A little Americana for Prince(ss) William

Apparently I'm now taking requests for what to blog about. This one's for you William. Thanks for the phone call. (Jelly Bean and The Jeremy--yours is coming. And here's a shout out to Papa Ron.)

Much to my Fousa-learned chagrin, the word in the local Arabic for "alot/many/much" is 'barsha.' (As compared to the Fousa that I learned, which is "owee." As in what 3 year olds say when they they have a boo-boo.) I learned 'barsha' my first day in class when Teacher asked what words in Arabic do I know already, and I responded, "All the Allah words. Inshallah, mashallah, humdulallah." She laughed hysterically and finally choked through her laughter, "All the Allah words. Behee barsha." (Very good.)

Last week, Teacher and I were working on what I have called "family words." I learned man, woman, men, women, husband, wife, mother, father, etc. I don't remember why, but Teacher said, "Barsha! Barsha! Barsha!"

And the intonation she said it with sounded exactly like Jan Brady whining, "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!"

Well, since we were learning all those family words and Teacher now has the Brady Bunch in my head, I thought to myself, "I know alot of these words. I could translate that." So I went home and gave myself the homework of translating the theme song of The Brady Bunch into Arabic.

Now before you get all impressed with me...I only did what I could (which wasn't much). Here's my broken, 3-weeks-of-language-learning version of the Brady Bunch.

There is a story of a pretty lady. She has three very pretty daughters.

(Skip the part about "all of them had hair of gold,") like their mother, (and skip the part about the youngest one in curls.)

There is a story of a man. His name is Brady. He has three sons. They are four men (skip the part about them living all together, yet they were all alone.)

Until this one day, this woman (met--didn't know the verb yet) this man. They know (skip that it was much more than a hunch that this group could somehow form) a family.

The end.

Then, the next day in class, while learning vegetables (yall have already heard all about that), I learned the word for BUNCH and got all excited to show my Brady BUNCH translation. Teacher had a hard time grasping a family grouped as vegetables.

But my educating Teacher about Americana isn't limited to the Brady Bunch. Oh no. Because apparently learning a new culture/language brings to the surface all sorts of American culture I haven't dug up in years.

Like yesterday when I said, "Dude!" in class, and she laughed and explained that "dude" means "worms" in Arabic. Which, since we were learning verbs, made me think to translate "Nobody likes me, nobody loves me, I guess I'll go eat worms." (And yes, I can now sing that in Arabic.) Or like when I said, "That's bologna!" to my roommate, who then asked "What is bologna?" And I began singing the Oscar Meyer song. Or during the first week of class when Teacher said, "As you wish," and I told her that made me think of the Princess Bride. She said we should watch it, but I explained that she might not catch all the humor--like the title character being named Buttercup.

So I had to explain what is Buttercup. And then the song "Build me up Buttercup." And then Motown.

Really...I think Teach is getting more language/culture than I am. I tremble to think what will happen when she calls one of her friends a maqlay dar--home skillet.