Not Making Sense
We've all experienced it, those of us attempting to express ourselves in new ways. How could it be possible the words coming out of our mouths are not understood by the people around us? Aren't we speaking the same language? And then we realize that maybe who we are has something to do with it. 

Indeed it does.

This was the subject of conversation among a classroom community in Amman, Jordan, where I regularly observed the teaching of colloquial Arabic in 2014. Speaking in Jordanian Arabic, Erica, one of the students in the class, shares the frustration of having attempted to speak Arabic with a local. 

According to Erica, this has been a consistent experience for her--using Arabic in the ways she knows how, only to be misrecognized as speaking English. Only, she presses on. Confronted with the signs of her counterpart's incomprehension, she responds to them in colloquial Jordanian Arabic, saying شو؟ [shoo?] or what? This way, she successfully avoids the use of English in her attempt to further the interaction. Her Arabic is the substance of her implicit resistance to being identified as a non-Jordanaian, Western woman. 

In the next frame, Erica describes how her repeated use of Arabic is met with fledging recognition: "Oh! You speak Arabic!" comes the response. 

Duh! That's how Erica feels, how everyone in the class feels. Of course they're speaking Arabic!

Not Just Arabic
Several researchers have explored the experiences of new speakers, particularly Western women, who attempt to speak with locals while abroad. More often than not, these Western women speaking Japanese (e.g., Siegal, 1996) or Swahili (e.g., Higgins, 2011) are not understood, and not expected to be speakers of these languages. In fact, these women explain how they seem to be speaking the unexpected, in proficiently using language within communities where they are viewed as outsiders. 

By speaking languages they have acquired in adulthood, languages with close-knit, narrow geographical reach, or associated ideal speakers, these women were not, and could not, be seen as authentic speakers of Japanese or Swahili. For these reasons, these women would approach others using the local language, only to be misunderstood and misheard as speaking English or otherwise. For locals, these women's faces and appearance were not a clear match to voices in Japanese or Swahili.

Why Authenticity is Important
Through my embedded participant observation within the study abroad program in Amman, I realized that projecting authenticity in the new language was of the utmost importance to the program's clients--U.S. American learners of Arabic. These clients' goal, both individual and collective, was to be able to use Arabic fluidly and legitimately among local Jordanians. In many cases, their ability to use Arabic convincingly and with a wide range of colloquial vocabulary gained them entrée into social groups, romantic relationships, and nightlife among young Jordanians. These were the hidden (and not so hidden) benefits of successful intercultural communication in Amman.

Even as the language program (and many do) had the explicit priority of building learners' competence in formal modes of Arabic unusable in everyday activities of shopping, dining, chatting, and taking transport, learners promoted their own priorities. This included seeking opportunities to practice using colloquial Arabic, and developing expanded identities in Arabic. Through my extended research, I found that for these learners,  using Arabic in these ways was a large component of their instrumental motivation. It brought immediate results: confirmation and reassurance of their developing language skills, and alternatively, clarification to where and how they locate within the identity politics of urban Amman. 

Erica's story reveals that authenticity is not self-appointed. Rather, it is a reward bestowed by empowered speakers unto their counterparts, signaling approval and insider status in communicative competence. Our life's journey often intersects with our desires for authenticity, because this is part of our claim on who we are within any given context, whether we're learning a new language or not.

A Desire to be Understood
At the core of our social experiences is a desire to be understood, to be heard, and to connect with users we find a commonality with. We want people to discuss our ideas with, validate our concerns, and share in our joys. When we turn to new and additional languages, we are celebrating these human threads in new modalities of self-expression and community. Time and again, this has been my personal experience, when I learned Malay, and later Swahili, and Arabic. This is how I know language learning to be the ultimate journey in self-awareness and communication. 

Working with new speakers of Arabic in Jordan in 2014, I used ethnographic techniques to investigate their attitudes toward dialects of Arabic, and their preferences for Jordanian Arabic. What I learned, and experienced with them through participant observation, was the importance of using colloquial dialects in everyday settings, and the personal dimensions that language embodies for each user. This is what Winnie, a Chinese American speaker of Arabic, shares with me in our interview, that: "It's necessary to have language through which you can express yourself well."

Localization in Real Time
In our day-to-day lives, we spend maybe 40-50% of a weekday in a formal work or school setting. However, even in formal settings, our speech and conversations may not all be conducted in fully formal registers of talk. We can usually get a joke in edgeways here and there. 

In Arabic, it's the formal, information-bearing bits that are communicated in mostly Modern Standard Arabic, and the jokes and gab and gossip that come across in a colloquial variety. Interestingly enough, it's Modern Standard Arabic that adult language learners are taught in colleges and universities in the U.S. If learners can gain access to instruction in other dialects of Arabic, these opportunities typically become available through study abroad (though a few U.S. universities offer courses in Egyptian and Levantine dialects on a limited basis).

As you might imagine, there's a certain excitement in learning a new dialect, or unique version, of a language you've already studied for some time. This was the case for the American learner of Arabic that I worked with in Amman, Jordan. We were excited to see all the ways that Jordanian Arabic replaced words in Modern Standard Arabic with words of its own, and presented alternative expressions that we could begin using. But we also recognized the powerful utility of the colloquial dialect. Over time, I could see learners strategically avoiding use of Modern Standard Arabic, in favor of the local variety.

I began to realize that what they were doing was localizing their experience in study abroad. In our desire to speak with locals, we began to speak like locals, to minimize distance in our conversations. In other words, there didn't seem to be a way to talk informally, casually, or personably in the Standard variety. This was why we turned to Jordanian Arabic, so we could express ourselves with a type of speech that mirrored the feel of 

Her name: Lubna.  I sat down with one of conversation partners working with the program for American students at the University of Jordan. She's nothing short of amazing! With her vivacious spirit, she shared how spending time with American students had truly become a unique opportunity of exchange. 

The Arabic word for exchange, تبادل (tebaadl), has at its center, the word for change, بدل (badala). This in mind, the idea of exchange is to reciprocate between parties, and impact each other. Communication presents increased opportunities for the exchange of ideas, where language learning empowers participants and maximizes intercultural learning. 

As part of my 2014 fieldwork in Amman, Jordan, I spent time with Jordanians involved in teaching Arabic, and their students, learners from U.S. colleges and universities. On campus at the University of Jordan, and in coffee shops and afterschool hangouts, I observed American students working together with Jordanian conversation partners for a full semester. 

American students were picking up new words from their local counterparts, and so was I. With more words under our belt, our afterschool exchanges moved from coffee shops to restaurants and bars. Language was becoming a vehicle of more than grammar and vocabulary. We were learning about Jordanian life, eating mansaf (the national dish!), taking part in concerts, and local volunteer organizations. Using Jordanian Arabic 

This first #languagestory comes from my time with U.S.-based learners of Arabic on study abroad in Amman, Jordan in spring 2014. 

I already had been interviewing them one-on-one or in groups of two, talking about their experiences in Amman, when the subject of rush-hour traffic came up. Crossing the streets on foot near the University of Jordan, or most places around the city was like playing Frogger.

**

What to do when you're trying to hail a taxi, and your taxi is usurped by another? What words do you use to express your frustration? To hail another cab? And then how do you communicate with the driver? It just so happens that one day after school, we all piled into a taxi together. 

And this is what happened...