To Be or Not To Be

Vocabulary Word of the Day: Al Humdul'allah
Meaning: Thanks be to God
Uses: Response to everything

From: Self-described Grouchy Grammarian
To: Self
Re: Loosen up and embrace it, it's not changing (and if you don't embrace it, you're going to be wrong!)

The time that I began teaching English to native Arabic speakers correlated roughly to the time that Jacob's own Arabic studies were beginning to really flourish and he'd come home from class with interesting little tidbits about grammar and vocabulary. One factoid was particularly disturbing: there is no "be" verb in Arabic.

I know, I know, it sounds trivial and silly (and you're probably thinking, "110 degree heat and kitchen gnomes and you're thinking about "be" verbs?!"), but such is the nature of my disease.

It wasn't such a big deal when I was teaching--surely they could see the benefit of "be" verbs, right? No, they aren't just confusing add-ons to myriad tenses full of irregular conjugations. They are a defining element of who and what you are and about what you are communicating! Spanish has two "be" verbs (lucky) and lots of hybrid tenses just like English so that each minute detail of a situation can be aptly and complicatedly described if that is so the desire of the writer/speaker.

Of course I was foiled in nearly every instance of quiz or test in which they were on their own to remember this phantom verb. I was surrounded by fragmented sentences and incomplete tenses (horror!).

On Sunday (our first day of the week), I was, of course, faced with the ugly reality of the stripping of my [Arabic] literate and communicative self of all "be" verbs. I swear I almost had a panic attack as we studied the first few conversations and sentences.

"Whain cuub?"
I insisted on translating in my head "Where IS the cup?" (WRONG!)
"Kaif Halek?"
"How ARE you?" (WRONG!)
"Shoo hadtha"
"What'S going on here?" (STILL WRONG, EVEN IF YOU DON'T WRITE THE WHOLE THING!)
"Shoo isme?"
"What IS your name?" (WRONG!)

Are you getting tired of me being wrong? Because I sure am. And hey, most things can be said without the be verb anyway, so maybe I'll adopt their method. It's certainly simpler. But, then, simplifying things, well, that just wouldn't be me.