Well not really "the far side of the world" but from my perch in America it seem that way. I created this blog, as a place to share my stories, observations and creative impulses that crop up in my day-to-day life during my Peace Corps service.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Vowels... We don't need no stinkin' vowels

Got a message from my friend Jim commenting on the lack of vowels in the darija words I write... well that is because there are no vowels, we place a few here and there to make it a little easier on anyone who is "latin" based in language. Here are a few example of words: fzg, sffr, rbH, tmmn...the list goes on, WTF you say, (see no vowels there either)...haha. Since the language I am learning was not a written language 50 years ago, it is a transliteration from the spoke word into a latin base so us poor souls can wrap our mind around it... did I actually just write that and understand it, yikes. Of course I will want to learn arabic script once I get a handle on the language. I of course want to badly round off the harsh sounds with my even present "ah" at the end of every word. Boston Darija has a scary yet soothing sound to it.

Sidebar What is the story with the F'en rosters here... I thought these creatures only cock-a-doddle-do'd as the sunrise was approaching. Well not here they make that pain in the arse noise ALL morning, day and sometimes at night. Now I know being from a city the only roster I know is from" Loonie Tunes" FogHorn Leghorn and he never crowed outside of sunrise... WTF it is 1:35 in the afternoon as I write this and a damn roster is cock-a-doddling.... ssshit!

Back to writing and studying my language... oh one last thing, a "q" sounds like a "k" deep from the throat, the "x" sounds like the "ch" in yech but even deeper in the voice box... it is just next to impossible to make these sounds in the flow of a sentence, for me anyways.

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