Aboufoul 1

Mohammad Aboufoul
Professor Blandford
UWRT 1103
14 September 2015
Arabic Struggles
When I try to think back to how I learned English, nothing specific comes to mind. All I
can remember is that I could speak it, I learned the alphabet in preschool, and soon after, I
became able to read words that I later strung together into sentences. As much as I try to
remember any struggles or difficulties or day to day challenges in becoming more and more
literate in English, Im left with gaps in my memory. What does stick out to me, however, is my
journey in learning Arabic.
As a child, I was raised in a Middle Eastern household. My parents and family members
had only spoken in Arabic and expected the same of me. Before going to preschool, my only
experiences with English were from watching TV shows like Barney, Sesame Street, and
Bill Nye the Science Guy as I was told by my mother. So for the first three years of my life,
before I learned to read or write in any language, I had been absorbing a mix of English and
Arabic. About a year after I began preschool, a Sunday school for the Muslim community had
opened up in Charlotte. Their focuses werent solely based on Islamic studies as they made sure
to set aside time for Arabic lessons. I remember my first day walking into the class. Everyone
had already arrived as my mother guided me in and spoke to the instructor. She soon left as I
joined the group.
The first thing I noticed was that I was the youngest one in the room. I felt a bit
intimidated, but soon relaxed as everyone was so welcoming. The teacher gave each student an

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odd character on a piece of construction paper. Mine looked like a crescent moon with a dot over
the edge of it. The teacher began the first lesson by telling us of the Arabic alphabet and all of its
twenty-eight letters. My letter was Zayn, the Arabic equivalent of Z. The days that soon
followed were quite informative and enjoyable. I learned about how the letters connected
together to form words and how they changed shape in the process. I learned how to pronounce
text that had previously looked like hieroglyphics and soon, how to read simple sentences. Of
course I had read very slowly at first and stuttered quite a bit that year, but in my defense, I was
only four years old.
The year ended and I had felt pretty special. Not many four year olds could (sort of) read
and write in two languages. The next school year began and I returned to the same Islamic school
with a different instructor. The details were quite a blur, and to be honest, I dont remember
learning anything new. We just continued practicing reading and writing Arabic without learning
anything serious. My second year passed and I was greeted with some disappointing news. The
Sunday school program was closing for good. I didnt know why, but now I guess it was due to a
lack of funding. A new school had opened up not too far away to accommodate for those who
wanted to continue their studies.
For the next four to five years I attended the new school and all I can say about it is that it
was a huge waste of time. Every year the same exact material was taught. The thing about this
school was that they started every year out with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch and
doing exactly what I had done during my first year of Sunday school. The Arabic teachers at this
school didnt even know any Arabic, which made things even worse. I left knowing nothing new
with four years of my life gone.

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At home, I had faced ridicule by my parents and my family for how little I knew after so
many years. When I visited my family overseas for the first time (I was about five), I was
practically speechless. I had thought that I was fluent enough to communicate to them and
attempted to do so at first. But of course, I made many mistakes and could barely understand
what my aunts and cousins were telling me.
After a few years, I could understand most of what they were saying but I would still
stutter and mix words up. My family responded by laughing. Every time I would mess up, a burst
of laughter would come from whomever I was speaking to. It was worse at family gatherings.
Everyone would tell their stories and chat. When I eagerly wanted to throw in my two cents, I
would, nine times out of ten, make a silly mistake which resulted in the room erupting in
laughter for what seemed to be hours. It hurt as a child and hurt as it continued through
adolescence. Its not like the ridicule ended a day or so after each silly mistake. My family
members would be in the living room relaxing or just chatting when one of them would say,
Remember when Mohammad said _____ instead of _____! or The other day, I took
Mohammad to the market and he said _____ to the grocer! His reaction was priceless! or
sometimes Hey Mohammad, what was that thing that you said the other day? When you made
that absurd mistake? And the laughter would continue and the teasing went on and on. I would
pout and cry but that only resulted in comments like What are you a baby? Do you need me to
get you some pampers?
It hurt to be mocked constantly. No one else would get picked on, not even my younger
sister, even though she wasnt any more fluent than me. Even my younger cousins would make
fun of me.

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As the years passed and as I became an adolescent, my family became critical of me in a
more serious manner. My parents would sit me down and would tell me to read from one of their
books. The books were an inch thick and had twenty to thirty lines of Arabic condensed to a size
twelve font. I would look at the text for a few seconds and then Id try to pronounce the first
word. I read at a rate of about ten words per minute. My parents sighed and then berated me for
the next few hours about how terrible I was. Theyd say that they had sent me to Sunday school
for years and that I should have a PhD in Arabic by now. Whenever some child came on an
Arabic channel and began speaking or reading Arabic fluently, my parents would compare me to
him and remind me how he was so much better than me as well as the fact that he was
younger. I would say that I had been raised in America and that I hadnt grown up in an Arabic
speaking country nor lived in one long enough but they would dismiss such nonsense and
continue on. Overseas, my cousins and aunts would tell me not to speak to anyone in public so
that they wouldnt know that I wasnt from there.