Sure, the Arabic script might seem exotic and at first glance undecipherable, “but I think it’s a myth that Arabic is a hard language to learn,” said Nesreen Akhtarkhavari, welcoming a visitor to Arabic 201, a class she teaches at the Oakton Community College campus in Des Plaines.
“You have to work at it, but if you learn your alphabet and pronounce the letters properly, you can read within a month,” she promised. Unlike the complexities of English, she added, the Arabic writing system is quite consistent, matching each symbol with one sound.
With that, the dozen members of the class opened their 585-page textbook from what Westerners would consider the back.
Lesson One started with “How to Say Hello,” a greeting that involves not only stating one’s name but placing a right hand on the chest and saying “peace be unto you.” Later, leave-taking requires not only saying the equivalent of “see you later” but also “go in safety.”
For the students in this intermediate-level class, all that was mastered last year.
These days, they are well into “Functional Modern Standard Arabic for Beginners,” as the text is known, working on such matters as how to “request and offer something politely” and how to “inquire about and describe activities.”
For Akhtarkhavari, as for many language teachers, her work is more than running through exercises in grammar and verb endings. It has to do with building bridges between cultures, following the urging of Russian author Alexander Solzenitsyn to “know languages, know countries, know people.”
“I try to give my students glimpses of the Arab mind,” said Akhtarkhavari, who also will teach at Columbia College Chicago this fall.
She encourages classroom discussion of everything from the war in Iraq to the tribal complexities of vast extended families in the Arab world. “We draw on both the similarities and the differences, all of which come from logical principles. People do things for a reason,” she said in an interview.
“She is a wonderful teacher,” reported Irfan Vaid, a student planning a career in international law.
“We, as a nation, need qualified Arabic speakers who understand Arab culture and religious traditions,” Vaid added, citing a recent congressional report that 99 percent of American high school, college and university programs concentrate on a dozen mostly European languages.
More college students study Ancient Greek (20,858) than Arabic (10,596), Korean (5,211) and Persian (1,117) put together, the study noted.
That soon may change, members of Akhtarkhavari’s class suggested.
“I don’t see any other language right now that’s more to my advantage to learn than Arabic,” said Dane Ruiz, who is preparing for some form of work with the U.S. government.
“Arabic is becoming more and more necessary,” added Robert Beyer, a writer for religious publications.
“I knew how to speak the language, but I didn’t know how to read or write it,” said Ramzy Bousheh, whose Palestinian-born parents speak Arabic at home.
Another student, Ahmed Almanaseer, has a business motive. Reflecting a college whose motto is “Start Here. Go Anywhere,” Almanaseer has used his expanding Arabic-language skills to set up a bilingual job-placement company on the Internet, HireIraqis.com.
Along with helping Iraqis find employment with companies involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, it offers links to popular Iraqi Internet cafes.
