the Greater Nomadic Council

Language Lessons

I have a feeling I'll never be learning Arabic:

Arabic is a VSO language, which means the verb usually comes before the subject and object. It has a dual number, so nouns and verbs must be learned in singular, dual, and plural. A present-tense verb has 13 forms. There are three noun cases and two genders. Some European languages have just as many forms to keep track of, but in Arabic the idiosyncrasies can be mind-boggling. When Karam explains that numbers are marked for gender—but most numbers take the opposite gender from the word they are modifying—we students stare at each other in slack-jawed solidarity. When we learn that adjectives modifying nonhuman plurals always have a feminine singular form—meaning that "the cars are new" comes out as "the cars, she are new"—I can hear heads banging on the desks around me. I want to do the same.

Even though the two most important skills in learning any language are memorization and pattern recognition, it helps if the language is also structured in a somewhat logical way. The rules this author gives as an example are completely arbitrary, however. It's one thing to remember that, as in Latin, French, and many other related languages, adjectives and nouns must agree in number and gender and, in the case of Latin, err, case, but rules that require things not to agree are just plain weird.