Language Learner's Journal: Homestay Edition

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.] 

My first time around with immersive language learning (studying for a semester in Brazil ten years ago), it was a no-brainer that I would do a homestay. I was a college student, I had no local networks to tap into to find housing, and forgoing a degree of privacy and independence felt not so different from the dorm life I was living the rest of the year. Furthermore, an employee of my school coordinated an apartment for me from the start, and back then I wasn’t as intentional, organized, and proactive about my learning as I am now.

By the time I got to Amman to bump up my Arabic studies last December, I only briefly considered doing a homestay. I wanted my own place or to at least live with other young people like me — I’d have guests visiting, I like to do yoga in my home, spend long times in the kitchen making vegetarian food and listening to podcasts, stay up late laughing with my mom on skype, etc. I also work part-time remotely each day, and I needed to make sure I’d have a quiet place appropriate for that.

About six months into studying, however, I started to think about a homestay seriously for the first time. I had a persistent feeling that my ability to read native texts and understand a newscast was beyond my ability to make small talk or say “Excuse me, I need to go brush my teeth.” 

I had a home in Amman and wasn’t going to force a homestay to happen, but I also began laying out feelers for families of all women interested in hosting a 30-year-old journalist. I had a happening Amman social life by half a year into my stay in the city, with morning yoga, friends who’d pick me up for running groups, dinner parties out, and meetings at coffee shops with my language partner. If I was going to stay with a family, it would ideally be one that understood my educational goals in Amman and how those various parts of my daily life fit into it.

I lucked out. A friend who coaches a track team broached the idea with a student who lives with her three sisters, parents and grandmother. The sisters range from kindergarten to college-aged and are a lively pack that zips around the city for their own activities each day, be it shopping, going to a sports team practice, or all the daughters going to the balad for a sisters meal out. Their home also had an open-door policy for all the neighbourhood youth, and throughout the day I’d have a smiley primary school girl telling me about the barbecue she ate the day before with her family or an Iraqi pharmaceutical student telling me about the farsi words he uses in dialect back home.  

Alex has emphasized to me the importance of speaking to a variety of people, since it can be deceptive to feel so confident speaking with language teachers and then, say, find groups of old people really challenging. The times when I was speaking with the grandmother of the family and the kindergarten daughter were indeed my hardest moments, but also fun, no-pressure ones Tayta usually wanted to know my whereabouts throughout the day and my travel plans. The little girl generally liked talking about her dog or the puppy show we saw in the circus together.

My favourite time of day was bedtime, when myself and the oldest and youngest daughter all went to bed together in the same room, chattering until we drifted off to sleep. I realized I had never needed to learn to say “Shall I turn off the light?” to anyone in all of my classes (بطفي الضوء؟)

I wish I had worked more with a notebook to write down new words and phrases I was hearing, but that house was full of life, and I floated between rooms and conversations and meals and situations throughout the day. Their conversations amongst themselves were often too fast for me, and sometimes I knew only the main outlines of what they were discussing and missed what specific point was funny or surprising. There was a huge difference between having a one-on-one conversation versus participating in the group chat – the former was a speaking exercise, whereas the latter was largely a listening one. I was once very lost in a conversation about food that involved peals of laughter until I recognized one word I knew (كبد) and realized they were talking about eating the internal organs of animals. 

Even if I hadn’t learned a single new word (thankfully, I did), it was a valuable booster shot to my confidence to be able to know that yes, I can live amongst a family and handle myself in day-to-day situations. I brought up basic things that I wanted to resolve in Amman with them, like explaining I wanted to find a quality and affordable dentist (they took me to a great one) and that I had Brazilian friends looking for an affordable way to send money abroad (hence many discussions about bank accounts and foreign currencies and a final group trip to MoneyGram). 

In the end, I stayed about two very happy weeks with them. I could always have done more toward a laser-focus goal of learning Arabic – I could have stayed with them from day one, I could have refused to speak with anyone in English all of my time in Amman, I could have lived in more remote parts of the country where I would be a rare foreigner. But one takeaway I have from my Brazil years is that, for me as a journalist, an immersive experience in a new place is a big-tent one: the gringos are part of it, the English-speaking locals with a foot abroad are a part of it, my bilingual running group and morning yoga are parts of it, the other language students working toward the same goals that I am are a part of it. The college-aged daughter who took me under the wing for my weeks in her home was about to study abroad in Germany, which I think is why she got my loosely defined “spend time with a family” goal so well. My next hope is that I’ll be able to open my doors to the sisters and offer them a home abroad someday.

Language Learner's Journal: Phone Calls and Timed Breaks

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.] 

I haven't written in this space in a bit because I've been taking breaks, both extended ones and daily small ones. At first I was anxious about "wasting" time by taking a sort of staycation holiday, but I'm seeing now it did me well.

Two friends came to visit me around Ramadan, and I threw a lot of my daily habits to the wind to enjoy having them here. One stayed an entire month – having a friend from Rio de Janeiro to pound pavement around this city with me during the unique time which is Ramadan was a fine way to enjoy what is otherwise a rather quiet and still time. I think together we made as many Jordanian friends as I had otherwise made in the six months before she came. We went to multiple yoga classes, including the Indian embassy's "International Day of Yoga," took a makeup shopping spree with two young women we met at Amman's Roman amphitheatre and waded through Wadi Mujib with a guide who seemed happy to have any clients during a slow month. There's something to be said for the "reset" button you can push when you have the novelty and joy of seeing a place through a visitor's eyes. 

Even as I wasn't studying formally and took a month off from classes, I still had useful, spontaneous ways to put my language to use. I got a speeding ticket on the way back from the Baptism site, which taught me some useful new vocabulary words (مخالفة غرامة، رخص). I even tried to argue with the officer that we couldn't see the sign because it was covered by a tree, but I was not successful (that said, the ticket was only 20JOD). During a week-long trip to Greece, a friend who took me to Athens' central fish market told me one of the men working at a booth was Syrian, so I went and introduced myself. It is a motivation super-charger to see how someone lights up to hear their own language when everything else around them sounds like Greek. 

When my trips were finished, I sat down with Alex's "Mastering Arabic" to review and refresh my study methods. I'm doing decently with motivation, a topic Alex covers at length. Learning Arabic has always been a project stemming from intrinsic motivation, something I chose to do for and by myself. I have no hoops to jump through to please an employer or scholarship committee – for now, I define my own success, which usually is satisfaction at being able to make a phone call or recalling a precise and useful word I've studied and putting it to use in the real world. 

"Mastering Arabic" did prompt me to think more about time organization methods, which I had let slide into just some vague sort of maximalism ("I have the evening free and will study as much as possible.") Two methods that have been useful are to divide tasks into discrete parts and then "reward" myself by taking a break afterward. That may mean: Read one story in حكايتهن from the UNRWA and then take a break by chatting on Whatsapp, or make Anki cards for 45 minutes then go do pushups while listening to Despacito. 

I've also made more active use of a language notebook. In the past, I took notebooks to class, but wasn't proactive enough to take it to stores or pull it out as soon as a friend and I part ways. One of my favorite exercises now is to try to recall new words or types of sentences I heard the soonest possible after I finish an activity – that recently included زبيب and شمندر after trips buying groceries, and اخبرني عنك and شو خطة الليل؟ when I listened in on phone conversations. I heard a friend say ...كنت رح اشتغل في محل بس كان عندي مشكلة and jotted it down. I've been feeling that what I lack is many basic speaking forms and daily vocabulary, and as simple as many of these things are, I didn't know them beforehand – I wouldn't have know how to say "I was going to do X" and that it was such a simple construction. I've long been a podcast fan, and now, when circumstances permit, I listen with a notebook beside me to jot down anything new. (My favorite new podcast discovery is عيب، which is in Jordanian colloquial Arabic and on subjects very accessible to me.) I've returned to private classes twice a week with a fabulous new teacher, so I bring her the questions that have accumulated in the days between our meetings. 

Alex is a big proponent of making phone calls, which for me is one of the final frontiers for language learning – it's hard to have no visual cues and introduce yourself coherently when you are a disembodied foreign voice over the phone and ask for things like interviews or deliveries. Thankfully, each successful call boosts my confidence a bit more, though I can't say I'm great – I stutter and stammer a lot, and I speak much more simply than I know how to speak if you gave me a quiet space and time to compose my thoughts. Still, to my delight, I was able to speak several times with a business whose employees I sought to interview, to my landlady to complain that she's been locking our veranda door unnecessarily, and to order food deliveries and try to explain where I live ("between the liquor store and the dukan of fulan"). My comprehension rate is variable – I understand nothing my building's haris tells me on the phone other than a general sense that he is granting or denying my request, but, thankfully, he seems to understand me.

A final reflection on taking breaks: When I was hosting visitors, I had moments of stress about how behind I was getting. I could do some calculation for you about how many words I "lost" by kicking back and speaking more English, Portuguese, and Spanish on a daily basis than Arabic. 

That said, the break served me well. One, it was nice to reflect on what language skills are – not a one-time performance but a world of abilities we keep in our pockets and pull out often at unexpected times. I haven't been in a Spanish class in about ten years, but I still am making friends and enjoying pop music in the language. Many of Alex's techniques are about how to maintain language abilities, i.e., not how to just do well on a test but recall vocabulary even several years from now. 

Two, athletic comparisons have always made sense to me when it comes to tackling this difficult project which is learning Arabic. My Rio de Janeiro guest added a new layer to that analogy when she began to show me what she was learning in her advanced yoga and acrobatics classes back home. My mode of exercise had long been about having time to daydream while I threw my body into motion, muscles and mind unattached while I ran ten, fifteen, twenty miles with little effort and thought. A pushup, on the other hand, or playing a competitive strategy-based sport was always difficult to me. The difference, my guest said, is attention to form and control and knowing that it won't "be natural" and effortless in the beginning. We practiced yoga chaturangas and headstands, two exercises that require total concentration and engagement rather than "zoning out." We also talked about rest. Nobody will run well if they run every day; yoga always ends with a savasana "corpse pose." The rest makes us more energetic and more engaged the next time we work out, pushing forward the frontiers of what one day will become natural for us. 

P.S. – This blog writing was also a timed activity. I went a little over my allotted hour-time block, but still wrote swiftly. Now, I'm off to do some pushups.

Language Learner's Journal: Meaningful Leisure

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.] 

If the first phase of my Arabic study in Jordan was intensive textbook fusha and the second was track-switching ammiya classes, this third and current could be called meaningful leisure, or, hanging out around town a lot and making friends. 

When I went to Bombay for an extended stay in 2010, a journalism colleague gave me a piece of advice: "Take everyone up on their offer to hang out with you." It may sound "duh," but over the years living abroad, I've seen how foreigners spend their free time in ways that often diverge from how residents in a given city do so. When we, as gringos in Rio, may have wanted to go to foreign film festivals or paragilding over the beach, many of our Brazilian peers would be going to baby showers, a classmate's thesis defense, or Outback Steakhouse. All of those activities are great ones, and I think the spirit of my colleague's advice was: If you want to get to know a culture, let your host take the lead and show you how they spend their free time.

That means over the past few weeks, I've sat on the sidewalk in front of a gift shop with a delightful young sculptor and a store clerk, my partners in very unstructured language exchanges that break when one of them needs to pop into the shop to attend a client. I went for a 6:30 a.m. workout with two of the fastest runners in Amman, a pair of brothers I met at a sunset race in Wadi Rum as we waited in the dunes watching for headlamps of other runners finishing. I went to a capoeira performance at Jadal cafe that was held in commemoration of the nakba; I was pleased with how accessible the discussion after the performance was for me, particularly when an older man in the audience vigorously questioned the capoeristas as to why they needed to do someone else's sport when they could do dabke.

Alex often talks about "islands" of vocabulary, and I thought about that as I spent more time with the same people and can make good guesses about the words they're using. (As I crossed the finished line at the race, other runners asked me ايش كان مركزك؟ though I certainly hadn't run fast enough to place. It was satisfying, though, to deduce what they were saying.) The store clerk and I talk often about money and salaries, since she hustles to work two jobs to help her family out.

I could be more purist; I speak plenty of English in these interactions. I'm still searching for the point of equilibrium between taking advantage of each opportunity I get to speak in Arabic while (of course!) having genuine friendships with peers with whom I share interests (running, yoga, current events, feminism, vegetarianism, pets). Plenty of the vocabulary and references regarding those topics are in English, not to mention the people who are interested in them often read and speak in English about them. I don't believe every friendship needs to be instrumentalized for one's language-learning goals (though I believe even more strongly that such an attitude should not be a lofty cover for native English speakers kicking back and relaxing). When I told Alex about my happy sidewalk sessions, which qualify more as bilingual shooting-the-shit than a proper language exchange, he said: You're doing the real thing, rather than practicing for it.

Some working notes, now, on practice:

I've been happy with my second time around testing out language exchanges; I've used the website Conversation Exchange, which I had suspected could be out of use by its retro web design but is actually popping. I'm pretty strict about where I meet the person, i.e., it needs to be as quiet as possible (a first exchange at Indoor cafe across from the University of Jordan was really hard to decipher and, from my point of view, turned into disjointed monologues rather than a conversation because I couldn't hear her well).

I think the exchanges, for my current level, are less experimental zones and more consolidation ones. That is to say, I don't risk and try to reach for vocabulary I'm shaky on but work with what I know decently. That's why I like coupling the exchanges with private classes, which I go to twice a week and are a better place for reaching and experimenting. I also think that in a language exchange it is useful to ask my partner "is the way I said that correct?" but not productive to ask "why?" I save those questions for my teacher.

Alex encouraged me to discover certain transition phrases (على فكرة... على كل حال... بالرغم من) and put them into practice in my speech, which give the impression of being more fluent and conversant than I am. This has been a fun exercise with my private teacher, since I take the English phrases I want and try to describe to her a situation that I might use them.

I'm on board with the many lines of criticism telling us that we need to make an active effort to start unplugging our lives before we turn into cyborgs; that said, having a round of friends here I chat with on Facebook or Whatsapp has indeed been great practice for seeing spelled out how people are saying what I hear each day. In conversations, I still feel like I rarely could repeat back word-for-word what someone has said to me, even if I usually get the message through key words and context.

I bought Diwan Baladna, an ammiya vocabulary book organized by subject matter. I really like it – my hope is that it will help me turn a lot of passive vocabulary into active vocabulary. I have a quibble with the audio component (read too fast in long audio files that make it tedious to isolate the word I want. And having sample sentences is far better than English translations!).

And finally, as per Alex's encouragement, I continue to avoid dictionaries and translation apps. I make ample use of Reverso Context, but only after I've read a message or passage several times through, and usually I'm using it to confirm my guess of a word's meaning is true. Especially when it comes to Whatsapp and chatting, the majority of messages I am receiving are ones that involve words I know well (Want to meet at this time? How far did you run today? I have foul and rice my mom made, want some? It's veg.)

Language Learner's Journal: Leaving Qasid

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

After two-and-a-half intense months, I've finished my course at Qasid. Though this didn't always feel easy to see on a day-to-day basis, it's extraordinary how much students there learn over a short period of time. On my first day, I couldn't produce full sentences other than my go-to greetings and "I'm an American journalist in Brazil," and over the weeks there, comprehended and participated in discussions about women's rights, marriage customs in different cultures, literature, colonialism and occupation.

Even if it kicked my butt (or because it did), I leave with a great opinion of the school. Qasid's teachers are extremely well trained in how to instruct students in an immersive method – we only occasionally resorted to English words when, say, our teacher wanted to make sure we really understood a grammatical point at hand. My listening comprehension soared, as did my ability to read texts (each week's lesson in our textbook revolved around one or two native texts). Also, I had the great fortune of my class whittling down to only two students, which meant that for three hours each morning, my classmate and I were responsible for answering every question and participating fully in every discussion. So much opportunity to speak in a comfortable, mistakes-are-fine-and-expected environment turned me into something of a chatterbox, though my enthusiasm is several steps ahead of my accuracy.

Also, a delightful unexpected benefit about Qasid is that a group of students and teachers stay the afternoon there in their study halls. That meant that while I worked on my computer after class, I was often surrounded by chatter in Arabic, both teachers engaging their students in fusha and many students who were native dialect speakers chatting amongst themselves.

That said, after speaking with several other language students and journalist colleagues, consulting Alex, and thinking about my goals, I decided to switch tracks from my original plan to study two terms at Qasid and then move back to the U.S. for a summer language institute to instead focus on ammiya here in Amman. I work a part-time job to support my studies, while most Qasid students are full-time exchange students. If all students there were exhausted from their homework load, I was 150 percent so. Journalist after journalist tells me they wish they had better dialect skills and, not being someone who has a "good ear," i.e., I don't pick up much language without studying it in a methodical way, I think it will be important to focus on a dialect in a structured setting.

Still, I'd consider going to Qasid again in the future. In fact, I was part of a test group to try out a new study tool the are developing that would supply easy-to-access audio and videos to accompany texts and vocabulary we study in Qasid's textbooks. It looks like a promising way to bridge the gap between reading comprehension and pronunciation of the words in the text, i.e., I often recognize words in a text based on their consonants and long vowels but am mentally (and inappropriately) filling in a fatha each time I don't know the short vowels.

As for my next steps: I've enrolled in a twice-a-week ammiya course at Sijal and am already enamoured with the class. I tested into the advanced level, though the other students in the class are far ahead of me in dialect. That said, unlike with Qasid the first time around (when I asked to be placed down a level because I was having difficulty following the class), I felt comfortable sticking to this level since I indeed understand the majority of the lesson. I'll also be taking private lessons to complement the group course.

Another choice I've been happy with is that I've also moved to a far more happening place than my last home in Shmeisani, which has meant a world of difference in terms of just having daily interactions. I try to look up the words of things I'm looking for before I hit the streets (most recently, شمعة، سبانخ، و لوز بدون ملح). I find most people are very willing to speak with a foreigner in Arabic, though this sometimes involves my telling strangers who respond to me in English "بحكي الإنكليزية شيء، انا برازلية). I will reflect on the merits of this and some broader thoughts on expat language learning/daily usage in a future post.

I've also become a social media and technology ascetic, logging out of my accounts and using them only when something necessary is at hand. In addition to being an old soul who believes that technology is eating away at humanity and rewiring our brains like substance addiction, seeing the Facebook I see every day anywhere else in the world is not one of the reasons I came to Amman. It's pleasant to let my eyes wander while I sit in a taxi or service and try to speed read the signs around me before they're out of sight. I don't think I risk جهالة anytime soon – I read plenty of news (it's part of my job), but it's confined to a couple of hours of work a day, and then I'm free.

And as for that free time, another upcoming blog will be about independent study methods post-Qasid that I will develop with Alex to make sure I keep up the reading skills I learned there even as I switch into a dialect course.

Language Learner's Journal: Deepening My Studies

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

An encouraging friend said to me recently that learning a language is like peeling back the layers of an onion. I’ve been studying at Qasid for a month now, and her comparison helped me take stock of what’s happened since then – on a given day, often I can’t call up a specific new fact to tell you that I learned and mastered that day, but indeed I am learning, a lot. This week I gave a twenty-minute presentation to my class that I doubtlessly would have been incapable of doing before I started this program.

Speaking has been my biggest hurdle, and I’ve put a tip of Alex’s into practice over the past two weeks — to find five minutes a day to speak without stopping. I’d like to do even more than that, and Alex also suggested prompting myself with a picture and talking about it for an additional five minutes. But for the time being, the former is all I’m capable of fitting in between class, work, and homework. I’ve been meeting with one of my fabulous Qasid teachers and try to recap the day’s news for her, since I write a global newsletter each day and those events are fresh and relevant to me. We’ve gone over the Gambian electoral standoff, Donald Trump and the #MuslimBan, and the Chilean wildfires in recent days.

In general, I’ve also been taking up anyone on the opportunity to speak — the same teacher asked if I’d be a practice student for her to become an oral proficiency certifier, which meant we had a 45-minute one-on-one conversation, while another instructor offered to stay with students after our evening ammiya course to have a purely conversational section. To strengthen my speaking muscles, in the presentation I mentioned above, I went with Alex’s “planned spontaneity” approach rather that write it word-for-word ahead of time. I chose a topic that is easy for me — the history of Arab migration to Latin America — and wrote down a list of words I wanted to use during it, like تراث (heritage) and بارز (prominent), and glanced over my list between my powerpoint slides of pictures.

The next step I’d like to put into practice is getting more comfortable using the verbs I know and conjugating them correctly without having to pause and think them out. I see that I have my go-to words that I use the vast majority of the time that I speak, and I’d like to resist getting into a rut.

As per the advice of a teacher, I’ve also been incorporating an extra nice exercise into class — I keep a running list of the vocabulary I come across in class that are new to me (on my list now: مطابق, identical, الفرد, individual, مرادف, synonym) and, when our teacher prompts us to write a few sentences using whatever new grammatical concept we’re going over, I glance through my list and try to use a word or two. It helps me resist the tendency to rely on my go-to words. It’s nice because I have an easy time learning obvious picture vocabulary — like animals, food, etc — whereas I need to pay better attention to words that are a little more abstract.

Also, very nicely, since I have a midterm coming up that will cover five chapters worth of vocabulary, I’m feeling appreciative that Anki’s spaced repetition methods means that material is still in the cards I see each day. As per Alex’s encouragement, I’m pausing to come up with mnemonic devices for words that don’t stick easily for me. This is something I did routinely when I studied at a more leisurely pace and that I’ve left behind as I feel a little breathless.

Alex has also been helping me think about my next steps after Qasid and finding the balance that’s right for me between speaking/dialect and reading/writing/fusha. I’ll share more about that once I finalize my next plans.

I’m still as pooped as I was when I wrote my first entry, but whenever I catch myself veering into a self-indulgent pity-me territory, I do stop to remind myself: I may be having little in the way of leisure time these days, but, indeed, I did live in Rio de Janeiro for six years. And when I was in Rio, I dreamed of the day I'd be able to throw myself into my studies.

Everything You Need to Study Jordanian Arabic

I've been living in Jordan for a little over four months, and I'm pleased to say that I seem to have converted what Syrian/Lebanese colloquial Arabic I learnt in the past into the Jordanian dialect.

Along the way, I've used various resources and watched various materials that have really helped. This blog post will be my review of what is available for the student of the Jordanian dialect.

Lots of people say that you can just choose 'Levantine' and that's enough. "You don't need to specialise any further than that," I've heard on a number of occasions. My experience is that the country-level distinctions between Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabic actually do matter, particularly once you get past the pure basics and want to have more natural conversations.

For various reasons, Jordanian dialect resources are under-represented in the market for books and audio resources. They're either subsumed under the 'Levantine' bracket or books generally tend to offer Syrian or Lebanese flavours. It is for this reason that I think it's worth taking stock and gathering together all the resources available for students hoping to travel to Jordan or make a study of the specific dialect spoken here.

Being the last somewhat-calm country in the non-Gulf non-north-African Arab-speaking world, it's a preferred destination for year-abroad students mid-university. If that's you, I think you'll find this post really useful.

How to Use These Resources

There are a lot of books and resources listed below. The expectation is not that you'll go through them all, but that you should rather be aware of what is out there. There aren't really many options for textbooks, so you're basically stuck with Hakini Arabi. (Good thing it's a well-designed course, with lots of dialogue and practice). I'd recommend the serious student of Jordanian Arabic get hold of both Tiedemann's 101 Verbs book and Diwan Baladna. Both are filled with material you'll find nowhere else. (See below for details on these books).

As for the rest, pick and choose: watch a comedy show; do some listening practice exercises; take an iTalki lesson with someone from Jordan. Those final steps are up to you, and depend a lot more on your goals and how fast you want to go.

If you'd like one-on-one mentoring/coaching in your journey to learn Jordanian dialect (and/or standard written Arabic), have a read of what I offer and get in touch with me.

For a one-stop-shop guide to improving your Arabic and getting beyond the intermediate level, particularly for students who've studied for a year or two already, read my new book, Master Arabic.

Grammar

• Jordanian Arabic Grammar: A Short Guide for Beginners (Peace Corps)

This is a useful overview of the main grammatical features of the language. The grammar covered is very basic, but it is nice to have it all in one place.

• CGE Jordan's Videos (YouTube)

CGE Jordan Institute for Arabic Studies have also published an indispensable book (see below), but these are their videos. They teach the kinds of things you'll never find in a book, and they also practice them in pairs. They also have material for intermediate and advanced students, like this video in which Fred teaches how to intensify your sentences:

If you learn best from watching videos and have the time to wade through hours and hours of short lessons, this is probably an excellent place to start. I spoke with the director of CGE, in many of the videos, for the premium edition of 'Master Arabic'.

Textbooks

• Hakini Arabi: Palestinian and Jordanian Colloquial for Beginners

This is your only option for a full textbook covering Jordanian dialect for beginners. It is taught as if you haven't necessarily studied any other Arabic before, so parts of it move a little slow, but that's a minor quibble. The book comes with a link to audio files that you download online, and these are essential for working through the dialogues and listening exercises. There are lots of group role-playing exercises suggested in the book, but even if you're studying on your own this is a valuable one-stop shop to work through.

Different parts of Jordan speak slightly different sub-dialects, and this book offers options for three varieties: 'Jordanian', 'Palestinian-Rural' and 'Jordanian and Palestinian-Urban'. For an idea of the kinds of materials contained within, here's an example of a vocabulary list from early on:

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and here's an example of a context/phrasal explainer from towards the end of the book:

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For a total beginner, I would certainly start with Hakini Arabi. One of the first things I did after moving to Amman was to go through this book.

• Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course

Living Arabic is part of the Munther Younes Arabic-tuition empire. He generally produces solid materials and though I've never seen a copy of this book, I've been told by a number of students that it contains useful materials for Jordanian Arabic. The text teaches MSA alongside colloquial, so this may not be totally suited to your goals. Perhaps the best scenario for this is if you get a chance to use it in a library. You can probably work your way through the Jordanian Arabic sections in a few days/weeks.

Words and Sentences

• Diwan Baladna: The Unprecedented Spoken Arabic Dictionary

This is a thematic dictionary and phrasebook for Jordanian Arabic. I hesitated to buy this for a long time on account of its cover, but I saw it in a bookshop and the content is really excellent. It comes with an audio CD, though that is problematic since few computers come with CD readers; I hope the authors will make the data available for download as well in the near future.

The first part of the book is filled with expressions, phrases, phrase + answer combinations and other materials that you don't usually find, even in books specialising in colloquial readers. Here is an example of phrases that come with certain responses:

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and here are some expressions from their very rich selection, also showing the explanations and how the book makes them very easy to use/pick up:

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The rest of the book is filled with thematically-organised vocab lists (sorted into Arabic / translation / Arabic plural columns). It's useful to have them all in one place, I suppose, and to know that these are what Jordanians use (as opposed to Lebanese or Syrian speakers of Arabic), but the real value of the book is the expressions and phrases contained in the first half.

• Jordan Dialect (Memrise Course + Audio)

I include this not because the word selection is particularly amazing but simply because it seems to be the only course on Memrise (the vocabulary-learning platform) that teaches Jordanian dialect alongside the audio files. There are lots of other courses offered, including some by students currently in Amman, but none of them offer audio files as well. There are only 736 words available to learn, but it's all Jordanian dialect. To my mind, this course is low-hanging fruit. Someone's made a great selection of vocabulary, most of which you'll use at some point, so I'd recommend just working your way through it relatively quickly.

• The 101 Most Used Verbs in Spoken Arabic: Jordan & Palestine

This book is more than just a guide to using verbs in Jordanian Arabic. It's a repository of sentences and their translations that comes with a CD filled with pronunciation. (As with other books, I really wish CGE would offer the files as digital downloads, since I and most others don't have a CD reader/drive).

The title is actually really deceptive, and I held off getting a copy for far too long because I thought it was just lists of verbs. It is, but at the same time it's a rich trove of sentences, phrases and associated vocabulary. I'd say this book is pretty much essential for anyone who wants to learn Jordanian Arabic. Take a look at this page, for example, to see the kind of thing 101 Verbs contains:

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It's a fantastic mix of phrases, sentences, vocabulary and literal translation or explanation. There are also useful appendices and introductory materials about the grammar of the Arabic verb, lists of broken plurals and various indexes so you can look things up as well.

I spoke with the author of the book (and director of CGE) for the premium edition of 'Master Arabic'.

• Basic Phrasebook - Jordanian Arabic (WikiTravel)

This is nothing more than a list of useful phrases, but as a way to pick up some essentials, this is a free and easy option.

• Pre-Departure Arabic Materials (PeaceCorps)

There are also audio files associated with this document. This is a basic overview of some situations that an English-speaker might encounter in Amman, and offers some basic grammar and vocabulary alongside phrases and cultural explanation. Nothing advanced here, but ideal for total beginners or visitors.

• Conversational Arabic Quick and Easy: Jordanian Dialect

I'd advise you to stay away from this book. It's sold on Amazon and seems to be frequently suggested as a 'suggested purchase' when you buy anything else relating to Jordanian Arabic. Unfortunately, the contents are not very useful. The book also does not use Arabic script; it is all transliterated. Caveat emptor.

• The Arabic Student: Jordanian Arabic

These are all the posts from 'The Arabic Student's blog relating to the Jordanian dialect. It was last updated in 2013, but as a resource it's extremely useful, and he covers a numbers of explanations of phrases, grammar and other interesting features of the dialect. Posts often discuss specific videos (or sections of videos) in detail, so it's a great place to get a taste for the unique features of the dialect alongside some entertainment and comedy.

Listening / Video

• Jordanian Dialect Podcast (Soundcloud)

I co-host this podcast together with Lina Obeidat. We discuss a new topic each week. Show notes include translations of difficult words. The idea behind this podcast was to have some materials available for intermediate students that weren't too difficult, but at the same time didn't dumb things down by using too much English and so on. Details on how to subscribe are available here, or just follow us on Soundcloud.

• Talk In Arabic

Talk In Arabic is a great resource for those who want spoken materials in the various dialects of the Arab-speaking world. The Levantine Dialect section contains a few dozen videos and audio lessons in Jordanian dialect alongside thematically-organised vocabulary lists. Everything is available as audio files (with transcripts and translations) so this is a useful service. Note that the site isn't updated that often, so you might find you can make use of all the materials in a month or two.

• Female Show (Roya)

This is a fun comedy starring comedy superstars, Tima Shomali and Raja'ee Qawwas. I've watched the three seasons of this show through from start to finish and learnt a lot in the process. The level is suitable for an intermediate-level speaker. I'd recommend starting at with season 1, episode 1, to give it a try:

• Usfuriyya (Roya)

This is a medical comedy set in Jordan. Think Scrubs, or think someone trying to imitate Scrubs in the Middle East. The Arabic is also at an appropriate level for someone who has a year or two under their belt.

• Roya TV

Roya is Jordan's preeminent contemporary TV channel. They commission most of the new dramas, comedies and other shows coming out of the country. There's always something interesting to watch here. To watch only their news click here. For their comedy shows, click here. For drama shows, click here. Highly recommended as a way to get exposure to the sound of the dialect.

• Jordan TV

This is the YouTube channel for Jordan's state-run TV station. You can view news broadcasts and more traditional dramas. The content is much more staid in comparison to Roya, but it exposes you to a different style of speech and local culture, so perhaps find a way to intersperse this in with your Roya comedies and dramas.

• LangMedia Arabic

There are a number of different links on this page (to CultureTalk or to their page of Jordanian/Palestinian dialect resources). This is a real treasure trove of materials, much of which is provided with audio, video and full transcripts/translations.

There are also some exercises to go through to test your comprehension. Here's two Jordanians talking about the education system using dialect. Note the transcripts and translations below.

• N20 Comedy

More Jordanian comedy shows. If you watch enough locally-produced TV and comedy you will notice that the same faces show up in many different programmes. Note that N20 has branched out to include other dialects, but it should be fairly easy to distinguish which is which. Lots of material here.

• Accents Library (DLIFLC)

Select Arabic. You'll be presented with a number of stories read by people from different countries. Jordan is one of them. Compare and contrast with the other dialects. This is more a resource to sharpen your ear. Mother-tongue Arabic speakers grew up among this diversity and so are attuned to the tonal and phrasal differences between dialects. This is a resource that can help you improve this skill on your own.

• Phone Conversations

This is a great database and resource of authentic spoken materials in the form of recorded (and transcribed) phone conversations.

Select Arabic and then Levantine. It'll (mostly) be clear when items relate to Jordan. Each conversation comes with a transcription, translation and study plan. The recordings usually last around ten minutes, so it's perfect for a quick study session. Use this to get exposure to authentic natural language.

• GLOSS (DLIFLC)

GLOSS is a resource developed by the US military. You can select the dialect for which you see materials (Levantine, in this case) and it'll show you different exercises to complete. There were over 240 unique items as of January 2017.

Once you go into the individual items, it states which country the dialect is from. I really like that you can choose whether you want the questions and instructions in Arabic, though the interface itself is really horrible. Here's one of the exercises where you pair off words to two columns, depending on the meaning:

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Despite the issues with the interface, there's loads of really useful material to work your way through here. This is a great resource.

• Aamiya Arabic (YouTube)

This YouTube channel covers a number of dialects, but you can click through to the playlists to choose Jordan-specific materials. These videos aren't specifically designed for students, but they provide lots of authentic dialogue and dialect appropriate for intermediate students. In this video, for example, sisters Hiba and Lynn talk between themselves about what they're selling at a market stall:

THere's lots to explore in this YouTube channel, and lots of phrases and unique Jordanian expressions to file away in your personal language notebook. Wade in!

• Kharabish Comedy

A mix of dialects here, but Kharabish are originally a Jordanian outfit, so lots of their older material uses that. As with earlier comedy channels, you'll recognise many of the actors and some of the skit premises.

• Ex in the City

This is mostly in English, so probably too basic for intermediate students, but the series covers a number of different expressions and culturally-relevant context. The host explains a new expression each episode.

Teachers / iTalki

There are currently, as of my writing in January 2017, only three tutors from Jordan on iTalki. I've only studied with one, so I'll recommend her highly. You'll recognise her from the Jordanian dialect podcast that we recently started together. Lina Obeidat works with beginners and intermediate students alike, and makes Skype lessons fun by combining free-flow conversation with a variety of other exercises and challenges along the way. I credit Lina with the lion's share of improving my spoken Arabic, so I'd highly recommend you work with her to blast through any difficulties you may have.

Institutes / Study Abroad

I haven't studied at either of these institutes, so I can't attest to the quality of the programmes they offer etc, but I do know that many people in Amman study at these two schools. CGE is founded by Fred Tiedemann, who wrote the essential 101 Verbs I mentioned above and produced many of the videos on their indispensable YouTube channel. They (seem to) take a colloquial-first approach.

Qasid is the other main alternative, and many universities in Europe and the US send their year-abroad language students there for tuition. Both institutes come highly recommended by people who've studied there, but as always with study-abroad programmes, a lot depends on what you put into them.

[NOTE: This list of materials is adapted and drawn from the premium materials available alongside my new book, 'Master Arabic'. For the full resource guide covering other dialects as well as tried-and-tested advice from experts and others who've made it to an advanced level, get the premium edition.]

New Year, New Arabic-language Podcast

This year, in combination with my publishing a book about getting from intermediate-advanced level in Arabic, I wanted to find a way to stay committed to improving my own language. So I’ve started a mostly-Arabic-only podcast.

There are two episodes up already, both from the ‘Jordanian Dialect’ series. This series is recorded with co-host Lina Obeidat, my good friend and Arabic teacher of several years. (Book lessons with Lina on iTalki here. She’s also a regular contributor to talkinarabic.com’s Levantine materials).

During the first episode, we talked about the winter and the rain in Jordan (where we’re both based), and I learnt about the existence of a period of 40 days when the weather is much colder. In our second episode, we talked about taxis in Amman. We struggled to find many positive things to say about the system or the drivers of taxis, but tried to see things from their perspective. At the end, I learned a new proverb that was appropriate to our discussion.

In the coming weeks I’ll be adding more shows to the podcast. There will be a show focusing on Classical Arabic texts. There will be a show on Modern Literature. Potentially we’ll have a show for Egyptian Colloquial (sigh!) but that depends on my finding someone to host it (let me know if you’re interested).

I’m looking forward to recording more episodes. Please leave a comment over on Soundcloud with any feedback you might have. Also, subscribe on iTunes by clicking on this link or search my name and you should find it. The podcast is also available on Overcast. Just search the name and it’ll show up.

Knot 2: Translation as Trauma, Taxis and Artificial Intelligence

This week I fell back in love with a piece of software (DevonThink Pro Office) while reorganising and refreshing two dozen archival databases. I’ve been busy putting the final touches on The Taliban Reader and I’ve made new strides of progress on the slackline.

Articles

• Lina Mounzer - “War in Translation: Giving Voice to
  the Women of Syria” (Lithub)

A deeply affecting account of the author’s work as a translator of stories from Syria, how language mediates and obfuscates the terrifying realities of daily life, and how even translation and re-communication gives rise to secondary trauma of a kind. If you read nothing else this week, make it this article.

• Hamzah Nassif - “Understanding Amman’s Yellow Taxi Dilemma: a Different Take on the Government’s Ongoing Battle With Ride-Hailing Apps” (The Black Iris)

I wrote about Amman’s taxis in my Arabic-language newsletter, and this (slightly old) piece helps answer some of my questions as to why taxi drivers in Jordan’s capital behave as they do. It also makes a strong case for changing the status quo. Taxi drivers seem barely able to make a living under current circumstances, and passengers aren’t getting much of a service.

• David Meyer - “The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal” (Gigaom)

As someone who has just bought a couple of new .io domains, I was unsettled to learn the backstory, how something dating back to the early nineteenth century’s colonial expansion (in this case, to the Chagos islands) has a direct descendent in the modern age. I’m most likely not going to return the domains I bought, but I probably won’t buy anything new from the .io set.

• Andrew Ng - “What Artificial Intelligence Can and Can’t Do Right Now” (Harvard Business Review)

There’s nothing especially new in this overview piece by one of the leaders in the field of artificial intelligence, both in terms of innovation and education. But it’s nevertheless a useful summary of some of the unique features of AI and machine learning, as well as some of the things it is less good at.

• Richard Benton - “Language hacking ≠ language love” (Loving Languages)

Richard’s posts are excellent at returning us to the reasons why it’s worth learning languages — to connect, to be useful perhaps, and not to simply chalk up notches on one’s belt. This recent posts is a challenge to the thankfully-less-omnipresent online polyglot community. Recommended if you’ve ever studied more than one second-language.

Books

This week, I reread Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Looking into my Goodreads list, I noted that I gave it a two-star rating when I first read it a few years back. Now, perhaps I was in a better place to absorb some of the lessons, but I gave it four stars. I’ll be writing a longer review for the blog here of some of the more contrarian or unexpected lessons. I’m currently reading Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me alongside Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck* (as audiobook).

Films / TV

I’m working my way through Channel 4’s Humans, albeit painfully slowly. It was recommended on a recent podcast as a possible vision for what a future with humanoid AI machines might look like: not as different as we might imagine, but still different enough to provoke some real societal challenges.

Climbing Routes Without Numbers

On Wednesday I climbed up an ungraded route. The indoor climbing centre where I go once or twice a week has been updating and renewing the different holds they bolt to the wall. We arrived before they had printed out the little square reference signs that run along the bottom of the wall.

In the place of my longtime-favourite warm-up route, a nice yellow-coloured 5A, was a new route populated with deep black jugs. It looked easy from the bottom, but there was no confirmation of this from the grading at the bottom.

Even routes in mountains — particularly in areas where lots of climbers visit — will often have been graded, but I found that I enjoyed climbing up the route without the grade. It returned me to that feeling — one I’ve been struggling to recreate — early on in my time climbing when it wasn’t always about doing the next level or the higher difficulty progression: it was just about enjoying the climbing, enjoying moving my body and whatever thoughts come up when you’re ten or fifteen metres above the ground.

I’ll be trying to pay less attention to the numbers in future sessions and more to the felt and sensed experience of climbing.

Climbing Fuheis: Two and a Half Ascents

This is a video from a recent climbing trip to Fuheis. (Filming courtesy of Felix Kuehn). The weather is starting to turn cold so I feel like maybe this is the last time I’ll get to go climbing outdoors in Jordan until spring comes.

I climbed three times yesterday. I don’t really have a strong sense of what the ratings were on the routes, but I think they were all in the 5s (i.e.5a–5c). You can see the ratings for the route at the wall here.

As I wrote a short while back, I’ve been dealing with things that I thought I’d sorted out weeks ago. My sense of trust of the rope and the comfort up at heights is still pretty good and I’m not too worried about how that is progressing, but yesterday I was unable to complete a route that I had ascended the last time I was there.

I had energy to spare, so it wasn’t a question of not being able to summon the strength to get up; it was more a mental block. I was unable to trust in my feet, in the grip of the shoes on the wall. As one more experienced climber said to me after I had descended, “you need to feel more stable and confident in how you place your feet on the wall”.

I can see the wisdom in what he’s saying, but I think it’s something that comes with time and experience rather than just a mental shift or a technical correction that you can make immediately.

I was also reminded yesterday of the non-linear path that learning often takes, where progression in one area can often be followed by regression a short while later. Over the long run, you’re getting better, but it’s hard to retain that sense of overall perspective.

Last time I went to Fuheis, I had a really good two or three weeks afterwards, spurred by my sense of regret and failure that I experienced while climbing outdoors. I’m more willing to seize the opportunity, to go the extra mile (or inch), so I’m looking forward to the coming few weeks to see what I get up to. I’m feeling confident in where I am and in my general strength and skill progression.

Walking Amman

I’ve been walking around Amman a little in the past couple of days. My poor sense of direction with the city’s somewhat haphazard street layout mean I make use of digital GPS maps on a regular basis. In Europe or North America, Google Maps is my service of choice, with due acknowledgement of their general creepiness.

But I discovered yesterday that Google Maps is pretty atrocious when walking around Amman. Either their data is old and of poor quality, or the algorithm for calculating time/distance between two points is not properly calibrated for a city with many hills. If you look on Google Maps’ display, you’ll see what looks like a flat terrain. Everything can seem very close. If you look out of the window, or walk on the streets, you’ll see that hills and a highly variable topography are very much a part of the experience of the city. (This gives some idea of it).

Google Maps knows how to deal with hills or variable terrain. After all, San Francisco, close to their centre of operations, is a pretty hilly city and I found the maps and the estimated timings worked pretty well when I was there last year. Which suggests to me that the problem isn’t that Google forgot to take into account topography but rather that the data is poor.

I’m studying data science-y things these days, so I thought a bit about how they might improve this data. Some possible solutions:

1. They’re already monitoring all the data coming from app usage etc, so why not track whether its estimations match up with how long people actually take to walk certain streets/routes. Mix that in with the topography data, and average it all out.
2. They could send out more cars. I don’t know how accurate the map data for driving in Amman is, but some anecdotal accounts suggest that it suffers from similar problems. This is probably too expensive, and I’m assuming it’d be preferable to find a solution that doesn’t require custom data collecting of this kind. Maybe something for when the world has millions of driverless cars all powered by Google’s software, but for now it’s impractical as a solution.
3. Find some abstract solution based on satellite-acquired topographic data which takes better account of gradients of roads etc.

For the moment, Google Maps is pretty poor user experience as a pedestrian. Yesterday evening I was walking back home from the centre of town. The walk would, Google told me, take only 12 minutes. 40+ minutes later I arrived home.

Others have noted this same problem and suggested an alternative: OpenStreetMap data. The data is unattached to a particular app, but I downloaded one alongside the offline mapping data for Jordan/Amman. It seems pretty good at first glance, and I’ll be testing it out in the coming days. I’m interested o learn why it seems to perform better. My initial hypothesis is that its data is just better than that which Google Maps is using.

Jordan Diaries: Start with Geography

I arrived in Jordan this morning and am beginning my attempts to get to know the lay of the land. First thing is always geography. If I don't have those mental hooks to know that someone is talking about a particular muhafadha  / governorate, I can't properly engage in the conversation / information, so the only way to do this at the beginning is to learn a bunch of those initial hooks in a more deliberate fashion. Later on, you can learn things naturally, incorporating new pieces of information as you hear it, but at the beginning you need that initial scaffolding.

To that end, I'm starting off with Memrise's Governorates of Jordan course, which teaches you all the names, plus their administrative capital town. I'll be doing the same with Amman's geography over the coming days, too, though no pre-written course exists so I will have to make one myself. For Amman, I can combine the more abstract map-work with travelling to see the various places with my own eyes. Then I can combine the two together for a solid grasp of the geography and different neighborhoods. In due course I will also be travelling around the various parts of Jordan for myself, but for now I have to content myself with learning all their names.