The only Kurdish I know is 'thank you' and 'how are you?'. If someone asks me how I am, I ignore their question and ask them how they are instead; sometimes I thank them for their answer.
Every day a Kurdish lady comes to clean our apartment. We have cheerful but brief and slightly confusing conversations in her native tongue. Her remit is to mop floors and dust stuff; she is not supposed to do our laundry. Nonetheless she insists on washing and ironing all the clothes she can lay her hands on. I feel slightly guilty at this extra work she is doing, but I don't have the linguistic tools to put a stop to it, and oddly enough I haven't yet rushed to my English / Kurdish dictionary.
The other day I advised one of my team to transfer money by hawala, a clever Middle Eastern cash transfer device a bit like Western Union. The agents have no guarantee that they will receive the reimbursement from each other, but trust in honour, familial pride and presumably the threat of broken legs. My finance officer seemed a bit bewildered at my suggestion and with good reason, as I was insisting that his cash transfer was done by halawa, a tasty confectionary made with pistachios.
My Arabic is improving at a glacial pace, but I am getting good at annoying my Egyptian housemate by reading out the words on cereal packets very slowly and incorrectly. My progress is hampered by the fact that I have the book but not the accompanying cassette, so I may develop my own unique accent, which might be interesting. Mastering Arabic is by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar; a look at the fly-leaf reveals that Jane wrote it and Mahmoud drew the pictures, which I find quite amusing in a racial stereotype sort of way.
Every day a Kurdish lady comes to clean our apartment. We have cheerful but brief and slightly confusing conversations in her native tongue. Her remit is to mop floors and dust stuff; she is not supposed to do our laundry. Nonetheless she insists on washing and ironing all the clothes she can lay her hands on. I feel slightly guilty at this extra work she is doing, but I don't have the linguistic tools to put a stop to it, and oddly enough I haven't yet rushed to my English / Kurdish dictionary.
The other day I advised one of my team to transfer money by hawala, a clever Middle Eastern cash transfer device a bit like Western Union. The agents have no guarantee that they will receive the reimbursement from each other, but trust in honour, familial pride and presumably the threat of broken legs. My finance officer seemed a bit bewildered at my suggestion and with good reason, as I was insisting that his cash transfer was done by halawa, a tasty confectionary made with pistachios.
My Arabic is improving at a glacial pace, but I am getting good at annoying my Egyptian housemate by reading out the words on cereal packets very slowly and incorrectly. My progress is hampered by the fact that I have the book but not the accompanying cassette, so I may develop my own unique accent, which might be interesting. Mastering Arabic is by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar; a look at the fly-leaf reveals that Jane wrote it and Mahmoud drew the pictures, which I find quite amusing in a racial stereotype sort of way.
 |
| My spare time |
 |
| The Arabic bit says "corn flakes" - beautiful language |
No comments:
Post a Comment