Fri 21 Jan

I pick up the "Teach Yourself Arabic Script" book I've been carrying around for the past month - today might be a good time. Wow! What fun. It's like writing in a secret code without the need of a mirror, slide-rule or lemon juice. Those mysterious squiggles on newspaper headlines and advertising headlines will soon be meaningful.

I start with six easy letters and learn to write them in many combinations: a, ab, abba, baa, baba etc. I soon discover there's a lot to learn. Obviously there's the name of each letter. Then there's the sound it makes which can differ according to its position in the word. The shape also depends on the position within the word and the letter or letters it follows. Worse still, though Arabic is cursive (joined-up writing); yet printed Arabic is different from hand-written Arabic. So I do an exercise or two and surprise myself. My intellectually-directed, consciously-guided hand produces the same shapes as in the book. But am I learning the style of the printed or the hand-written Arabic? I soon realise I'll need to cover the same units again for learning to read Arabic. Reading my own handwriting in English is bad enough - my Arabic looks impossible.

To add further mystery and intrigue the short vowels are unwritten. "Bank" for example would be "BNK". You would have to know the word "bank" exists in order to guess that is what is meant. Perhaps the context would help. "BNK A CHQ" obviously gives you "bank a cheque". So I not only need to learn to write and read the script but significantly increase my vocabulary too.