Okay folks, here's the truth.
Sometimes, I'm not as eloquent and as well spoken as I like to admit.
Actually, at other times, I am downright tongue tied and confusing to listen to (sorry!!).
At still other moments, I am just plain incoherent in my rambling (you know the moments...where I KNOW I started with a point-something logical, even important, to say-but and in the short instant it takes to get from thought to articulated word, everything gets to be all-a-jumbled in my speaking. AND when I try desperately to recover, to say something brilliant and witty to cover up for my flub, it all gets even more confusing and then, much to everyone's relief, I eventually sputter to a stop and take a breath (sorry, sorry, sorry!!).
Yup, sounds like me (but this doesn't happen too terribly often!).
I pride myself on knowing how to express myself well, both verbally and in writing. Good communication is one of my deepest values, and I like to know that my thoughts are expressed clearly. However, there are moments where that is just beyond me~maybe I'm being silly when I'm supposed to be serious; perhaps I'm rather stressed out or emotional; or, and this is typically the case, I'm too tired to think straight and all of my finely-tuned communication skills have abandoned me in a quest for a nap.
And mind you, that's when I'm speaking English, my friends.
Arabic is a whole other deal.
My first few months here, I was completely illiterate for the first time since I was a very small child.
Illiterate as in, absolutely-for-the-life-of-me-could-not-even-sound-out-the-words-on-the-shop-signs-because-Arabic-uses-a-completely-different-alphabet.
All I could see were squiggles and dots, keys to this beautiful language that was greeting me around every corner. Shway, shway (remember?! slowly slowly), I began to be able to understand what I was hearing around me, and even offer a few phrases in return. My ability to converse and interact with my surroundings was returning to me. Now, nearly 5 months in, I am semi-confident with my far from perfect grammar, decidedly limited conversation topics (I can talk about what to drink, buy fruits & veggies, tell you what I'm wearing, name the colors, direct a taxi, ask the price of something, count, describe where I'm from, where I work, where I live, and say basic greetings...), but only recently have I begun to understand those mysterious symbols that make up the written languages.
***And when I say begin, folks, I really mean, begin. As in, sounding out words slowly, painfully, carefully...only to discover that I've only matched 3/4 (usually less, boo) of the correct sounds to their corresponding letters. Phew. It's SUCH a process!
So if you pair the part of me that likes to express myself with words and communicate well with a rather illiterate and vocabulary-less me, you have quite a paradox, an oxymoron, if you will. I am often stuck in my conversations with people. I am pretty good at convincing people (taxi drivers and other people I interact with for less than 2 minutes, that is) that I speak Arabic, but if the conversation gets beyond a certain point (like, beyond small talk or approaching a topic of any real substance or significance), I'm lost. AND if you ask me to write words, or to sound out the letters in front of me (particularly if I'm tired; see above description of my deterioration into incoherence), there's a good chance that I'll get frustrated, teary or both.
I'm not used to being illiterate. I am not used to having a frighteningly limited vocabulary. I am frustrated by both of those realities, because:
LEARNING TAKES TIME
(and sometimes I'm not the most patient girl in the world).
And so I practice. I ask an absurd amount of questions, I rejoice when I understand the flurry of words around me, I sound out words on signs (first triumphant, then dejected when I realize that there's NO WAY that it says what I thought it said just a minute ago), and I try.
I try really, really hard.
And I'm going to continue trying really, really hard, because communication matters.
Because I want to have a real conversation with someone in Arabic someday (sooner, rather than later, insha'allah!).
Because I want to speak & to read & to write.
Back to studying I go!
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