In August, girlfriends and I are meeting in Paris. I have tried unsuccessfully to get them to come to Jordan but Paris was the compromise - and indeed a pretty good compromise. We have all volunteered to research a neighborhood and loosely plan a day of our trip. I am researching the Marais which is the neighborhood where our apartment will be. In the course of my research, I have ended up on French websites - no surprise it is a french-speaking country after all.
It is a source of much frustration to discover that I am better at reading French - a language I have studied with one 10 week course at USDA 18 years ago than I am at reading Arabic. For instance I was just at the Pompidou Center website - and among the headers are "Expositions" and "Cineme" and "Votre Visit" - this is so easy! The equivelent headers in Arabic would be المعارض لزيارتكم سينما
And I do actually know all of these Arabic words - "cinema" is in fact "seeneema"but I read Arabic like someone just learning to read does - some words I know as "sight words" - if I see "company" or "Jordan" on a sign or in a newspaper article I just know the word - but even easy-to-read words like "cinema" require me to read all of the letters and go "oh right cinema"
Now granted, I can't actually speak/understand French beyond "je voudrais vin" but maybe we'll just eat falafel all week at Moroccon and Algerian restaurants and then I will be able to talk.
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2 comments:
i think je voudrais vin and je voudrais fromage will be sufficient.
Or je voudrais a salami sandwich, si vous plais
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