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Figuring Out the Arabic Language For many years my foreign language skills had been limited to some high school Spanish and a few favorite German words, including "bratwurst" and "strudel." I learned a little Arabic shortly before I moved to Qatar, as I'll describe below, but most foreigners don't need to know much if any Arabic to get around Qatar, especially in the larger cities. The official language in Qatar is Arabic, of course, but like much of the world, Qatar is becoming a dual-language country: the local language (in this case, Arabic) is used by the locals while English – or at least, broken English – is used by many non-locals.
English is more commonly spoken and understood in the urban areas of Qatar than in rural areas. It may be hard to find anyone who speaks English in smaller towns here, and most of the signs in rural areas of Qatar are only in Arabic. In larger cities, however, almost all of the signs are in both Arabic and English and most retailers speak at least a little English. That’s because there’s such a large expat population here – about 80% of people working and living in Qatar are from another country – that English is the unofficial second language in Qatar. Also, most road signs here, no matter where you are, are in both Arabic and English.
There are two basic steps for understanding any foreign word. Step 1 is to be able to read (and mentally pronounce) the word and Step 2 is to translate that word so you understand it. English uses the same Latin alphabet as most European languages, such as French or Spanish, so if you speak only English, you can at least pronounce words written in another European language (Step 1). Because you can read and pronounce it, you can also make an educated guess at what the word means (Step 2). For example, the Spanish word for “market” is “mercado” so if you see the word “mercado” in a town in Mexico, you can read and pronounce it. You can also logically guess that it’s a market. For languages that use the Latin alphabet, you can usually pronounce every word you see. Sometimes you can even translate them into English.
Arabic uses a completely different alphabet, however, so if you can’t read or speak Arabic, then you can’t even pronounce the words (Step 1), let alone translate them into English (Step 2). Also, the Arabic language is read from right-to-left, instead of from left-to-right like the English language so it takes some getting used to. And interestingly enough, vowels in the Arabic language are often omitted from Arabic writings, like in a book or newspaper. It's just "understood" by the reader what the invisible vowel should be. All of these things – the strange alphabet, the right-to-left reading, and the invisible vowels – make Arabic a challenging language to learn.
I took a basic Arabic class at Portland Community College a few months before I moved here and it was helpful, especially in learning the Arabic alphabet. I also brought a book on Arabic with me to Qatar to refresh my memory and every week or so, I review the 28 characters of the Arabic language. I also play a little game when I go to the mall and see the store names in both English and Arabic. First I look at the Arabic word and try to pronounce it, then I check the English spelling to see if I’m right. I’ve learned the Arabic alphabet well enough so I can pronounce most of what I read in Arabic (Step 1), but I still can’t translate most of the words that I can pronounce into English (Step 2). So even though I can pronounce the Arabic words that I'm reading, I don't understand what those words mean in English.
For example, the road sign for “Yield” here has a word that’s written in Arabic characters and by reading those characters, I can pronounce the word as “af-sah.” I would have no idea of what “af-sah” meant except for the fact that it’s displayed on a “Yield” sign, so therefore I can deduce that “af-sah” must mean something like “yield” or “give way.”
But as rudimentary as my Arabic is, I’m leagues ahead of most of my Western colleagues here who, in general, have made little or no effort to learn Arabic. That’s reflects the fact that you don’t really need to know how to read or speak much Arabic to live in urban areas of Qatar, or most other Gulf countries. Nevertheless, it’s helpful to know a little Arabic (and, of course, it's required for certain jobs, especially in the government). If you at least make an attempt to speak some Arabic, it will help ingratiate you with the locals and you’ll have a more positive experience here. If you ever decide to visit the Persian Gulf area, you should first learn a few words of Arabic, including “Shokran” (thank you), “Salam” (hello) – or it’s more formal phrasing of, “Ah salam aluykum” (peace be upon you) – and “ma salama” (goodbye). Some of my Western colleagues here don’t even make an effort to do that.
To summarize, if you speak only English, you don’t have to worry about learning the Arabic language if you ever decide to visit a Gulf country. But it’s helpful, polite and respectful to learn at least a little Arabic.
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