If there is a hell, I’m certain that in it there is a special room for people who move thousands of miles away from their parents. Being one of those people, I always carry this guilt with me. My family is usually far far away.
Luckily, although I was a bad daughter for hauling my bags and myself off to Morocco, I have a wonderful sister and parents who come to visit and now is one of those times that I get to spend days on end with my mom.
Depending on how you count, this is my mom’s fifth or sixth time coming to Morocco and she is a language superstar. It’s not that she’s fluent in a number of languages (just English), but she is so eager to communicate and so willing to make mistakes that she jumps right into Arabic while she’s here. Every trip she adds a few Arabic words to her notebook and even tries those words back in the US on unsuspecting, but always thrilled, Arabs. Well, she once used Arabic on a rather confused caucasian border patrol agent in California after having wrapped a scarf around her head, but that’s another story.
My dad, on the other hand, has only picked up one Arabic word ever. That word means “I’m full.” This is the one word a visitor to a Moroccan home needs to survive. I’m not kidding, it’s that important. Forget and there will be no end to the food they give you. Death by hospitality is real.
Oh, I should point out here that not all Arabics are the same. Each country has its own dialect and the stuff in the news is a standardized Arabic that no one speaks as a mother tongue. Moroccan Arabic is the farthest dialect from the standardized because it has been so influenced by Berber, French, and Spanish. Most Arabs can’t understand Moroccan Arabic.
Back to my mom. So she has this notebook with about 30 words or phrases in Moroccan Arabic. Most of them are useful - “Good morning,” while one or two are for pure amusement- “little monkey.” She’s requested that my husband and I pepper our English conversations with words from her list so she can hear them in action. We do what we can. And every day she tries to add a few more things to the list. Her trip is for two more weeks (yay!) and the goal is to have 100 words by the end.
Today was the first time this trip that we went to my in-laws’ house. Arabic is the main language spoken among them because it’s the only language the older generation knows. My husband’s generation knows French and some English, and the older kids are awesome at English as well.
During our visit my mom busted out her Arabic. Apart from some letter switching, z’s became s’s and b’s became d’s, she did great. Too great because it prompted my in-laws to try to increase her budding vocabulary tenfold. When my husband’s nephew was trying to explain the difference in pronunciation between “red” and “donkey,” (a very small difference I have yet to master) I knew she was in trouble. We managed to calm the vocabulary onslaught, but then they started the inevitable comparison between the Arabic skills of any foreigner and myself. The conclusion being that if my mom sticks around a couple of months she’ll be teaching me Arabic. It’s probably not too far fetched, but it still made me go “grrrrrr” to have my shoddy Arabic be looked upon in disdain.
Tomorrow is Friday, meaning a trip back to the in-laws’ for a delicious meal of my mother-in-law’s awesome couscous. My mom is preparing some new phrases for then, but she can also refer back to today’s hit - “Eat, you little monkey,” - directed at yours truly.
Luckily, although I was a bad daughter for hauling my bags and myself off to Morocco, I have a wonderful sister and parents who come to visit and now is one of those times that I get to spend days on end with my mom.
Depending on how you count, this is my mom’s fifth or sixth time coming to Morocco and she is a language superstar. It’s not that she’s fluent in a number of languages (just English), but she is so eager to communicate and so willing to make mistakes that she jumps right into Arabic while she’s here. Every trip she adds a few Arabic words to her notebook and even tries those words back in the US on unsuspecting, but always thrilled, Arabs. Well, she once used Arabic on a rather confused caucasian border patrol agent in California after having wrapped a scarf around her head, but that’s another story.
My dad, on the other hand, has only picked up one Arabic word ever. That word means “I’m full.” This is the one word a visitor to a Moroccan home needs to survive. I’m not kidding, it’s that important. Forget and there will be no end to the food they give you. Death by hospitality is real.
Oh, I should point out here that not all Arabics are the same. Each country has its own dialect and the stuff in the news is a standardized Arabic that no one speaks as a mother tongue. Moroccan Arabic is the farthest dialect from the standardized because it has been so influenced by Berber, French, and Spanish. Most Arabs can’t understand Moroccan Arabic.
Back to my mom. So she has this notebook with about 30 words or phrases in Moroccan Arabic. Most of them are useful - “Good morning,” while one or two are for pure amusement- “little monkey.” She’s requested that my husband and I pepper our English conversations with words from her list so she can hear them in action. We do what we can. And every day she tries to add a few more things to the list. Her trip is for two more weeks (yay!) and the goal is to have 100 words by the end.
Today was the first time this trip that we went to my in-laws’ house. Arabic is the main language spoken among them because it’s the only language the older generation knows. My husband’s generation knows French and some English, and the older kids are awesome at English as well.
During our visit my mom busted out her Arabic. Apart from some letter switching, z’s became s’s and b’s became d’s, she did great. Too great because it prompted my in-laws to try to increase her budding vocabulary tenfold. When my husband’s nephew was trying to explain the difference in pronunciation between “red” and “donkey,” (a very small difference I have yet to master) I knew she was in trouble. We managed to calm the vocabulary onslaught, but then they started the inevitable comparison between the Arabic skills of any foreigner and myself. The conclusion being that if my mom sticks around a couple of months she’ll be teaching me Arabic. It’s probably not too far fetched, but it still made me go “grrrrrr” to have my shoddy Arabic be looked upon in disdain.
Tomorrow is Friday, meaning a trip back to the in-laws’ for a delicious meal of my mother-in-law’s awesome couscous. My mom is preparing some new phrases for then, but she can also refer back to today’s hit - “Eat, you little monkey,” - directed at yours truly.
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