Tag: Jordan

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Moving

We moved this past weekend.  Not too far, just down the street, but the work involved in changing houses is incredible.  I guess that’s true if you have a lot of things.  Or maybe just if you do it yourself.  I am trying to remember how many times I’ve moved in the past.  After spending my first 17 years in the same house, I wasn’t really used to moving.  Now, in the second 17 years of my life, I’ve moved quite a bit.

The move to college is a normal, expected one for an American teen, so maybe that shouldn’t count.  My first real  move was following college, when I moved an hour from my college town to attend grad school. This was my first apartment, cooking for myself, paying rent, buying furniture, dealing with a landlord.  My stuff was minimal, and following two years of grad school, I brought it all back east in a small U-haul trailer attached to my Chevy Lumina, which henceforth overheated in the mountains of PA.  But I made it back with all my stuff.

Next it was my first job, and with it, relocating to New Jersey.  I actually started my job before finding a place to live, living instead with my former principal’s family.  Great people.  Good job.  Hard to find affordable housing in New Jersey, but eventually, found some roommates and a good apartment right on Main Street in Somerville, right above a Chinese restaurant.  Too bad I’m not a big fan of Chinese food.  That was my residence for only a year, as my roommate wanted to be closer to New York for her commute, so we moved to Metuchen.  A nice town, with a walkable main street.  We lived here for three years, before I got married and moved not too far away to Piscataway.

Jayson and I were quite spoiled here.  This was the top story of a split level house.  We bought some furniture from newspaper ads and set up our first home, temporary as we knew it would be, nicely.  It even had a pool in the backyard.  Our elderly, widowed landlady lived downstairs.  She was an interesting person, hailing from Nazi Germany where she was part of the Nazi Youth movement.  She gave some interesting insight into Germany at that time, but was currently a diehard US Republican.

That place housed us for two years before our first overseas move together.  In one sense, it is easier to move overseas, because this time, we were limited to four 50-pound suitcases, unless we wanted to pay extra.  A couple with no kids and a simple lifestyle didn’t need more than 200 pounds of stuff, so we managed with our allotted luggage.  Once in Jordan, we found an apartment and bought furniture and household goods, and moved in.  Again, a good place.  Looking back, we didn’t realize how nice it was at the time.  Ground floor with a play area out back, but of course, we never needed that in Jordan.  Now it’s something we think about.  Another two years there and we were selling our furniture and household goods, or divvying them up among some of our Jordanian friends, and repacking our four suitcases to head to the states for six months.  Another move.  This time into a furnished home where we would welcome our first baby before heading back overseas.

A baby can bring with it a lot more stuff!  This time we moved overseas with six 50-pound suitcases, although some of them were overweight.  This time in Tunisia, we started out in a furnished place in Sfax, the large city in the south of the country.  It had its peculiarities including no oven but a large Jacuzzi-like bathtub.  Emma slept in our room to begin with, until we convinced our landlord to let us put her crib in their storage room in our house.  It was a great place for language-learning as we shared the property with two Tunisian families.  Very generous people.  Again, we didn’t realize the value of the outside courtyard.  A nice, tiled area for kids to run around.  But, that place lasted about nine months before we headed north to the capital and searched high and low for the perfect spot in the suburb of Manouba.  After a few days of searching, we realized we needed a ground floor apartment to accommodate our double stroller, and found the perfect spot after a bit.  This time it was unfurnished, so, we bought furniture and household goods and set up house again.  We anticipated this place being our home for awhile and began to bring things from our storage in America, because of course, we owned more than 300 pounds of stuff.  I guess you could call Jayson’s parents’ garage in New Jersey a second home for us since that has housed our things since our first overseas move!  As fate would have it, we set up a nice home for only about one year before moving out of Tunisia.  Again, selling our stuff, packing more suitcases than we came with; of course, we also added a child in Tunisia … add a child, add more stuff!  Back to the states for another six months.  This time, we didn’t really move; we just lived with Jayson’s parents.

And then on to Egypt.  Our luggage allowance keeps getting bigger as we add more children, but this time, we opted to pay for some extra luggage too.  Partly because of the children, partly because of what we’ve learned in the other two countries.  Some things are just better and cheaper to bring with you.  So, we probably brought about nine 50-pound suitcases this time.  We lived in a temporary place for a month, so didn’t really unpack too much, and then onto our current place which was furnished.  Only needed to buy minimal house goods.  But somehow, now that we’re moving just down the street, that “nine 50-pound suitcases” has multiplied exponentially.  All told, we’ve taken 6 carloads and 2 pick-up truck loads of goods to our new place.  Again, we added a child.  We bought some furniture both for guests, and for ourselves.  People have been very generous and given us things … toys, house goods, knick knacks.  It all adds up.  So why move again with all it entails?

We knew from the time we took our first apartment here in Maadi, that our landlord’s son would take it from us at the end of a year as he anticipated getting married.  And so I had a year to look around for apartments.  I looked online just about every day to see what was available through Craigslist, since that is how we found our original apartment here.  As the summer approached and we narrowed down exactly what we were looking to move into, I started to call realtors and give them our specs.  Most of them told me that to find an apartment on the ground floor with a small garden in the neighborhood near Jayson’s work and within our budget was near impossible.  However, we stuck with our budget and eventually, a realtor found our new place.  The landlord wanted us to take it right away rather than let it sit empty, and our current landlord graciously agreed to let us out of our contract a couple months early.  We really felt we needed to grab an apartment when it came available as there is a great influx of foreigners at the end of the summer making the apartment search a bit harder.

And so, we move now.  Not the most opportune time in many ways.  Less than two months after having a baby, and rearranging our old apartment for our two houseguests, Mom and Mother-in-law, for a month.  Right toward the end of World Cup action.  In the midst of job transitions for Jayson at work.  And in the middle of an Egyptian summer which translates into lots of sweat.  But, now is the time, so move we will.

Well, I haven’t counted, but there were lots more moves in my second 17 years compared to my first!  And who knows where the next one will be, but I really hope it’s not for a long while now.  Funny thing is, my parents are in the process of moving now too.  They have been in the same home, my childhood home, for 38 years!  Talk about accumulating stuff!  Well, we are too far away to help them with their car and truck loads of things, but now that we are in our own new place, I have plenty myself to unpack and arrange!

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The Problem of Dialect – Part Two

The strange thing about different language dialects is that the most basic words you use everyday differ from country to country.  I remember Jayson telling me this after his experience in Mauritania.  He would say, “The words for bread, water, and house are different in the Mauritanian dialect than in other dialects, but the deeper you go in the language, the more similarities you find.”

Here is a case in point.  In Jordan, we studied Arabic in a language school.  This was great in so many ways, one of them being that the teachers taught us all the basic greetings we needed to know.  So we probably learned within the first week how to say, “How are you,” which in that dialect was “Keef hallak?”

Fast forward to Tunisia, where we didn’t study in a language school, but tried to pick up their dialect on the street and in our everyday interactions.  It took quite awhile, and one of the most basic things troubled me for some time.  After someone greeted me, they would often ask me, “Faynik?” which literally means, “Where are you?”  At first I would answer them, probably with a confused look on my face, “I am here.”

Or if we were talking on the phone, I would say in my confused tone, “I’m at home,” or, “I’m out shopping,” or whatever.  It wasn’t always an inappropriate question.  I mean, if I was supposed to meet them, and they were calling me, they could ask me where I was so they knew when to expect me.  But when I went to visit my friend in her store and her first question was, “Where are you?” it was really weird.  It took a little while to realize that this was their way of saying, “How are you?”

Don’t ask me why they chose those words, people usually don’t choose the words of their greeting, they are simply taught from generation to generation, but somewhere it must make sense.  I wonder how many of my friends were confused, however, when I supplied them with my location.  Even after I realized what this really meant, it still took some forethought to not answer their question, but rather say, “Good, thank you.”

The experience changed again in Egypt.  Again, they don’t use the typical, “How are you?” that we learned in Jordan, and most of the time, they don’t even use the word we expected to hear here which is “Zayyik?”  Instead, they say, “Aamila aye?” which means “What are you doing?”  It took me right back to Tunisia.

Before I realized that this was their way of saying, “How are you?” I would answer them with what I was doing, which again, was usually an odd, confused answer, “Well, I am coming to visit you.”  Or, “I am coming here, to church.”  Of course, my thought was, “What do you mean, what am I doing?  Isn’t it obvious?”  Probably thanks to my experience in Tunisia, I caught on more quickly, and realized this was their way of greeting, and that it could probably be equated to our equally incongruous “What’s up?” in English.  Oh, the joys of learning the language on the street!

Another word that has been tripping me up some is the word for “Today.”  A most basic word, to be sure, and one that I should know well if I say I can speak the language.  Probably half the time, however, I use the word I learned in Jordan, “il-yawm.”  I was thinking through this word the other day and realized that in the three countries we’ve been in, Jordan is the only one that makes sense.  Here’s what I mean.

In Jordan, the word “il-yawm” is used for “Today.”  Following this the days of the week each have a name along with the word “yawm” in it.  One of the neat things about the days of the week in Arabic is that they are kind of forms of the numbers 1-7, so it is fairly easy to pick up, or at least logical.  So, for instance Sunday would be “yawm il-ahad,” which is kind of like “the first day”.

Well, moving onto Tunisia, they use the same word for today, which is probably one of the reasons I am having a hard time switching it now.  However, when they speak of the days of the week, they use a different word in place of “yawm,” and that is “nahhar,” which also means daytime or morning.  So, Sunday would be “nahhar il-ahad” or “the first morning”.  It was tricky to learn that at first, but we got used to it after awhile.

Now in Egypt, I realized that they do the opposite of Tunisia.  For the days of the week, we are back to the Jordanian word, “yawm il-ahad,” but the word “Today” is now “innahhar da” which literally means “this, the morning.”  Now my logical brain looks at Tunisia and Egypt and says that they should kind of switch things up a bit so at least their word for “Today” matches with the word they use in the days of the week, but who am I to criticize the language.  I’ll just keep using the wrong word for awhile until it finally sinks in and becomes habit.  Until then, I think people usually know what I’m saying, but I do think I’ve confused some of the kids at Emma’s preschool.

Since we’re on the topic of time, the last word that I will point out is the word for “Now.”  Again, it is a word I use all the time.  In Jordan it was “halla.”  In Tunisia it was “towwa.”  Now in Egypt it is “dillwaqti.”  Do you see any relationship between those three words?  Me neither, but at least I can see a familiar word in the Egyptian choice which makes it mean literally, “this, the time.”  Oh, the sweet sounds of Arabic … if only it wasn’t so confusing!

 

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The Problem of Dialect

We have lived in a few different Arabic-speaking countries now, and we aren’t sure if this has been good or bad for our Arabic skills.

We started off in Jordan for two years where we studied the Jordanian dialect as well as the Modern Standard Arabic which is what people read and write, but rarely speak.  Next we spent two years in Tunisia where the spoken dialect seemed to be about 100% different from what we learned. At first, we didn’t understand anything people were saying to us.  It seems some people understood some of what we were saying, as they compared it to Egyptian Arabic which is widely known throughout the Arab world due to Egypt’s high movie output.

Well, just about the time we were getting comfortable in the Tunisian dialect, we moved to Egypt.  Egyptian Arabic is much closer to Jordanian Arabic, so we were excited to be “coming back” to what we learned in a sense, but the problem is, Tunisian Arabic is what is on our tongues.  We have been adjusting over these last couple months, and some things came easier than others, but I wanted to try to give some examples of these dialect differences to either let you sympathize with us, or at least get a good laugh.

One of the major ways Egyptian Arabic differs from both Jordanian and Tunisian is in the pronunciation of one letter, the “jeem.”  We see/hear this letter and pronounce it as a “j” sound, but Egyptians change it to “geem” or the “g” sound.  This has provided some difficulties in adjusting.  For instance, we weren’t sure if our names would be Gulie and Gayson here, but it does seem they make allowances for western names as we’ve actually met many people with the letter “J” at the beginning of their name.

One word I use a lot is “zawgi” which means “my husband.”  This word has been tricky for me. You see, in Jordan, we learned this word for husband, but with the “j” sound – “zawji.”  Then, in Tunisia, they use a totally different word, “rajul,” which we translated “man” in Jordan.  So every time I said “rajuli” in Tunisia, I translated it in my head, “my man.”  It fits, but it’s not quite the same as my husband.

So, now we came to Egypt, and I have to remember that they don’t use “rajuli,” for husband, and if they did, it would be “raguli,” which to them would mean, “my man,” but they use “zawji” like I learned in Jordan but pronounce it “zawgi.”  This is still my thought process almost every time I use this word, and people wonder why it takes me so long to say “my husband.”  You would think I was a newlywed and am just learning to talk about having a husband, but we’ve been married for 7 years and I’ve been referring to him as my husband, in Arabic, for about 5; it just hasn’t been the same word all five years!

The original word we learned for house was “bait”.  Not too hard.  Well, in Tunisia, they use a different word for house, “daar”.  It wasn’t a new word to us; in Jordan we learned the word “daar” also means house, it’s just that’s not what the Jordanians used.  So, the Tunisians used “daar” for house and used the word “bait” for room.  It took us awhile to get that.

It’s an important word to learn quickly as you are house hunting because you are looking for a certain number of bedrooms and we kept saying “gurfitayn”, meaning two rooms in Jordanian, but they were looking for “baitayn” which to us meant “two houses.”  We certainly didn’t need two houses.  Well, that was Tunisia.

Now we are in Egypt, and they again use the word “bait” for house. Good.  The problem is they have a new word for room which I don’t know too well yet, “awda”, and since I don’t know it well, I automatically fall back on Tunisian, “bait.”  So the other day when a friend was visiting and looking at our apartment, I was telling her a little about our apartment search and that we saw many apartments with either “two houses” or “three houses” in them.  Whoops.  I kind of realized it as I was talking, but then couldn’t think of the Egyptian word for room.  I think she got the idea, though, but it made me feel kind of silly.  Gotta learn that word for room!

Here’s another word I messed up the other day.  We use the verb “to go” a lot.  In Jordan, we learned to say “aruuh” for “I go.”  It conjugates differently depending on who is speaking, but the root is the same.  So we got used to that using it there.  Then we went to Tunisia and they use the word “amshi” for “I go.”  Now, we learned this verb in Jordan, but it meant, “I walk.”  Subtle difference.

The words could be used interchangeably at times … especially since we do walk so much here, but it doesn’t always fit.  However, it seems they just used this one word for both meanings in Tunisia and you sometimes had to specify “walking” over “going” by saying, “with my legs.” Now we’re in Egypt and we’re back to “aruuh” for “to go” and “amshi” for “to walk.”  But since my Tunisian is on the tip of my tongue, I was talking to my landlord the other day about getting us a refrigerator … click here for this story … and told her that if she wanted me to, I would “walk” with her to the large store (which is located about a 30 minute drive away.)  She kind of looked surprised and said, “Carrefour is very far!”  It didn’t quite occur to me yet that I used the wrong word, I just said, oh I know it’s far, I don’t mean “walk, but walk.”  It wasn’t until after I left that I realized I was using the word for two meanings and she was only hearing one.

All of this is further complicated when I Skype with one of my Tunisian friends.  She kind of laughs at me as I’m trying to speak Tunisian, but keep throwing in Egyptian words here and there.  Fortunately she understands me well, but it’s a big mind game trying to learn the Egyptian and at the same time, not totally forget the Tunisian.  Welcome to the Arabic language … it’s beautiful, and at times, painful!

 

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