[28] Learning Arabic From Refugees In Jordan

Summary:

• We took our 8 month old son on his first immersion trip to Jordan.
• The trip was primarily for the purpose of working with Iraqi and Syrian refugees in East Amman.
• The refugees we worked with had survived ISIS, who went from town to town marking doors with the Arabic letter “ن” to target them.
• They’re able to live in relative safety in Jordan but still remain an underclass with few privileges.
• The language immersion challenge was exceptionally difficult for me as it was often very emotional talking to people and hearing their stories.
• I had some fascinating exchanges with multiple Arabic dialects at the same time.
• The goal was to use TalkInArabic.com as a tool to employ some of these people.

Related blog post:

Learn more about what we did in Jordan in this post.

Resources:

Check out my review of Diwan Baladna. It’s an amazing book for learning Jordanian Arabic.