Pimsleur Level II: Finished!

Over coffee at Café Margot, I puzzled over the Arabic “Teach Yourself” book once again. It is overwhelming. I can’t read the Arabic well enough, plus the vocabulary/grammar is wildly different from Pimsleur. Basically, my own experience calls the series title into question, since I don’t, in fact, seem to be able to teach myself with this particular book.

Tonight I finished Pimsleur lesson 30 (Level II). I did it quite late, when I don’t generally like doing Pimsleur, but I made myself anyway. I tried to fold clothes at the same time, but had to stop. You really have to give this all your mental energy. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while doing Pimsleur lessons—at least not Arabic Pimsleur.

Anyway, this was the last lesson of Level II and had a ton of directions (like “take the first right,” “go left on such-and-such street,” etc.). As I’ve said before, I hate directions. I tend to remember vocabulary I care about much better than vocabulary I don’t. This has been quite enough direction-giving for me.

The word of the day that really did me in: something that sounded like hataghdi for “you will take.” What is that letter in the middle? I can’t understand it. Akhod is “I take,” so why is the sound in the middle of hataghdi so much more like an r than the consonant in akhod? That same thing just happened with two forms of another word, but I can’t remember which one right now.

A teacher could come in handy right about now.