Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Sbah elgier!

We had a wonderful time in Agadir, Morocco. During our stay in hotel Decameron Tafoukt, we got to meet several sellers from the little shops (souks) next to the hotel. They were very friendly and not too pushy at all. It helped that we were friendly too, and we wished them a good day whenever they spoke to us. There was this one man in particular, an older man, no front teeth left, with an amazing grin on his face. Whenever he spotted us, he yelled: Sbah elgier!!! Meaning: good morning! So we Sbah elgiered him back and the grin on his face grew even bigger. It was contagious, because all of the other sellers started to Sbah elgier us as well. It was very nice to meet them and have a little chit chat now and then. The conversation between us and the other sellers didn't go much further than Sbah elgier, Masa elgier (good evening), shokran (thank you), aafwan (you're welcome), bislama (goodbye), felous (money), .. They did their utmost to make us understand them. Of course they wanted to sell us gadgets and souvenirs and yes, we did buy way too many gifts, but we liked them.

I love the Arabic language. The sounds are wonderful but not easy to mimic. It is funny to hear our daughters teach Moroccans Dutch. What a blast! And they mimic real easy, without any accent at all. Languages are important and without it, we wouldn't be anywhere!
Our youngest daughter and I took an orange "petit taxi" (little orange cab) to go to the supermarket Marjane. The driver only spoke Arabic, so it was somehow difficult to make him understand what we were up to. But he was patient and funny and he even took us to a small soukh because we wanted to buy an original Tajine to cook in. I tried to speak French, but although he understood some of it, he couldn't answer my questions. It's frustrating if you want to speak Arabic but you lack the knowledge. We're learning, definitely. I'm sure we'll visit some other Arabic countries in the future, so our language skills will improve in time.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eindelijk iemand die deze klanken ook graag hoort.
Maar heb je Arabisch gehoord of was het Berbers?

www.kokenenhogehakken.blogspot.be said...

Heerlijke klanken hè!
Ik veronderstel dat het Berbers was, daar het grotendeel van de Marokkaanse bevolking toch Berbers zijn?
Ik vond het wel een beetje anders klinken dan het Arabisch uit Egypte. Sommige woorden die ik daar geleerd had, waren niet bekend in Marokko.
We hebben ook Arabische muziek gekocht. Super!