Fun with Language

In a perfect world, if you want to learn a language, full immersion is definitely the best strategy. Unfortunately, for students of Berber language, full immersion is nearly impossible to achieve. Even in my quaint, rural community, I routinely hear at least as many words from outside my "target language" as within. Of course, part of my problem is that I live here with my wife so I always have somebody with whom to engage in English-speaking conversations. Even if I were alone, there are just so many other languages being used. Men usually speak Darija (Moroccan Arabic), which is the preferred language of business; and educated professionals (teachers, nurses, etc.) commonly include French or the occasional Standard Arabic in their speech. Despite myself, I have learned to understand, but not speak, basic French language; like numbers and travel questions.
Nearly everybody in my area speaks some form of TashlHite (the Berber language). This varies in dialect depends on where they are from. Just about every region has its own unique dialect. If your lucky, dialectical changes are just differences in pronunciation. For example, up north in the Khenifra Province, they switch their "k" sound with a "sh" sound (i.e. "tafusht" instead of "tafukt", meaning "sun"). Or in my site, for some reason we replace most "b" sounds with "v". Most of the time, regional dialects also have their own vocabulary, so that their is at least 3 or 4 words for the same thing; one for each dialectical variation. For example; the word in my site for "good" is "iHla". In the next town over, which is all Arabic, the word for "good" is "mzien" or "zween". Just to the south they say "ifulki", and just to the west they say "ishwa". Incidentally, "ishwa" means "sharp" in my site (both smart and like a knife), which brings me to my next point:
TashliHite is short on adjectives. "IHla" is the word for good, but it is also the only word for every other adjective that is a synonym of "good". How do you say "amazing, awesome, wonderful, cool, neat, nice, hard-working, beautiful, great, pretty, and cute"? "IHla"! If your really trying to emphasize how good something is, the best you can do is start adding synonyms from the other dialects; "iHla", "zween", "ifulki", etc.. Actually, there is a word for beautiful ("idrf") , but I've never heard anyone use it. And there is a word for "hard-working" ("iharsh"), but in some dialects that just means busy. In my site, the word for fast ("izrbn"), also has the connotation of being busy or late for something. When I told my host mom that we were going fast during one of our daily health walks, she thought I was telling her I was late for something and needed to turn back. Now I know that if I want to compliment her on her walking speed, I have to say "datazalt", which literally translates to "you run".
That brings me to another point. Do you know what we say when we go on daily walks with our host mom? We say "Anskr L'marche". Her doctor told her to walk every day, but he must of used the French word for walk so now we say "lets make walking", with an ugly French word, even though their are perfectly good TashlHite words for "walk (verb)", "walking (noun)" and "run (verb)", among other possible options.
The "mohim" (point of the conversation in Darija) is that while I am technically immersed in foreign language most of the time, the variety of language, and the idiosyncrasies of these languages, make it very hard to master. That is not to say that I'm not getting better. It is just a way of justifying the following collection of embarrassing language-related "faux pas"s (arrrg... another French word).
"You?": Unlike the English language, TashlHite has more than one form of "you". There are in fact four versions; masculine and feminine singular, and masculine and feminine plural. The first time I met my mquddam (like a neighborhood government official), I said, "How are you (feminine) doing today?" He brushed it off, but the mistake was not lost on him, or any of the native-speakers within earshot....

"That's Handy!": The first time Amber and I traveled to Ouarzazate alone, we were very cautious not to get ripped off by the taxi drivers. When one of them started speaking to us in French, thinking that we were tourists, I replied in TashlHite, in an attempt to convince him that we were locals not to be messed with. Unfortunately I mixed up the body parts vocabulary lesson and said, "We don't need a taxi, we're just going to walk into town on our hands". The taxi driver was impressed, but not by my language skills...

"The Moroccan Mom Joke": We have some great, friendly neighbors on our neighborhood, who were early to accept us into the community, and willing to be good listeners when our language skills were still abysmal. During one of our conversations with them, we expressed our desire for a pet cat. A few months later, when their cat had kittens, they brought us one of the cats as a gift. Shortly after that, we were visiting their house for afternoon tea, and I saw an adult cat roaming around. I pointed at the cat, intending to ask if that was our new cat's mother. But because of difficulties with the possession indicator, I looked right at our neighbor, pointing at her cat and said, "Is that your mom?". It wasn't....

"Sharing Is Not For Everyone": We recently had 16 PC volunteers staying in our house for a regional meeting. Needless to say, that many people requires a lot of food, and much bigger cookware than we were equipped with. The day before everyone arrived I went over to our host-mom's house and asked her if I could borrow her large pot. The word for pot is "gamila". Unfortunately, I used the word "jamila", which is the name of her oldest daughter. She said, "Sean you can't have Jamila. She's got three young daughters of her own, but I'll let you borrow some pots instead...."

"Lady Bug": One day, while wandering through the fields with some friends, I noticed a small ladybug on a blade of grass. I pointed out the bug to our friends and asked, "whats this called?" Their response was "tabHusht" which is just the generic work for bug. Having just recently learned that word, I was excited to here it come up in conversation,a dn even more excited to try and use it. I exclaimed,"In America we say 'bug of woman'(tabHusht n tamagart)". The women we were with seemed to think this was much funnier than it seemed to me, until I realized that I had said "taboosh" instead or "tabHusht". That "H"soud is the difference between saying "bug" and saying "breast". I tried to explain myself through the giggling, but its very possible some people here still think we call those cute little red and black-polka dotted insects "breast of a woman".