Learning Arabic

My plan of learning Arabic by watching Egyptian cartoons with Finn wasn't working, so I signed up for my first language class this week.  I'm learning the Egyptian dialect, rather than Modern Standard Arabic because despite it being the language of newspapers and news reports, it's not the language spoken everyday.  You can certainly get by without any Arabic at all (in a city of 20 million people, an English speaker is never far away), but my life will be much easier if I can speak to taxi drivers and shopkeepers myself.

My teacher's name is Ju Ju...or Shu Shu...I'm not sure which.  The fact that I can't pronounce her name doesn't bode well for my future as an Arabic speaker.  She's a good teacher, and fortunately has a good sense of humour.  She's going to need it.

I've almost learnt the numbers, which is handy for telling taxi drivers where I want to go, particularly in Maadi where all the streets are numbered, rather than named.  Most of the house numbers have the English translation as well as the Arabic, which is useful to practice on.  You have to be on guard for false friends - the Arabic four looks like a backward three, five looks like our zero and two and three look like backward sevens.  It takes a while to throw off the associations.  Despite its numerical system, which English borrowed, and an accessible alphabet, Arabic is from a totally different linguistic family and it doesn't give English speakers many hints.  John tells me it's far more orderly than English but that doesn't sound particularly helpful right now.

After my first class my head hurt from thinking so hard.  It's been a little while since I used my brain for anything other than scheduling nap times, making to-do lists, and watching Peppa Pig with Finn, and I'm sorry to report that it wasn't quite up to the task.  I'm enjoying it and I'm curious to know how much I can pick up.  Can this old dog be taught new tricks? We'll see.

Meanwhile, the top photo is of the Macaw parrot that lives at the end of our street.  Finn was the one who found it.  At first I didn't believe him when he told me he'd seen a parrot, but I should have known better - three year olds don't miss much.  I also didn't believe him when he told me the parrot had 'zebra' on him, but I was proved wrong again.  He has beautiful black and white stripes around his eyes.  The parrot can talk, but so far he hasn't said anything recognisable, but I'm guessing that's because he's an Arabic speaking parrot.  Perhaps in a few months time I'll be good enough at Arabic to 'talk parrot'.
Here's my name in Arabic: كاميلا