Learning darija: I speak in gaffes

Now that the official training is done, the real learning now begins. My fellow site mate working at a dar chabab, youth center, introduced me to a great guy who speaks English tremendously well who I've decided will be my Arabic language for the next 12 months, God willing (inshallah). He also happens to run a small sandwich shop that makes some killer sandwiches. His name is Ali, but everyone calls him Mister Ali, and his deli is named Snack Ali. We have lessons on the weekends at a local cafe. Right now, we’re in the process of rehashing my old lessons, correcting pronunciation, and finally putting all the disparate vocabulary and verbs into coherent sentences.

Couscous Fridays with the whole fam

I thought I’d share some of my language gaffes for everyone’s enjoyment. I laugh at myself all the time along with those willing to hear me out. I thought I might be pretty successful as a stand-up comedian in Morocco. My family is always asking me to say the most mundane of things at least two or three times and every time they crack up laughing. I’ve had a difficult time pronouncing some letters and will often confuse similar sounding words. So here’s a list of things I’ve said. I hope you enjoy it:

1. At the end of a meal, one way to stop the incessant calls to keep eating is to say “May God replenish you”, which in transcription would be written something like this: llah y-xlf. In my futile attempt to sound local I ended up running everything together and saying something in the neighborhood of “God is green pepper”, which is pronounced as llah flfla. My tutor worked with me on the Arabic ح , which is sometimes represented by a combination "Kh" or "X" showing me how I needed to almost rev back as if to clear my throat.  I have finally gotten down the God phrase, but for joke’s sake still include flfla so after every meal I tell my family “May God replenish you with green peppers” or llah y-xlf b flfla.
2. I was eating some olive oil with some fresh out of the oven bread for a snack one time and decided to share a bit of scientific fact I had remembered from my days watching the Discovery Health channel, which I also miss minus the gory surgeries. I wanted to tell my family that olive oil is good for the heart so I told them, "zit zitun mzyan l  l-klb," as I pointed to my heart. When I said this, my host father and host mother gave a me strange, bewildered face, and my host brothers laughed.  He then proceeded to bark followed by the transliterated word klb and the qlb while pointing to his heart. He did this a couple of times so that I could understand the difference in pronunciation.  The Arabic ق otherwise represented by the Q in English is a /k/ sound that is produced much farther back in the throat.  Thank goodness for context.  As you may know, dogs in most Islamic countries are considered to be impure animals not generally kept as pets.  As you can imagine, I am extra careful now telling people they have a good heart.
3. Over the course of the last several weeks, I've been confusing the following words: mosque, Friday, university, and association. In transliteration, they are, written in the same order, the following: jamﻉ, jmﻉa, jamﻉa, and jamﻉiya. As you can see, they're all in the same neighborhood so it's easy to forget which one you need to use at any particular point in time.  In fact, in setting up meetings, I’ve ended up telling people, “The meeting will be on the mosque at 10AM on the university, and please ask your Friday to be there.” Then I wonder why people don’t show.
   

This is all I have for now. I’m sure I’ll have some more in the near future. When I come across others, I’ll remember to share it with yall.

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If you'd like to hear and learn the Arabic alphabet, you can do so by visiting these two links:

http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/arabic_audio_alphabet.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANIoxAxruys