السلام عليكم

I'm in the process of trying to learn Arabic. Should you harbor any illusions otherwise, let me tell you that it is not easy. I'm finally pretty familiar with the alphabet and can read (or at least transliterate) and write very, very slowly. Surprisingly, the right-to-left thing is not as confusing as I thought it would be. On the other hand, the fact that it is an abjad, or writing system with consonants only, makes it very difficult to "sound out" words. Of course in beginner's books and in the Qur'an they do use vowels (marking the letters with little accent-like diacritical marks) but in most writing they don't.

One thing that is fascinating about Arabic is how you literally cannot learn the language without learning about the culture and Islam. Two side benefits: I finally understand why it's so hard to spell Qaddafi and I now know what some people's names mean. For instance, Kareem Abdul Jabbar means "generous servant of the Compeller" where Al-Jabbar (الجبر) is one of the many names for Allah.

It will all be pretty pointless until I get the CDs and learn how to pronounce it. For now, the letter ^ceyn just scares me because one book alternatively describes it as similar to gagging and "like a bleating lamb, but gentler". The explanation that it is a pharyngal voiced fricative didn't help either.

Oh, in case you're wondering (or your browser doesn't support it), the title of this post is the traditional Arabic greeting, "as-salaamu ^calaikum" or "peace be with you".