Pronunciation: Like the English letter b. Vowels that follow it have a frontal

Pronunciation: Like the t in teeth, which is frontal

Pronunciation: Like the th in three, not the th in that. Notice that air is pushed out with the first word, but not with the second.

Mnemonic (Arabic): The letter is pronounced like the th in three, and it also has three dots above. It is a joiner on both sides because of the smile and wants to connect to everyone.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Just as baa, taa, and thaa share the same downward arc, the ArFS had the same palm orientation (PO) and fingertip orientation (FO). The baa has one finger up, the taa has two fingers up (fingers together), and the thaa has three fingers up, the number of dots in each Arabic letter.

Pronunciation: Now that you have learned three consonants (baa, taa, and thaa), we will begin to learn the vowels. We start with two consonants that can also act as vowels. This should not be such a strange concept to us. Do you remember learning the English vowels? "A, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y." The y in yellow is a consonant, but the y in sky is a vowel. The letter waaw is pronounced w as in well when proceeded or followed by a vowel, or at the beginning of a word. Otherwise it is pronounced like the oo in school. The two sounds are related: If you say oo and ah immediately afterwards, it becomes wah. As a vowel, remember that the oo is twice as long as a normal English vowel.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine the shape of a reclining woman. The men see her and say "Wow (waaw)!" and the woman who are jealous say "Oo!" The letter joins on the right side because her hair flows behind her, but she is reclining so she can't join anyone to the left.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The index finger and the thumb follow the curve of the letter.

Pronunciation: The letter yaa is a consonant at the start of a word or when preceded or followed by a vowel. Otherwise it sounds like the ee in eek and stretched out twice as long as a vowel.

Mnemonic (Arabic): See the letter as Superman with his eyes looking below using x-ray vision with his cape furling to the left. When the men see how strong Superman is, they say, "Yeah!", and the women say "Eek!" The waaw is a joiner on both sides because Superman helps everyone in the world.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The handshape is like the ASL fingerspelling for "Y" and can have a similar sound.

Pronunciation: This and the next two entries are diacrits, not letters. They represent short vowels that are shown as an aid to pronunciation, but generally are not included in everyday Arabic. They would be shown in ancient texts, such as the Qur'an, to help in pronouncing the older forms of Arabic. Note that the name is pronounced "fat-ha", not "fath-ah". The "ha" syllable forces out air as it is uttered. The distinction is shown by using an uppercase (capital) letter, which in this case is in the middle of the word. A frontal

Pronunciation: The short vowel Damma is a small waaw placed above the consonant as represented above. It sounds like the oo in wool.

Mnemonic (Arabic): See the mnemonic (Arabic) under

Pronunciation: The pronunciation of a kasra ranges from the frontal

Pronunciation: The letter jiim has three different pronunciations, depending on the region in the Arab world. In the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding areas it is pronounced like the j in Jack, or the dg in bridge. In the Levant and North Africa, it is pronounced like the j in bon jour. In Egypt it is a hard g like in game.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine someone doing sit-ups in gym (jiim) class with the top of the letter showing the elbows sticking out from the head and the curve showing the person's big belly. (That's why he needs to do sit-ups!) The dot is for perspiration.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The top of the handshape is like the top of the Arabic letter and the thumbtip is positioned where the dot would be in each case. For the jiim - below the top surface of the fingers, for the Haa - hidden next to the fingers, for the khaa, above the surface of the fingers.

Pronunciation: The letter Haa represents a sound that is produced deep in the throat. It has no equivalent in English. First take a few minutes to become better acquainted with some of your throat muscles that you use often, but not to speak English. The following exercises are designed to make you aware of what these muscles can already do, so that you can use them to speak Arabic. Practice them for a few minutes every day, as often as you can.

Exercise 1.With your mouth closed, block off your windpipe at your throat. Put your hand on your throat at the Adam's apple and constrict the muscles on the inside. You should be able to feel the muscles contracting. Alternately tighten and relax them for a few minutes.

Exercise 2. Repeat this with your mouth open. Try to breathe out through your mouth -- if you can, you are not closing off the windpipe entirely.

Exercise 3. Constrict those same muscles so that air can just barely squeeze through your throat. Imitate someone fogging a pair of glasses to clean them. By now, you should be aware of what your throat muscles are doing.

Exercise 4. Bend your head down so that your chin rests on the top of your chest, and repeat Exercise 3. This position should make it easier fo you to feel what you are doing.

Mnemonic (Arabic): For jiim we said to "Imagine someone doing sit-ups in gym (jiim) class with the top of the letter showing the elbows sticking out from the head and the curve showing the person's big belly." The dot for perspiration is now missing because the exercise is done and the exerciser breathes out: Haa!

Mnemonic (ArFS): The top of the handshape is like the top of the Arabic letter and the thumbtip is positioned where the dot would be in each case. For the jiim - below the top surface of the fingers, for the Haa - hidden next to the fingers, for the khaa, above the surface of the fingers.

Pronunciation: The sound of the khaa is found in many European languages: the Russian x, the Scottish pronunciation of loch, and German ch as pronounced after a back vowel as in Bach. Some people use this sound to say "yech!" To pronounce it, say k and pay attention to where the back of your tongue hits the back of the roof of your mouth and blocks your windpipe. Instead of closing off the windpipe with the back of your tongue completely, block it part way, and you will produce this sound.

Mnemonic (Arabic): It is time for that person to start his sit ups again and says khaa to mean "yech!" The dot is on the top because s/he is "taking it from the top (starting from the beginning)."

Mnemonic (ArFS): The top of the handshape is like the top of the Arabic letter and the thumbtip is positioned where the dot would be in each case. For the jiim - below the top surface of the fingers, for the Haa - hidden next to the fingers, for the khaa, above the surface of the fingers.

Pronunciation: This symbol is a pronunciation marker that indicates the absence of a short vowel. So far, you have learned to use fatHa, damma, and kasra over consonants to indicate the short vowels, and consonants not followed by a vowel have been left "blank". In fully vowelled texts, however, all consonants have at least one marking, even if no vowel occurs, because there is a special symbol to indicate the absence of a vowel. This symbol is called sukuun (meaning silence).

Mnemonic (Arabic): You can think of this diacrit as a zero, which is represented similiarly in Arabic but the zero looks like a small dot.

Mnemonic (ArFS): You can think of this diacrit as a zero, which is represented similarly in Arabic but zero looks like a small dot. The ArFS uses the non-dominant hand to show the placement of the sukuun above a baa. It is customary in grammar books to also use a written baa as an illustration as seen in the written form above.

Pronunciation: hamza is a not a vowel but rather (like other consonants) is a carrier of vowel sounds. It is a sound you make in English all the time--every time you say a word that begins with a vowel, in fact--but you do not recognize it as a consonant because English has no letter for it. Linguists call it a glottal stop. Say "uh-oh" several times and pay attention to the sound you make in between the two syllables. You make the same sound when you pronounce any word that begins with a vowel, such as our, it, I, on, up. Say these out loud, and pay attention to the "catch" in your throat as you pronounce the first vowel. In Arabic, however, this sound is considered to be a consonant.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine that the shape represents your uvula (that flap that hangs down in the back of your thorat and vibrates when you say "ahh" for the doctor) which also vibrates when you feel that catch in you throat.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The hand vibrates from side to side (it doesn't twist like in the ArFS for alif), and the thumb is held up so that you can similarly envision the uvula moving as mentioned above.

Note: The hamza can appear alone as pictured above, or it can appear over an alif like so: and is represented in ArFS thusly:

Pronunciation: This consonant is pronounced like a clear, front d in English, as in the word dentist (not like the d sound in puddle).

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine a doll (and hence the d sound) that is sitting on a bed with its shoes making an edge. This is important becase it does not connect to the next letter.

Mnemonic (ArFS): This is a view of the hand as the receiver sees it, not the signer. Form this handshape and note that if the index finger were extended upwards, like the ASL "L", it would look like the letter. But this hand shape is needed for the

Pronunciation: You learned that thaa is pronounced like the th in three. This it the "other" th like the th in other. Remember it that way. Pronounce three and then other, a few times noticing the different placement of the tongue and the subtle difference in sound. This difference is crucial for speakers to understand which word you mean in Arabic.

Mnemonic (Arabic): This is also a doll, but the dot represents it tongue stuck on its teeth. Notice that the tongue is held against the teeth for other but slides against it for three.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The dhaal looks like a daal, but it has an added dot. Take the ArFS for daal and cross the middle finger over the index to add a "dot" to the letter.

Pronunciation: This is a slightly trilled r sound as you would find in Spanish or Italian. You already know how to make this sound: it is like the tt in gotta go. Say gotta several times in a row quickly and pay attention to what your tongue is doing.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine the shape as that of the tongue as the higher part on the right slaps against the back of the teeth. To remember that the bottom of this letter should be written below the line, think of the root of the tongue being below the teeth.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The handshape looks like an upside-down raa. This could have been done with the thumb to make it look more like the Arabic letter, but a dot has to be added to the handshape for our next letter, zaay, so we need to use the index finger and it is just to awkward to turn that upside-down.

Pronunciation: This corresponds to the English sound z in zebra.

Mnemonic (Arabic): I have yet to come up with a mnemonic that satisfies me, but think of its shape with the dot as the teeth coming together to make a z and the fact that they will vibrate slightly.

Mnemonic (ArFS): As mentioned above with raa, the handshape inverts the letter and the middle finger is crossed over the index to add a dot.

Pronunciation: The shadda doubles the consonant it is over. Learning to pronounce doubled consonants requires hearing them from a teacher or audio.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Think of the double u (w) as doubling the consonant.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The shadda has three spikes as does the handshape.

Pronunciation: Sometimes the English s sounds like a z, as in easy and dogs. The siin is always a hiss, as in the English word seen.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine this as the shape of a lorgnette, the snobbish glasses that have no temples and are held up by a single vertical handle. Ladies at the opera like to be seen (siin) with their lorgnettes.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Think of the four fingers as the spikes of the letter. The fingers are not spread, because they will be for sheen, which in English means shiny, and the CL for that in ASL requires the fingers to be spread.

Pronunciation: This letter corresponds to the sound sh in shoe.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Remember the ladies with the lorgnettes in siin? Well now they are even snobbier: they have their hair in a bun (the three dots) and are say "sh!" because they want to hear the opera. Some people!

Mnemonic (ArFS): Think of the fingers as the horns (spikes) of the letter. The fingers are spread because sheen in English means shiny, and the CL for that in ASL requires the fingers to be spread. Remember to keep the thumb held against the index finger.

Pronunciation: This letter represents the emphatic counterpart of

Pronunciation: This letter represents the emphatic counterpart of

Pronunciation: Sometimes pronounced as a taa, sometimes it only strengthens a

Pronunciation: This letter represents the emphatic counterpart of taa. To pronounce it, put the tip of your tongue up against the bony ridge behind your teeth on the roof of your mouth, the same position used for

Pronunciation: This letter represents the emphatic counterpart of

Pronunciation: It is not difficult to pronounce, but you need to exercise your throat muscles, the same ones that you use to pronounce

Pronunciation: This letter is pronounced like a voiced

Pronunciation: This letter is pronounced like the f in feather.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine the letter as a bird's head and a curled wing, with the dot as a feather falling out of the head.

Mnemonic (ArFS): The loop in the letter is formed by making a ring by touching the fingertips of the thumb and index finger.

Pronunciation: This letter represents a new sound, the emphatic counterpart to k. Like the other emphatic sounds, it is pronounced with the tongue low in the mouth. It differs from them in that it is pronounced farther back in the throat, at the very back of the tongue. Take a minute to become more familiar with your throat muscles. Open your mouth and say "aah", as if you were at the doctor. Your tongue should be flat in your mouth. Without raising your tongue, pull it back so that the back of your tongue closes off air by pulling back against the throat. At this point, you should not be able to breathe through your mouth, although it is wide open. Practice doing this first without making a sound. After performing this exercise several times, make a sound by releasing the air forcefully. The result will be the sound qaaf.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine the two dots are your eyes, the curved line is base of your mouth and the circle is your tongue pressed against your throat.

Mnemonic (ArFS): If you think of the qaaf as a faa with an additional dot, then start with the faa handshape and add the middle finger touching the thumb to be the additional dot.

Pronunciation: This letter corresponds to the k in likewise. Remember to distinguish it from

Pronunciation: This letter represents the sound of the Spanish or French l, that is, a frontal l in which the front part of the tongue is against the back of the teeth, and the tongue is high in the mouth. Americans tend to pronounce l with the tongue farther back and lower down in the mouth, resulting in a more emphatic sound than an Arabic laam. Say the word bull aloud, and notice that the position of your tongue is similar to the position your tongue holds when you say

Pronunciation: The distinct shape of the combination of a laam followed by an alif is not part of the Arabic alphabet, but must be used to join these letter wherever they occur in this order in the same word.

Mnemonic (Arabic): This combination looks pretty much like the two letters except that the laam may be bent towards the left and look like it was written first.

Mnemonic (ArFS): This one would make a little more sense to me if it looked like the [ILY] handshape, an "L" for the laam and the little finger sticking up to be the vertical stroke of alif, but the Arabic letters are squeezed together so the thumb is folded into the hand.

Pronunciation: This letter corresponds to the English m as in may.

Mnemonic (Arabic): Imagine a mouse facing to the left, sitting on a table. Its paws are curled in front of him, and his tail is draped over the table edge.

Mnemonic (ArFS): This looks inverted from the printed shape, which has a rounded body with a vertical line that points downwards.

Pronunciation: This letter represents the sound n as in noon.

Mnemonic (Arabic): The semicircle is the sun, and the dot shows it directly above us, because it is high noon (nuun).

Mnemonic (ArFS): Use the mnemonic above to remember the shape, and then the handshape is easy to remember.

Pronunciation: This letter represents a familiar sound, h in house. Unlike the English h, which can be silent, as in hour, haa is always pronounced.

Mnemonic (Arabic): For the isolated form (first of the four forms), imagine a house. For the initial form (second of the four forms), imagine a house with a door in the middle of its structure (the vertical line inside the rounded body) with its shadow cast to the left. For the medial form (third from the right of the four forms), imagine a house reflected in the lake. For the final form, you're on your own, smile.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Use the mnemonic above to remember the shape, and then the handshape should be easy to remember.

Pronunciation: The original vowel on the alif is swallowed by the final vowel of a previous word or by a helping vowel.

Mnemonic (Arabic): None, just memorize.

Pronunciation: This symbol is often called dagger alif because its shape resembles a small dagger. It represents an old spelling of alif from early Qur'anic writing that survives today in a few common words and names. It is pronounced exactly like the long vowel

Pronunciation: A variant spelling of alif that can occur only at the end of a word. This shape of alif is a spelling convention that dates back to the writing of the Qur'an. It is pronounced like the regular

Pronunciation: Pronounced like a

Pronunciation: Pronounced an, it is used only in very formal situations.

Mnemonic (Arabic): No mnemonic, just memorize.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Clear from the orthography, with a baa as a place holder, as seen before.

Pronunciation: Pronounced un, it is used only in very formal situations.

Mnemonic (Arabic): No mnemonic, just memorize.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Clear from the orthography, with a baa as a place holder, as seen before.

tanwiin al kasr

Pronunciation: Pronounced in, it is used only in very formal situations.

Mnemonic (Arabic): No mnemonic, just memorize.

Mnemonic (ArFS): Clear from the orthography, with a baa as a place holder, as seen before.

Semantic challenges

Representing form or meaning is a choice that interpreters make daily as they decide what the goal of the communication is (such as the title of a book, a technical phrase, or a common saying) and what the communication mode of the consumer is (ASL or PSE) . All of us are familiar with the difficulty of representing English in ASL, and I personally agree with those that feel English should not be taught to the D/deaf through signing, but should be taught as a written language with explanations in ASL. This would probably work best for foreign languages also, but D/deaf people certainly have a right of access to foreign language classes, especially if this is the only way they can satisfy their degree requirements for a foreign language.

There is a teaching method using computers which is generally referred to as CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), although specific programs have been developed with their own names. If such programs are available at the school where the foreign language is being taught, the teacher may be able to give the deaf person guidance on how to use the computer programs to good effect, since they serve to promote reading and writing, rather than working through an auditory mode. See the bibliography for some articles on this methodology.

An exciting development has been the blossoming of awareness about foreign sign languages. I look forward to the day that D/deaf people can get academic credit for learning these sign languages as well. It may be instructive to skim a sign language for the country whose spoken language you are interpreting. Consult with the D/deaf person to see if they wish you to use foreign signs to represent some of the frequently occurring words in the foreign spoken language they are learning. Some very basic words may be helpful to know how to sign in this language. Concepts in the language that have no English equivalent could be negotiated in this way, and as a matter of fact ASL is now incorporating such signs as SUSHI, SMORGASBORD, and VODKA. Deaf/Interpreter Arabic sites are listed at the end of this article.

We've alluded to the difficulty of teaching English in ASL, and it's even more complicated for other spoken languages. Foreign countries, especially if they have a strong contingent that support oralism, may have an invented system (parallel to Manual Codes for English) to represent their spoken language, but this requires that the D/deaf person learn three languages: the written language, the signed language, and the manual code! Invented systems would not be beneficial anyway, for the same reason that MCEs only lead to confusion and are dropped by students and even teachers inadvertently due to their visual clumsiness.

The method I have used is unvoiced Sim-Com, that is, mouthing Arabic while simultaneously using conceptually accurate ASL signs and fingerspelling. The method you decide to use should be negotiated with your consumer. If there is no one-to-one match between English and ASL, which share some of the same culture, imagine trying to find one ASL sign for a given Arabic word! This is where sign negotiation comes in. You will feel more needed then ever if you interpret an Arabic course, because there are a limited number of Arabic-speaking interpreters.

Syntactic challenges

The big challenge is in showing the inflections of verbs and to a lesser extent the endings for adjectives and plurals. As I've mentioned before, spelling out everything seems to be an information overload, but each interpreter needs to negotiate with their students to see how much is too much.

Working with the students

As mentioned before, find out the goal(s) of the students in learning the foreign language: do they want to be able to speechread native speakers, write and read only, or also be able to pronounce the language? Remember to negotiate signs, how much fingerspelling is desired, and how will the students represent the "answer" to questions from the teacher - will they fingerspell the sentence, use voiced or unvoiced Sim-Com, Cued Speech, or some other option? It can be difficult for the interpreter to know when they are assuming that all the endings are correct or that they (the interpreter) are using cloze skills to fill in what the answer should be. If the students are not interested in speechreading or speaking the language, pronunciation drills will not be helpful in themselves, so perhaps the time could be used to merely spell out what the class is saying and interpret it, to give the students more exposure to the language.

Another method that has been used where the interpreter works even more closely with the student is to use a laptop computer to "caption" the class. The interpreter types the drills and dialogue. The student and the interpreter can then practice the drills by typing on the laptop while the other students practice orally. At the end the session can be printed and saved for further study.

A related method is to use a voice recognition system. The teacher wears a microphone and their speech is translated into text on a computer screen. One drawback is that the present state-of-the-art requires the person whose speech will be transcribed to spend many hours training the computer to become accustomed to their voice and will therefore require extra work from the teacher (as much as 15 hours). The system also can not transcribe spoken text from audiotapes or videotapes that might be used to supplement the hearing students' auditory training unless similar session are used to accustom the computer again. The computer will aso make some transcription mistakes that will have to be corrected later. Voice recognition programs dedicated to the language in question may be necessary to show diacritical marks. On the positive end, it will allow the interpreter to use their hands for interpreting so that they will not be flitting from keyboard to ASL or falling behind in the lecture and will lessen repetitive motion problems.

Working with the teacher

It is always essential to be a team player with the teacher, and in foreign language classes it is inescapable. Show your interest in doing the readings and homework, so that the teacher will realize early that the task of interpreting is more than a lexical skill like taking dictation. If students pair up for spoken dialogues delivered during a later class period as homework, the teacher might simply give the D/deaf students more written work as a substitute. If there is an auditory comprehension part to the tests, where the students listen to an audiotape and answer questions on what they heard, the teacher could have an additional written part for the D/deaf students' test. If there is group work and there is only one D/deaf student, ask the teacher if it is best to interpret for a hearing partner or if the interpreter should work with the student.

Summary

Interpreting for a foreign language course presents a number of interesting challenges for interpreters, but by working with the teacher and students and preparing well for each class, it can be made to work. The teacher will have an opportunity to use creativity in redesigning some materials for the D/deaf students as well as to be exposed to yet another language (ASL) which may make them think more deeply about the relationship of language and culture. Interpreters will firm up their skills in the foreign language being taught and intercultural mediation. The D/deaf students will be able to gain access to a foreign language that will broaden their way of thinking about the world.