Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Long forgotten pleasure of learning a language

Its been a while since I have really put myself into the situation of learning a new language. Though I had my english language certification, well, let's put it nicely that I did not die of studying for it (rather the result of years of active practicing :P).

But now at work we did start having arabic classes! And not any more just random stuff, despite the fact that it is mean to help us picking up the "survival" level of language, which I already sort of have/had.
Well, where we are heading is rather elementary and basic, than survival, meaning that it is a way higher level. we have a 20 lesson course and already after the 5th I really need to squeeze my brains into it and pick things up fast...as I said, despite already having some sort of minimal basis.

This was hard at the beginning, but somehow when I got used to studying again, really paying attention, pacing up and down in my room while mumuring words from the vocabulary we took in the last lesson(s)...and I really started to feel happy about it. It is a good challenge which does yield its results! And these are again small pleasures of life!

Like with the last campaign I have launched, finally I did not need a translation of the heading of the ad which I'm supposed to approve! (To the right you can check it out)
I did totally understand what the following heading (the lime lines on top) means:
احكي مع فلسطين ب 9 قروش فقط

(Ehki ma falesteen bi 9 kerusch fakath)
Which means: Talk to Palestine for 9 piasters only

While it is not a very complicated sentence it did feel truly delightful to have no difficulties reading and the translating it!

And then we also started constructing sentences (though we are not writing in arabic...I think I would go nuts from that). I finally can introduce myself in short, but full sentences, actually sharing meaningful information, besides my name (like where do I live, where I'm from, where do I work....) and some random others like my favourite colours.

Anyways, I just felt like sharing this small delight of an internship in Jordan :)