Thursday 8 October 2009
Thursday 1 October 2009
Grammar is not a game!
Professor Yusuf wrote a sentence on the board. Zaid stands accused of killing the driver...and his son. (زيد متهم بقتل سايق و إبنه). "Grammar is not a game," he said, calling on a student to close the door, barring all late comers from the lecture hall. The place was packed to the gills with mesmerized Syrians. "This sentence, depending on how we place the diacritical marks on ibn (son) can mean either that Zaid and his son were accused of killing the driver or that one culprit, Zaid, stands accused of killing the driver and the drivers' son. Grammar is not, I repeat, a game. Grammar is life!!"
I was far too captivated by the professor's rapid fire fus'ha to notice the melodramatic aside. He whisked us through the next two hours, I and nearly three hundred freshmen on the edge of our Ottoman era benches. Professor Yusuf threw us stanza after classical stanza, manipulated verses like a magician, an inveritable Gandalf of Grammar, "Is the poet al-Jareer telling us that every heart seeks its beloved, or is he telling us something more, about his own heart in particular. thi'qalbin, is it what it seems, or is thi really short of hathihi?!"
Some, unable to contain themselves, would shout out answers, flail their arms and rise from their seats. All of this went against the almost nineteenth century rules governing teacher student etiquette at Damascus University. "We are an in an adab department after all, let us conduct ourselves with adab," he said, playing on the dual meaning of adab as both grammar and manners. Smiling, Professor Yusuf assured students there would be ample time in the coming classes for outbursts of morphological enthusiasm. Hijabs glittered under the auditorium lights, pens scratched furiously trying to keep up, and the professor soldiered on.
Clearly in over my head, I nevertheless knew I had come to the right place. Language institutes for foreigners? Not I! Hanif al-Batuta, fresh from Bengal, will sit in a Syrian class with Syrian students. And before I realized how desperately behind I was falling, my mind was already dancing with thoughts of those early Persian linguists, to Sibawayh, who composed an elaborate and precise Arabic grammar as early as the 8th century...
I walked out of class, my mind awash with classical Arabic. As for the bemused expression on the face of the roadside fruit vendor, I only realized after the fact that I had asked him something that roughly approximated to, "When, pray, shall yonder bus arrive at this here spot where we are currently standing."
I was far too captivated by the professor's rapid fire fus'ha to notice the melodramatic aside. He whisked us through the next two hours, I and nearly three hundred freshmen on the edge of our Ottoman era benches. Professor Yusuf threw us stanza after classical stanza, manipulated verses like a magician, an inveritable Gandalf of Grammar, "Is the poet al-Jareer telling us that every heart seeks its beloved, or is he telling us something more, about his own heart in particular. thi'qalbin, is it what it seems, or is thi really short of hathihi?!"
Some, unable to contain themselves, would shout out answers, flail their arms and rise from their seats. All of this went against the almost nineteenth century rules governing teacher student etiquette at Damascus University. "We are an in an adab department after all, let us conduct ourselves with adab," he said, playing on the dual meaning of adab as both grammar and manners. Smiling, Professor Yusuf assured students there would be ample time in the coming classes for outbursts of morphological enthusiasm. Hijabs glittered under the auditorium lights, pens scratched furiously trying to keep up, and the professor soldiered on.
Clearly in over my head, I nevertheless knew I had come to the right place. Language institutes for foreigners? Not I! Hanif al-Batuta, fresh from Bengal, will sit in a Syrian class with Syrian students. And before I realized how desperately behind I was falling, my mind was already dancing with thoughts of those early Persian linguists, to Sibawayh, who composed an elaborate and precise Arabic grammar as early as the 8th century...
I walked out of class, my mind awash with classical Arabic. As for the bemused expression on the face of the roadside fruit vendor, I only realized after the fact that I had asked him something that roughly approximated to, "When, pray, shall yonder bus arrive at this here spot where we are currently standing."
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