Arabic Language A Tough Assignment

Indeed, the difficulties of mastering Arabic provide their own challenge. The State Department characterizes the Arabic tongue as a Level Four language, on a difficulty scale of one to four, the same as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Scholars say it takes roughly twice as long to reach proficiency in Arabic as it does Spanish or French.

The language holds no relation to English in terms of root words or grammatical structure or even alphabet. Words are written right to left, in an elaborate cursive in which each of the 28 letters of the alphabet can take four shapes, depending on where they occur in a word.

"In terms of the learning experience, it's very demanding," said Karin C. Ryding, chairwoman of Georgetown's Arabic department. The short vowels in Arabic script are not written, so students learning to read the language must puzzle out an outline of consonants, she said. "This is something that takes a lot of time and practice."

Still, Ryding said, Georgetown is seeing more students who are determined to push past the introductory years, prompting the university to expand the number of sections across all levels and hire more instructors.

A greater hurdle for Arabic programs, then, might be simply keeping up with the demand. Edward S. Walker, president of the Middle East Institute, a Dupont Circle area policy and research group, said the institute has doubled the number of students in its Arabic language programs in recent years -- and could double it again -- but is having a hard time keeping enough linguists on staff when they can command substantial salaries elsewhere.

"It's getting harder and harder to find teachers because so many people have been drained off by the government," he said.

Many universities have faced the same difficulty while trying to build up departments that barely existed not long ago. The Washington area offers far more opportunities to take Arabic than most parts of the country. Still, only Georgetown offers a major in Arabic -- as well as a master's and a doctorate. American, Howard and George Mason universities offer four semesters of Arabic, and the University of Maryland offers six. Catholic University and a local campus of Johns Hopkins University offer Arabic as part of graduate studies.

At George Washington, students can take up to eight semesters of Arabic. The new honors program, though, was structured to condense the first two semesters into a 12-week summer session. Thirty-one students are enrolled in two sections of the course.

George Washington President Stephen J. Trachtenberg said he came up with the program last year, announcing it in an off-the-cuff toast at a dinner hosted by Edward W. Gnehm, U.S. ambassador to Jordan. The program, named in honor of Gnehm and his wife, Margaret, offers students the extra studies for free to encourage more to start Arabic.

"It's an investment in the kids, an investment in the country, an investment in an important discipline," Trachtenberg said. If the students take another year of Arabic, "by the time they graduate, they should be conversant. This will strengthen them in the job market."

But one month into the program, many students couldn't say for sure whether it was sticking. Despite her best intentions, Loffelman said she fears the rigorous demands of her international relations major won't leave her with time to take Arabic in the fall.

Ashley Spillane, a junior from Boston, said she had expected that her longtime enthusiasm for Arabic music and culture would ease her way into the language. "But it's so difficult," she said. "It's definitely harder than I thought."

Then again, it depended on one's perspective. Emanuel Dash, a senior from Boulder, Colo., said he had always wished he could speak Arabic to his Palestinian neighbors during his childhood in Israel but that few Israeli schools taught it.

Dash, who said he hopes to return to Israel to work on grass-roots peacemaking efforts, had previously taken Chinese for many years but leapt at the chance to switch languages when he heard about the new free program.

"Arabic," he said, "is much more simple than Chinese."