One month into second semester Arabic and students at Cholla High Magnet School have mastered the basics. They feel comfortable when they say ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, but it’s taken practice.
Ernie Valencia, one of 20 students in the class, plans to join the military one day and wants to prepare now to be able to communicate with anyone. Arabic, he says, can be hard.
“There’s so many different vowels and every vowel and every dot changes the meaning of the word,” says Valencia.
Letters look different. There are also more letters to learn – 28 compared to the American alphabet’s 26. Students must also learn to read from right to left.
“Learning how to write is pretty hard cause you have to go from the opposite direction,” says student Sammer Miqbel who grew up speaking a dialect of Arabic.
Nour Jandali, a translator in Tucson teaches the Arabic, which is in its first year. Jandali, who teaches Arabic and Math at Cholla, is originally from the Middle East. She is a practicing attorney in Syria and Egypt and speaks at least four different languages including Lebanese and Egyptian.
“The language is the key to open any door they want to open,” says Jandali.
Cholla offers four languages to students - Spanish, German, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. It’s the first school in Pima County to offer the class. Cholla Principal Marcia Volpe hopes to add Russian and French to the curriculum.
“We’re looking at languages that have relevancy to the 21st century,” says Volpe.
The majority of Cholla’s student-body already speak Spanish, which means Arabic will be their third spoken language. Arabic translators can earn six figure salaries for certain jobs and are reportedly high in demand.
