October 15, 2009

Arabic Day 3: Frustration


The Frenchwoman couldn't pronounce the throaty "ha" and her frustration spilled over and spread onto us. The class felt too long. The letters blurred together. We frowned and furrowed our eyebrows. We complained to Wafa that we needed more time to practice the sounds. In the worst moments, though, my secret companion would step forward. Turkish to the rescue. Wafa would unknowingly use an Arabic word that I knew from Turkish and it was like a friend's hand on the shoulder. I started a list.

Arabic Turkish

kelima (word) kelime (word)

dars (lesson) ders (lesson)

dar (house) daire (apartment)

resim (picture) resim (picture)

maktab (desk) mektup (letter)

balad (country) belediye (municipality)

daqiqa (minute) dakika (minute)

kalam (pen) kalem (pen)

jumla (sentence) cumle (sentence)

sabah (morning) sabah (morning)

kitab (book) kitap (book)

2 comments:

  1. omg, i love cognates tooooo
    almost everyone i asked said arabic was hard arabic was hard etc

    but i knew there must be some cognates, or a similar language
    could you teach arabic based on the cognates?? it would be valuable :D

    ReplyDelete

Yay for comments! Nothing mean please, and that means you, Anonymous.