Arabic continues

I see that my Arabic 101 post was deleted, probably by me. Oh well, who wants to hear all my outdated angst anyway? :-) We are getting into the meat of things now, things that I didn't know before, which is really nice. It was good to solidify and standardize what I knew, but much more exciting to learn new grammatical structures!!! The best thing is, I can also transfer this knowledge to Lebanese (with some help). I pulled out another Arabic textbook which is great as a grammar reference, and am filling in some weak points of ours with it.

One of the authors of our textbook has some little video clips online with lectures on Arabic and how it's not really that hard to learn. Well, maybe....... Okay, the verb system is regular- every verb is unpredictable! She steered clear of plurals and the things that really do make the language hard. I'll probably be convinced of how amazingly easy it is to learn after I've known it for 15 years, too. :-) Reminds me of the person who told me that once I learned one Semitic language, the rest would be easy. Yes, it's learning that first one that's the killer!

Anyway, French is also getting more complicated, and my piles of flashcards are growing and growing. It's taken me a while to get into the swing of being in school, and now my timing with flashcards and homework is improving some. The first oral exam was pretty funny- I was delighted that my answers were so concise and to the point; but my grade suffered because I didn't talk enough! No oral exams in Arabic; we do skits instead.