I have so far learned six Arabic letters. There are 28 letters (only two more than English) which sounds easy except that each letter changes shape depending upon its position in the word. So the letter shape shifts if it is the first position, the last position, or somewhere in between. Like English, the letters look different if they are printed or in cursive, though it doesn't appear that people use printing for regular communication (unlike in English where you can always fall back on printing when the cursive becomes unintelligable). Like English, the phoneme the letter is linked to changes so the pronunciation is never quite clear. Unlike European languages, Arabic is written from right to left, but numbers are from left to right.
So when I'm walking down the street and see a sign, I try to identify the letters that I know...kind of like what I probably did when I was three or four. I can almost feel my brain working, trying to make neuroconnections that have not had to be reworked for a long, long time. Actually sometimes it seems I can hear my brain working on this. Exercise for the brain.
