Via LanguageHat, a wry essay on the difficulties of learning Arabic, something I know more than a little about.
Soon I began marching into the Arabic markets on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, near where I live, and testing out my textbook phrases. Generally I was met with a confused look and then a smiling apology: “We don’t hear too much fusha around here.†Linguistically speaking, what I had done was a bit like asking an Italian for directions in Latin. Modern fusha, also known as Modern Standard Arabic, is a modified version of the Classical Arabic in the Koran. It is the language of public address, and of any newscast on Al Jazeera and other Arabic television stations. It also corresponds to the written language, and any educated Arab can understand it. Arabs have enormous respect for fusha (“eloquent†is the word’s literal meaning), especially in its fully inflected Koranic form; that is why Al Qaeda’s leaders, like clerics and most political leaders, place great emphasis on the classical idiom.
But the language of the street is different. The colloquial versions of Arabic are derived from fusha, and they are dialects rather than wholly separate languages. Still, the gulf can be substantial in vocabulary as well as pronunciation, and takes getting used to.
I’ve been studying Arabic off and on for over 10 years, and really haven’t achieved anything. I can sound out words and read very slowly with a dictionary, but as for listening and speaking, forget it. Kinda depressing, actually.
By the way, do not pronounce the word “fusha” with an esh sound. The “s” and “h” are separate sounds. The first syllable rhymes with “book”, and the second is basically a choking sound (the author’s “lovely breath of air”).