Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Learning the language is understanding the culture: Arabic in Egypt

"In the Arabic language", our Arabic tutor explained to Courtney & me, "there are four ‘modals’ – four words used to express the degree of severity or importance of something". Ana barouh means 'I go'. Ana lasim arouh means 'I have to go'. Ana dahrouri arouh means 'I should go', or 'it’s important that I go'. Ana mohim arouh means 'I ought to go', and finally Ana mumkin arouh means 'I may or may not go'. All four of these words can also be used in the negative sense, as in Ana mish mohim arouh, meaning 'it’s not important that I go'.

We have been here in Egypt almost three months now, and have already heard a lot of the words our Arabic teacher introduces to us, however in this case, we were very familiar with the word mumkin, often heard together with the word bukra which means tomorrow, but we had never noticed any of the other words. Is it a cultural sign?
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