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June 9, 2005

Khullus!

That aweful transliteration means "finished" in Arabic. I just got out of my final Arabic exam and am sooo happy to be done. It has been a long semester of trying to fill my brain with more information that I ever thought it could hold. I can honestly say I have learned more Arabic than I thought possible. It is funny because I used to think I knew so much Arabic but now I see that I must have been crazy! I know now that I will probably never master this language, but for now I am ok with that.

It is funny because one of the concearns we talked about in Exit Orientation was dealing with people who expect us to now be fluent in our new language. When people go to France or Spain for 5 months they come back able to speak the language but Arabic is not French or Spanish. It is hard to explain why I am not fluent to other people because it just seems like a rediculous idea to me. Arabic is such a unique language that it is almost impossible to become fluent without years of intensive studying.

I have an article at home that I clipped out of Time magazine when I started Arabic that said it takes something like 100 weeks to become fluent in Arabic. With only about 15-20 weeks in a semester and long breaks in between that is almost 3 years of studying. So please, don't expect me to translate Al-Jazeera any time soon!

Posted by rcollins at June 9, 2005 5:29 AM

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Posted by: Josh at June 13, 2005 6:02 PM