{"id":2123,"date":"2014-05-12T07:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T11:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=2123"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:24:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:24:48","slug":"the-thrill-is-gone-arabic-italian-and-blissful-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2014\/05\/12\/the-thrill-is-gone-arabic-italian-and-blissful-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thrill is Gone: Arabic, Italian, and Blissful Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itchy<\/a><\/p>\n

Certain languages have a charm or magic about them which\u00a0only exists so long as you have no idea what they’re talking about.<\/p>\n

I personally find Arabic to be the most aesthetically pleasing written script. There are a number of\u00a0beautiful Asian alphabets, including ornate Hindi, swirling Burmese, and precise\u00a0Chinese. But to me, written Arabic exudes an ancient grandeur that surpasses all others. I’ve spent hours in museums ogling mind-bogglingly lavish\u00a0Qur’an pages like this one<\/a>. The calligraphy seems\u00a0to seep out from the decorative patterns on the border, stretching out across\u00a0the lines like inky raindrops running down a window pane. But anyone can be impressed by ancient texts – while living in Morocco I was just as easily awed by cereal boxes, maps, and, as you can see from the comic above, stop signs.<\/p>\n

Of course, I can’t read a word of Arabic.<\/p>\n

And I think this is key. Anyone with even a passable knowledge of written Arabic will be scoffing heartily at this point. “Puh! Baw! Scoff! How patronizing! Typical Western ethnocentrism, finding beauty in ‘oriental’ cultural objects\u00a0through ignorance. If you love it so much, why not go tattoo misspelled words on yourself? It’s not like it matters!” Fair enough. I agree that it’s my lack of knowledge which fuels my appreciation (side note: did you know Chinese students have been getting nonsensical English words tattooed on them, because English letters are “just more special<\/a>“?). But I’m not being patronizing, I speak from experience. I don’t\u00a0want<\/em> to learn how to read Arabic, because I know what will happen if I do.\u00a0It’s already happened to me before with Italian.<\/p>\n

I personally find\u00a0Italian to be the most aesthetically pleasing spoken language. Or I did, four years ago, before I met the Italian girl who would become my wife (all right, I might be biased). Yes, French has a certain\u00a0je ne sais quoi<\/em>, and Korean bubbles with enthusiasm, but hearing an Italian on a tirade sounds like the rhythmic, cyclic pitter-patter of rain drumming on the roof\u00a0(forgive me, it’s a rainy day. I’m full of rain metaphors). I recall one time when we were first dating, back when I didn’t speak a word of Italian, I had my then-girlfriend read aloud from the publisher’s copyright page of her university textbook. You could have read tax law\u00a0to me, and it would have sung me to sleep.<\/p>\n

Until I learned how to actually speak<\/em> Italian, that is.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the rub, my friends. Now that my Italian is conversational, while I can still appreciate a good Italian tirade, I no longer hear one long, lovely string of unbroken music. I hear\u00a0words!<\/em> I hear verbs and adjectives and conjugations and prepositions. My brain works double time to convert those rhythmic raindrops into communicative messages. The language is no longer a passive experience washing over me, it’s now a practical tool, it’s an implement, used to accomplish a specific task, and unfortunately that has blunted the beauty. It’s like when you love a certain song, and then you listen, really\u00a0listen<\/em> to the words for the first time, and you realize how stupid they are. Suddenly the song loses its magic.<\/p>\n

This is why part of me doesn’t want to learn how to read Arabic. I would love to learn to speak Arabic – I think if you can\u00a0speak English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin, you could travel just about anywhere in the world and get by. But if I learned how to read the Arabic written language, the magic would vanish. Spidering webs of ink would become mere words, instructions or lists or directions.<\/p>\n

A stop sign would be just a stop sign. Isn’t that sad?<\/p>\n

“Of course not,” you say, “don’t be silly.” And you’re right. We’re here to learn languages, after all! Our\u00a0appreciation for their beauty got us into it, and one day, we too will speak Italian with the bouncing flourishes of a native speaker! We too will write Arabic with the delicate\u00a0swirls of a native hand! We will join the players up\u00a0on stage, not satisfied to simply sit clapping in the audience! Some day, our skills will be so great that we will encourage\u00a0some other person to pick up a language book and crack the code, no matter how pretty it may look or sound. Go now,\u00a0do what every artist has always done upon being inspired by a master’s work:\u00a0go out and inspire someone else!<\/p>\n

And\u00a0how about you? What languages do you find the prettiest? How can we regain some of that magic? Are stop signs sad, or am I off my rocker?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Itchy

Certain languages have a charm or magic about them which\u00a0only exists so long as you have no idea what they’re talking about. I personally find Arabic to be the most aesthetically pleasing written script. There are a number of\u00a0beautiful Asian alphabets, including ornate Hindi, swirling Burmese, and precise\u00a0Chinese. But to me, written Arabic exudes an…<\/p>\n

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