A friend helped me to find a guy and then on a Monday we started learning Tunisian Arabic. I have spent a few months learning Algerian Arabic and a few weeks on Modern Standard Arabic, and I’ve studied a bit of Arabic grammar with several books. But this time it’s meant to be long-term and…
How could I keep this high level I had achieved after having coming back from Spain? Well, the answer is easy: I couldn’t! To hold your level, there are many necessary things: talk regularly to mother tongue speakers continue learning new stuff even though you may think you know “enough” stay inside the culture of…
In Algeria, as in all Arabic countries, there is Standard Arabic, which is the official national language. In addition, there are many other dialects spoken, dialects of Arabic and also several Berber languages. In Algeria there must be around 15 minority groups of Berbers, but no one knows exactly how many. About 30 people live…
Why on earth do you still need to attend language courses once you have been in the country for more than a year? Well, I had to. Even though I had just came back from Spain, having been there for the third time for a total of over nine months, I had to go back…
By now we have learned a lot about the culture, language and people of this country. But there are some things we can’t get through our heads. We just don’t get it. For example, our landlady says, “If I make this meal tomorrow, I’ll invite you over.” We express our thanks. The next afternoon a…
Now that we are in country, there are some urgent tasks to do that we have been putting off for a long time. That means that I am spending more time than I used to at the computer. Unfortunately, there is only one table in our apartment, the chairs are too low, and we can’t…
A year earlier I had tried to get a scholarship in California. Somehow I thought it would be fun to study my languages in the United States – an opinion the committee that granted these did not share. They asked a lot of questions about my motivation and also about California. As I hadn’t studied…
Time is money, they say where we come from. Time is life, you could say here. Whereas people in our country often bustle along the street looking agitated and rushed, here it’s normal for people to stand around chatting or doing nothing at all. Recently I needed a haircut. I hesitated a long time because…
I had said about the second semester: „Our teacher came into class the first day and we had a hard time understanding her. She had decided to speed up a tiny bit. Everything was a bit tougher.” Well, this time again: She came in and was even faster. We had to work a lot more…
In our first few days in Algeria we have quite a bit of time to meet people and get used to living here. I have the idea of learning to read and write using Arabic script while we’re here. That will also be useful to us later for language learning, which we probably won’t have…