The Arabic language is considered one of the hardest languages in the world to learn and unless you’re going to an Arabic-speaking country, so what’s the point of learning it? And I’m not referring to those who know Arabic, but only how to read it, from reading the Qur’an because the Arabic in the Qur’an is very different than written Arabic today, and they have also not learned how to speak it. And for me, speaking Arabic has been the hardest part. I haven’t struggled a lot with reading or writing the letters – that’s the easy part for me, but speaking it and especially listening to people speaking it is the biggest challenge for me.
People say that Fush’a is written exactly as it’s pronounced but for beginners, I would like to call bullshit on that. There are so many letters that are pronounced so similar but the only difference is whether you make a “kha or ha” sound or a “aein or ghraein” sound where all those three letters are written the same except some have a dot on the bottom or top or no dot. Here they are written in Arabic: “kha” خ vs. ح “ha” and the “aein” ع vs. غ “ghraein.” And it may seem easier now when it’s laid out like this, but when you’re doing a listening activity in class and have to write down in Arabic what your professor is saying, it’s actually really difficult.
Yet that shouldn’t turn you away from learning Arabic. Despite how difficult and sometimes frustrating learning the language can be, I still love every minute of it. So here are a couple reasons why you should learn Arabic:
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It’s the 5th most spoken language in the world with around 420 million speakers (including non-native speakers) and 26 countries that have it as their official language. That’s huge! It may not do you a lot of use if you plan on staying in America or traveling to parts of Europe, but if you plan on going anywhere in the Middle East or North Africa, being able to speak Arabic is incredibly helpful.
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It’s a beautifully written language. The Arabic alphabet is already beautiful enough on it’s own, but when the letters are combined together to form words, it’s even more beautiful. And don’t even get me started on Arabic calligraphy which is something from another dimension. It’s also incredibly fun to write Arabic as well. For example, here are a couple words in Arabic:
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Despite how it may be hard at first, once you get over the beginning section of learning that language it will be a lot easier.
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Knowing the Arabic language will also help in getting jobs. Obviously working anywhere in an Arabic-speaking country, despite whatever job you have, will be definitely beneficial but also jobs dealing with international relations, NGOs, journalism, foreign language instructor, and so forth.
For an example of handwritten Arabic, here are a couple sentences I wrote:
This reads, “my name is Carly. I am from Massachusetts and I live in Acton. I am a student at HWS. I study anthropology and Middle Eastern studies.” My handwriting might not be perfect or beautiful compared to those who have been writing Arabic for years and when you first start, your handwriting won’t be perfect either. But with time, it’ll get better.
There is also different ways that you can write the Arabic letters. See how some of the letters in my paragraph have a dash or half circle above them? That’s a way that people can write the letters different. In the picture below, you can see how depending on the person’s handwriting style, some of the letters might look a bit different. Although on the Arabic keyboard and a lot of the times, you’ll usually see the dots more than the dashes.
Arabic is honestly such an amazing language and I have had the time of my life learning it. Despite the difficulties, hard work has resulted in a lot for me and it’s starting to become much easier for me to speak to Moroccans on the street and with my own host family as well as making my handwriting look less like a 5 year-old. So I hope this little introduction to Arabic will help you decide on starting to learn the language and get a rewarding and amazing experience from it.