The alluring but difficult appearance of Arabic script was a further spur to my enthusiasm, rather than a hindrance.

One Christmas Day, in the tiny village of Ed-Debba on the Nile, I whiled away the hours copying out the letters of the Arabic alphabet and their equivalent English sounds, from a colleague's text book.

This opened a whole new avenue of activity. If I'd been in danger of driving some people mad by my constant badgering over the meaning of words and phrases, I undoubtedly drove others to distraction, once I started testing out my ability to read shop signs, bus tickets and newspaper headlines.

Again it paid off. Practical trial and error rather than the dry study of books allowed me to grasp the language with a constant focus on the application in real situations, of what I was trying to learn.

This was always instructive. It was frequently comic. The day I discovered the Arabic for fingernail 'daffara', I was keen for an opportunity to try it out. The chance came soon after in the village restaurant where I ate.

One of the locals arrived and greeted those of us who were sitting inside eating bowls of fuul beans. He inadvertently dropped a coin on the ground but no matter how hard he tried, couldn't prise it off the floor. With sympathetic intonation, I asked in my best Arabic if he had no, "daffara", (finger nails), with which to lever the coin up. This statement produced a ripple of mirth around me which I hadn't been expecting. Instead of finger nails, I'd asked if he had no 'naddara' - the Arabic for spectacles.

Gathering new words soon became like stamp collecting. I feverishly pursued every new lead. There was an endless supply of fresh specimens to add to my bulging notebooks. Many expressions were so colloquial, I could find no equivalent in standard Arabic dictionaries.

Sudanese Arabic has a word, 'zeefa', for the smell of sand after rain. Remarkable, in a country whose north can go years without experiencing any rain at all.

The Shaigi people who live on the Nile some 200 miles north of Khartoum, are used to drinking tea in times of sugar shortage. But this doesn't mean they drink their tea bitter. Instead they hold a date inside the mouth over which the tea washes as it's swallowed. The date is supposed to act as a sweetener. This practice of drinking 'shai banjoogli' undoubtedly predates the appearance of granular sugar in Sudan.

When I moved to the extreme north to teach in a new school in Nubia, I was delighted to hear that Arabic was the second and not the first language in the region. In fact Nubian, which crosses over into Upper Egypt, is a pre-Islamic language. And in northern Sudan it has at least three variants.

There is fierce debate as to whether 'rotana', as it's called in Arabic, is a fully-fledged langauge or simply a dialect. It seems that 'rotana' once had its own script and was a literary as well as a spoken language.

It's interesting to note the thrust of Islam in Sudan. The Nubians were the last group in the north to convert to the religion of the incoming Arabs. They in turn chose the Arabic word 'rotana', meaning 'gibberish', to describe the tongue of the Nubians.

Today Nubian is dying out. It's use in school classrooms is discouraged and younger people are unwittingly mixing the native speech of their forefathers with Arabic vocabulary.

But to me, the prospect of living amongst Nubian speakers was just as exciting as the experience of being in Sudan. It was clearly time to grab my notebook and start pestering my new hosts.

A Well and a Bucket

Sudan Studies, Number 6 (June 1989)

Despite a year in the north already under my belt, my 'Sudan skills' were still very poor in some areas. A case in point was my laborious technique for drawing water out of the well in the grounds of Merowe mosque. Faced with the 'bakra', a contraption made out of welded iron spars which resembled a large skeletal cotton reel fixed over the mouth of the well, I would attach the handle of my bucket to the rope and feed it centimetre by centimetre into the black hole.

The mosque well was a focal point for small children who were sent to get water. These children would usually transfer their water into my bucket, totally ignoring my protestations; sometimes I would reach the well alone and the children would catch me in the middle of my clumsy pantomime. On these occasions the young water carriers could sit back and enjoy the spectacle and I could practise my Arabic on them, while coaxing my prize out of the abyss.

An embarrassing incident at the well forced me to learn the Arabic word, 'jardal' which means bucket. I had for several weeks been aware of the gulf in style which existed between my timid approach to the art of drawing water and the bold, all or nothing method of the local infants. the boys and girls of Merowe would throw the bucket and rope into the gaping maw of the well, letting the take-up reel spin freely as the rope was paid out. At the last moment a childish hand was applied to the axle in the manner of a brake, slowing the hurtling bucket to a stop just before it crashed into the water.

Inevitably, the day came when I felt irresponsible enough to try this flamboyant technique for myself. My bucket was already in free-fall when a small boy appeared on the scene in time to catch the finalé. Judging that the bucket was near its destination, I grabbed the metal axle intending to stop its movement. I was unprepared for the searing heat of the metal bar which was exposed to sunlight all day long and leapt back from the well head as if I'd received a jolt of electricity.

I could feel the critical eyes of the boy drilling into my back as I went up to the slack rope and began rewinding. It was with little surprise and supreme embarrassment that I reached the end of the rope to find nothing more than the bucket's handle attached there. The boy rather pointlessly tried to comfort me with the words, "ta'al bukra" (come back tomorrow).

My mortification was only complete when the shopkeeper, who later taught me the word 'jardal', followed me down the row of shops to listen in on my transaction with another merchant, so anxious was he that I got my pronunciation correct when I bought my replacement.

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