But I’m not giving up just yet.

I’ve been living with a linguistic frustration for years: I share my daily life with two million Arabic speakers, and I can barely speak a word to them. The people who fix my car are Arab. The people who take care of my health are Arab. 40% of Jerusalemites are Arabic-speaking. The tragedy is that, like me, most Israelis don’t speak Palestinian Arabic. A large chunk of Arabs living here don’t speak Hebrew either, even educated ones. In many cases, both peoples resort to English to bridge the gap, which I find utterly absurd. No wonder we have problems getting on.

Yes, the school I teach in, like many others, boasts an Arabic elective. But guess what? During their three years of high school, the kids don’t learn to communicate in Palestinian Arabic at all. The best they can do is translate parts of the Koran or answer questions on an article in Al Jazeera. Ironically, it’s the army that offers the most effective and fastest route to fluency, training entire units to a high command of Palestinian Arabic. But it’s far too late for me.

Yes, most Israelis know a handful of basic words in Arabic. A lot of them can haggle pretty well in the language. But up until three months ago, I knew nothing save shukran. And I was embarrassed.

So, as part of my sabbatical year studies, I took a course in basic spoken Palestinian Arabic. It was a win-win—finally, I could have a basic lexicon in my pocket, and I get PD (professional development) credits at the same time. PD credits bump up a teacher’s salary, but sadly not enough to keep up with hikes in gas prices.

The course was solid. I was bombarded with questions and exercises. Each unit was dense with lexical gems and useful chunks. The video clips, however, were embarrassingly outdated. An entire clip featured a man trying to decide which music CDs he wanted. What the hell is a CD? The other was an argument between a husband and wife over what he had and hadn’t bought in the shuk. The prices sent me into a fit of nostalgia.

But truly, going back to grade one in anything, particularly at the age of 55, is truly humbling. The garbled dialogues that left me........

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