makanqadrsh kanfhem l-'erbiya lli makuntsh men l-maghrib :-( (rough translation: I can only understand colloquial moroccan arabic) But that is still so cool that you're bilingual too. It always amazes me that Arabic, though one language, is unintelligible to native speakers thanks to the dialects. i.e. Here I have friends from Algeria and Morocco that can't understand each other at all. I speak moroccan.
Exactly! I speak Syrian/Lebenese dialects and it's very difficult to understand any others.
And I'm actually trilingual (is that the word?), in that I know Englih, Arabic and almost fluent French. My main goal right now is to work on my Welsh...y'know, try and get the languages from my background down.
Well, as mentioned in one of my previous posts, there is a HUGE population of Northern Africans here, mainly Algerian or Moroccan. So, naturally, as a language dork, I took advantage of the situation, got a dictionary and a phrase book, taught myself the grammar using the example phrases in the dictionnary, and presto, you have an Arabic speaker (strictly Moroccan. The dialects are so different that its reallllllly hard for a Moroccan, for exemple, to understand a Tunisian. Iraqis and Moroccans are pretty much incomprehensible). And I knew how to read and write it before I came. So that took care of that.
can i just say how depressed I am that I have missed every single phone call that you have made to my house. I miss you and I wish I wasn't such a complete spaz who has no free time to talk to her most beloved jack wickham.
god.
email me or something because I want to know what's going on, and how yo're feeling, and if you fluently speak french already (which I'm sure you do, because you're jack wickham who is amazing at anything and everything he encounters) and if you've hooked up with anyone wearing a beret in a coffee shop.
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That is quite possibly the roughest translation I've ever done. But with my luck, it'll turn out looking like those little boxes...
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(rough translation: I can only understand colloquial moroccan arabic)
But that is still so cool that you're bilingual too.
It always amazes me that Arabic, though one language, is unintelligible to native speakers thanks to the dialects.
i.e. Here I have friends from Algeria and Morocco that can't understand each other at all.
I speak moroccan.
l-hudur l-'erbiya mezyanat bezzaf! (Arabic speakers rock!)
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And I'm actually trilingual (is that the word?), in that I know Englih, Arabic and almost fluent French. My main goal right now is to work on my Welsh...y'know, try and get the languages from my background down.
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I definitely just spelled Lebanese wrong.
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And I knew how to read and write it before I came. So that took care of that.
Wow, I am so cool.
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god.
email me or something because I want to know what's going on, and how yo're feeling, and if you fluently speak french already (which I'm sure you do, because you're jack wickham who is amazing at anything and everything he encounters) and if you've hooked up with anyone wearing a beret in a coffee shop.
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