Learn A Language, Avoid A War

How one podcast is helping students learn a difficult language, while humanizing ordinary Palestinians, through conversations in colloquial Arabic.

Dear Readers: I’m starting a new feature: short interviews with talented people doing fascinating things connected to the subject(s) of my blog.

My first interviewee is Olivia, a theatre director and the founder and producer of Learn Levantine With Livi, a podcast that will be of particular interest to intermediate and advanced Arabic learners.

Here Olivia and I discuss here her podcast’s approach to teaching languages, and its cultural context, all of which underscores the Arabic proverb: learn a language, and you’ll avoid a war: ta’allum lughatan wa sawfa tatajanab al harb: تعلم لغة، وسوف تتجنب الحرب . The same basic proverb is found in many different languages.

I hope you enjoy the interview, below.

Ethan:  Olivia, you’ve produced an innovative podcast, “Learning Levantine with Livi.” While the audience for the podcast is quite specific, i.e., upper-level students of Arabic as a second language (ASL), your approach to teaching and the universal importance of language acquisition, should be of more broader interest. 

I am a big fan of foreign language podcasts for entertainment and ongoing learning. I only wish such a wealth of material had been available when I was still in school. Can you tell us a bit about yourself, what you do, and your interest in Arabic, Arab culture?

Olivia:  I’m a theatre director and writer also working in experience design. I’m fascinated by how people learn and how we can create meaningful, narrative-based experiences.   My interest in Arabic started at University where I was studying Theology and Islamic Studies. Arabic was not part of my formal coursework, but I became aware that my horizons were limited by not speaking Arabic.  So I did a Summer intensive course in Damascus, 

I was very naive in thinking that in two months, starting from zero, I’d be able to read fluidly. But I gained a massive enthusiasm for the Arabic language, which was re-ignited a few years later when I had the chance to travel to Palestine for work. I really wanted to be able to talk to my new friends and colleagues in their mother tongue, rather than forcing everyone to switch to English all the time, which I thought was not fair.

Ethan: You mention in one episode that you don’t (or didn’t) consider yourself a natural language learner. Yet your spoken Arabic is impressive, as is your accent.  Can you elaborate on the benefits of developing a “cultural motivation” for language learning? 

Olivia: Until a few years ago I believed that I suffered from some cognitive defect that prevented me from learning languages. I still have memories of crying during French lessons at school because I just could not get the hang of the grammar.

But I’ve come to discover that I am not uniquely stupid but rather the environment and the teaching style I was exposed to were just not suited to the way I learn.  I believe  to really learn a language and deeply connect with it, you have to love, value and respect the culture that the language belongs to.

Ethan: I completely agree!  Another aspect of the podcast I found original was your invitation to your interviewees to correct your own occasional errors  -- which I think is a terrific way to encourage others not to fear making mistakes when speaking a language (I also wondered if you included them on purpose. The method seems to draw attention to the corrections more than the errors.  Was this effect intentional, or just natural?

Olivia: I wanted to challenge the perception that Arabic is an impossible language to learn -- by using myself as an example, proving that if I can do it, I reckon any one can. I also wanted to highlight failure as a key factor in language learning.  You must put yourself out there and be happy to mess up in front of native speakers if you want to get into a habit of speaking.  I’m all for fast, shame-free failure as a pedagogical tool.

Ethan: I love how the podcast is built around conversations with real people, about their lives and struggles.  While your conversation partners are all fascinating, I found one of them particularly compelling - a young man from Gaza named Adam, who happens to be blind, and who, against great odds, makes it to Holland to study international social work. Can you tell us a bit about how you met, where he is in his studies, and how the current horrific war has impacted him?

Olivia: Adam is a truly remarkable person. We met through conversationexchange.com, a platform for connecting with speakers of different languages. We would talk regularly on the phone and speak for 30 mins in English then 30 mins in Arabic.  His English was perfect and very academic, and I was very surprised to hear he had no formal education in English. He is entirely self-taught, an endeavor that started with his buying a VHS tape of a film in English and watching it 30+ times to memorize it. He built a basic vocabulary from this film and went from there.

I did not know that Adam was blind initially, as it didn’t come up in conversation. We talked about how we both love the sea and open water swimming. He told me he used to hold the record for the deepest free dive in Gaza (which means diving without oxygen) when he had his sight, but that he kept diving even after losing it.

A few months into our conversations he told me he was applying to study in a couple of universities in Europe. He already has a law degree, but he wanted to study social work so that he could support people with disabilities, like himself.

I felt like he was the perfect candidate for this kind of study and profession but, as I’m sure you know, getting out of Gaza and then making it through Egypt is extremely complicated and dangerous, even for someone who is sighted. So the idea of his doing that alone was both strikingly bold and terrifying. We might do an episode on the journey soon so I will save the rest of the story for then.

Adam is now in his second year of studying International Social Work in the Netherlands and, whilst he is physically safe, he is obviously struggling with extreme worry about his family who are in a living nightmare. His family, like most Gazans, has been displaced. His sister recently had her first child and has had medical complications due to lack of medical supplies, and finding food is a daily struggle.

Ethan: Given your obvious attachment to Palestinian culture, how are you -- and those in the podcast and their families — dealing with the disaster that’s been ongoing for the last many months?

I started studying the Middle East and learning its languages during the late 80s and 90s, during what I think of as a 'honeymoon' period, before the upheaval and destruction that has enveloped much of the region. I spent years in places like Yemen and Libya without many restrictions on where I could go. I had a degree of freedom to learn and explore that exists in far fewer places now. I find it's a recurring mental weight, to think of the places and people I grew so attached to, going through such constant violence, as a result of external, and internal forces.  

Thank you for asking. I really don’t know how to answer the ‘how are you’ question for myself as I think that I, like so many others, and probably like yourself, am in a constant state of shock, alarm, and grief. Regarding my friends and colleagues, of course, everyone is affected in almost unimaginable ways. So many have lost multiple family members. Some have lost three generations all in one go. I don’t know how anyone can begin to process that kind of loss. I cannot.

Ethan: What are your thoughts about the way Arabic is taught, formally, in Western universities?   I don’t have the impression it’s changed that much since the early 1990s when I was first learning,

I myself regret not learning a regional Arabic dialect from the start. The usual academic idea is that one takes 2-3 years of classical, or ‘Modern Standard’ Arabic (MSA) before moving on to a dialect. This is (a bit) like learning Latin grammar, as prep to speak Italian. And while there’s a certain logic to this, it also stifles real-world contact - as few run around speaking classical Arabic in the street.

Olivia: I did not study Arabic at University, but I have noticed that the university system of Arabic instruction seems to produce a lot of exceptional grammarians who can’t have a conversation.

I think the problem with focusing uniquely on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) -- the language of news and diplomacy --  is that you are studying documents, statements & artifacts rather than learning from and hearing from people in the way they express themselves day in, day out.

I’ve gone about things the other way round and am now trying to learn MSA. For me this works well as I feel I have a base to work from, and figuring out MSA becomes a bit more like a very challenging but fun puzzle I’m prepared for, rather than something overwhelming.

Ethan: What general advice do you have for students of Arabic as a second language, or those who want to start, but are overwhelmed by how complicated it seems?

Olivia: Learning any language is one of the best things you can do for yourself. If you are feeling daunted I would say, start with a dialect.

Shami/Levantine dialect is the most broadly understood and a great base for learning other dialects. The grammar in spoken Arabic is also considerably easier than MSA and not terrifyingly complex.

I will say it can be tough learning Arabic when you are not living and working in an Arabic speaking country, so you do need to create that context for yourself, be it through having the radio on in the background in Arabic or through making friends who speak the language.

Ethan: Was the pandemic a catalyst for the podcast?  What are your plans and hopes for it moving forward?  And who is your current audience?

Olivia: I am one of those people who started a podcast during Covid…I was furloughed from work, and I don’t do well with sitting still so I thought I’d push myself to make it and keep myself busy.  I believe the current audience is almost all Arabic language learners with the majority being Americans, Israelis, and Brits (or that’s what Spotify analytics tells me!).

I would love to expand the listenership to native speakers too. I’m fortunate to have some very interesting friends who I think would draw a wider audience (I’m just convincing them to record episodes with me).  I plan to keep it going and try to commit to making episodes more regularly. I have a half-baked idea to invite other non-native speakers as guests (Ethan -- what about it?) just to reinforce the ‘you can do it’ message of encouragement that I hope the episodes transmit.

Ethan:  I’d really enjoy that, though be forewarned, my colloquial is not ‘pure Levantine’, if there is such a thing.

And to end on a philosophical, or practical note (and I think I know what you’re going to say, based on some of the conversations in the podcast): What do you think of predictions that foreign language learning will decline, at least among speakers of English, given the ubiquity of AI-powered translation apps? 

Olivia: I sincerely hope that language learning will not go into decline. Whilst apps are a great help and I use them myself sometimes, they cannot replace the element of human connection which lies at the heart of speaking someone else's language. One of the hardest but most rewarding  aspects of learning a language is translating your personality. If you rely on an app to do that I think you are settling for never being a full version of yourself in the other language.

Ethan: Thank you again Olivia! Again, if you’re an intermediate or advanced student of Levantine Arabic, do check out Learn Levantine (Arabic) with Livi.

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