Language, Language, Language

My language training is going well, although I get exhausted very quickly trying to speak in Berber so much. I had a practice session with my language teacher today and she said I was probably at an intermediate low level, which is above what I need to be at this point!!! Yea!! I’m happy all my studying is paying off. Hopefully I won’t bomb the test in next week and I’ll continue to improve quickly. Being immersed in a culture certainly helps you pick up language quickly.

I think my biggest hurdle with the language is the lack of written literature. Berber is a spoken language only, so there are no books, dictionaries, manuals, etc. I hadn’t realized how helpful those were when I was learning German. I’m trying to create some of my own, but it’s difficult. The language structure is entirely different than any other language I’ve studied. For example, you rarely ever use personal pronouns, and possession is shown by adding a specific ending to a word or verb. For example, to say my house, I say “tigmi” and add the ending “inu”. Her house is Tigminm.

And of course, I find the prepositions very confusing. In Berber, you hang something in the wall (not on the wall). I hope I get them figured out eventually, because right now its all very confusing. I think once I get to my site, and can spend as much time as I need studying, I’ll get them figured out fairly quickly. Maybe I’ll try developing an exercise like my high school German teacher had as do. We’d have to take an object and put it in a box, on a box, next to the winder, etc. and say the phrase in German. It helped a lot in memorizing the correct way to put everything.

My host family has been great about helping me learn the language. Every time I get out homework, at least two of them will come and sit by me to help me with whatever I’m trying to do. They try to teach me the appropriate responses in every situation and yell at the little kids when they giggle at my poor pronunciation (of course, I’m totally clueless about most of my faux-pas, but its nice that they are looking out for me. )

I think I’ll start studying French as well, since Berber is only spoken in certain parts of Morocco. French is the official language used by the government and would probably be very helpful as I travel.