Saturday 25 February 2012

انااسمي أنيسا

إنا اسمى أَليس او أَنيسأ

My  name is Anisa.  That's the title up there.  The first line says my name is Alice or Anisa.  It truly depends on with whom I am speaking.  I'm hoping the او does mean "or".  Kinda had to fool around with the Arabic-English online dictionary.  And not too sure about Arabic grammar right now.  I know that ana'asmee is My name. There is no "is".  So it becomes, when translated "My name Alice or Anisa."  

I have also learned the first line of Surah al-Fatihah (the first, most important, surah in the Qur'an) (surah meaning chapter).  I have learned to write and read it in Arabic without having to look at my cheat sheet.  

بسم لله الر حمن الر حيم

Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.  In the name of Allah, the beneficent the merciful.  It's kind of interesting that in English, that sentence is nine words.   In Arabic, it's three. 

But remember, read Arabic right to left, not left to right.  My biggest issue with that hasn't been doing that.  It's when using the Arabic keyboard, I want to switch the keys around and keep hitting the tab key for the backspace key.  I mean, that key hasn't moved.  But in my brain, the whole keyboard has flipped.  

So why (or how) can I do this?  I am teaching myself Arabic while the boys are taking Arabic lessons.  I learn a little from being at the class with them and have a few Arabic speaking friends in real life as well as on line who've been helping me out. It is most definitely a challenge.  And yes, it's one I'm doing because I'm Muslim.  But it's not because I'm Muslim that I'm doing it.  That doesn't make sense, does it?  Well, I'm choosing to learn this language because I'm Muslim.  But I was also looking for a challenge because I'm unable to continue taking university courses because here in Ontario, if you want to go to university, you have to be rich.  Even just to do one class it's nearly $1000 with the books.  Most of us don't make that kind of money where we have a thousand dollars that we can spare to take a course.  So one of the brothers in the local community is teaching the boys and me.  

Honestly, I'm having fun.  I'm learning to write and using the Qur'an to do so. I'm also picking things out in Arabic and transliterating them.  Then I'll start going through to find the translation.  To me, that's how I learn.  Just learning to speak it wouldn't work with my brain.  I kind of do it backwards.  Most people learn to speak and then read and the write.  Or read then speak then write.  Not me - I write first.  So as time goes on, I'll probably record more and more of what i learn.  But at the moment, this is my interest.  And I'm really enjoying it.

3 comments:

  1. WOW! You are dong such a great job!! I am so proud of you!

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  2. Very cool! We have a ton of stuff in Arabic laying around our house. Maybe I'll start taking pictures of some of the things and post them for you to translate. :)

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