LANGUAGE
Twenty-seven students - six more than last year, a dozen more than five years ago - are taking Washington University's first-semester Arabic class this fall. They started in August, on the other side of the Sept. 11 divide.
Since then, organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sought to hire people fluent in Arabic. It's a matter now of national security, a key to the secrets of individuals and countries suddenly topping our national consciousness.
Arabic is spoken by 160 million people in 20 some countries of the Middle East and North Africa and, as the language of the Quran, is familiar to millions more throughout the wider Muslim world.
Americans, often derided abroad as foreign-language phobic, are especially laggard in Arabic.
The 2000 census found only 355,150 Americans over 5 who speak the language at home. According to the Modern Language Association, just 164 two- and four-year U.S. colleges and universities out of a total of about 3,000 offer Arabic courses. The St. Louis area has only two of the 164 - Washington University and St. Louis Community College.
The last time the association counted, in 1998, college students nationwide registered for a total of 5,505 Arabic courses. But that was a 24 percent increase from three years before, making it the third fastest growing language on campus, behind biblical Hebrew and Korean.
Just looking at Arabic may put some prospective students off. Its loopy and jagged script looks forbiddingly foreign to Western eyes accustomed to the Roman alphabet. But the script is the easiest part, teachers and students say.
Mahmoud Abdalla's first-semester class at Washington University proves the point. Two months into their study, his students have learned an entirely new 28-letter alphabet. They can read short selections and write simple sentences without stopping to remind themselves that, in Arabic, one does both from right to left.
More impressively yet, they speak, doing their best to get their tongues and teeth around Arabic's throaty and lisping sounds. At Abdalla's insistence, they mostly leave their English at the door. From his opening greeting to his closing goodbye, he conducts the class almost entirely in Arabic. Cupping his ear in his right hand, making a come-on motion with the left hand, he encourages his students to respond in kind. And they do, however haltingly.
They repeat words and phrases after him. They answer his questions. Judging by the frequent laughter, they joke with one another. He breaks into English now and then only to reinforce a point of grammar.
Washington University is unusual in offering four full years of Arabic, enough for a major or minor. Abdalla, an Egyptian with a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, is also teaching second- and third-year credit Arabic classes this semester.
Experts say it takes at least two years of study plus a few months abroad in an Arabic-speaking country to gain even minimal proficiency in the language. The reasons include its highly complex grammar, its plethora of dialects and its large vocabulary.
Laura El-Bendary is Abdalla's counterpart at St. Louis Community College, teaching at the Forest Park and Meramec campuses. She was born in this country, learned Arabic at Washington University and has lived in Egypt and Jordan. She has a total of 18 students this semester, compared with an average of about 12. Her classes, like Washington University's, started in August.
Sept. 11 motivated her students. "They're very interested in the culture and the religion," she said.
That describes Marilyn Koncen, one of El-Bendary's noncredit students. "There's so much I want to know about the Middle East and the Muslim religion," she said.
One of Koncen's classmates does business with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; another is gearing up for a doctoral program in Egyptology. One woman, a Muslim, wants to be able to read the Quran.
This woman is among a major group of Arabic students their teachers describe as "heritage learners," those who want to get in touch with their national or religious backgrounds.
Omar Awar, in Abdalla's second-year class at Washington University, is another such learner. Lebanese by birth, he's studying Arabic because "it would be nice when I go back to be able to communicate more." Abdalla says he also gets students who take up Arabic in order to make better sense of the Middle East. Some students want to travel in that part of the world, and others want a challenge, he says.
All good reasons, all personal. That they could use Arabic in the service of their country seems not to have dawned on students yet. Mention to Abdalla's or El-Bendary's students that the FBI and CIA are eagerly recruiting Arabic speakers, and they respond blankly with looks that seem to say "so what?"
Abdalla said their attitude reflects more lack of confidence than lack of interest. "They're not sure they're up to it at this stage," he said. ==============
NEWS: More students are taking Arabic at colleges in St. Louis this semester, but they all signed up before the attacks on Sept. 11.
ISSUE: Classes have not swelled since the attacks, nor do students here seem to be heeding a call yet from the FBI and CIA for Arabic speakers. Most students give personal reasons, such as wanting to learn more about their own heritage, for taking Arabic.
Reporter Susan C. Thomson covers higher education for the Post-Dispatch. \Reporter Susan C. Thomson: \E-mail: sthomson@post-dispatch.com \Phone: 314-209-1315
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