English

On Mondays and Tuesdays I wear dress shoes and a shirt and sometimes a tie to class. Because these are the days I teach. Afterward I catch a taxi to second circle, which is maybe a fifteen to twenty minute ride depending on traffic. During this time I talk with the taxi driver in a broken English/Arabic mix. Most of the conversations I have with taxi drivers go the same way. We greet each other, he asks where I am from, I tell him I'm an Arabic student, and we talk about Arabic and English and what makes them different. Most Jordanians have taken English in secondary school or university and speak it with varying degrees of efficiency. Most Jordanians are extremely friendly and love to talk with me. I've had a couple folks give me their phone number and offer to help me with anything I need upon first meeting them.

The taxi driver drops me off in second circle, a large and unruly roundabout packed with cars, and I walk to a nearby shawarma or kebab shop. Amman is built around seven "circles" or roundabouts, and their surrounding neighborhoods, arranged in a line running from east to west, with the rest of the city growing to the north and south of this line.

I sit and read at a table while I wait for my food and speak with the store owner a little. I get a few different reactions from the Jordanians I speak with in passing; the first response is terse brief responses in Arabic, the second is friendly engaging conversation in Arabic, and English is only introduced when my Arabic skills break down or the person I'm speaking with knows the word I'm searching for in English. The third and perhaps funniest response is the enthusiast English speaker.

Occasionally you'll meet someone who is excited about the opportunity to try out their English on a native speaker. Much like myself, they've probably studied English for awhile and have learned a number of memorized phrases that clearly were printed in a conversation book somewhere. Walking into a convenience store, a friend of mine was greeted with an enthusiastic, "Good day to you sir! Will that be all for you? With pleasure! And may I get anything for you sir?" I empathize with these guys the most. The Arabic I study is called FUS-hha, or Modern Standard Arabic. It's what newspapers are written in. However, each country will speak a wildly varying form of 3ameya, or common or street language (sometimes Arabic sounds that aren't in English are represented by numbers, like 3, 5 or 7.). This common language can often be so divorced from the standard as to be a separate language in itself. The closest analogy that I can think of is if someone walked up to you and started speaking in colonial English. Needless to say this can be incredibly frustrating and serve to make me look like a fool. The only saving grace of Modern Standard Arabic is that it can be understood almost anywhere in the middle east, where as the common speech will have idiosyncrasies particular to that region only.

Arriving at the center after I eat, I spend some time speaking with the students in Arabic and English. They are eager to practice their English and also to help me with my Arabic. I co-teach a conversation class for seven intermediate level English speaking students, all of which are adult men, although there are women students at the center. We mostly focus on smoothing out the wrinkles in conversation, this means correcting the use of certain words, working on the use of things like 'was' and 'is', and minor grammatical errors. I have one student in my class who is from Ecuador and speaks Spanish as his first language, but the rest are Jordanians. They are mostly successful career men; an accountant, an engineer, an art teacher, etc. And they are all extremely grateful that the teachers are there to help them learn English.

The prevalence of English in Amman is really astounding. It is so integral to the country that street signs are printed in both English and Arabic. Most advertisements are bilingual, and any service involving a highly specialized or trained field, optometry for instance, can be expected to have a proficient English speaker. It's a very odd phenomenon. English is considered absolutely necessary to participate in the business world, both here in Jordan and all over the world. I know that teaching English here, in a small way, will improve the lives of the Jordanians I have met. But I can't help but wonder what it means that English is so dominant here. I have serious questions regarding globalism, even more so now that I've seen it in action. The dominance of the language is indicative of a whole way of doing things, a whole new system. Imagine what the United States would be like if every sign was printed in English and Spanish, and kids are taught from a young age both English and Spanish. In many ways it would be great, but in others it would completely change the dynamic of the country given enough time. The western life has really come to dominate in many ways out here, for better or worse.