expatwanabe

Waiting for a date to fly out the Jeddah to finalise a job offer, how many Expats in the ME have made the effort to speak Arabic.

I was going to try and learn a few basic phrases before I arrive.

I know you don’t have to as English is widely used, but surely spending some time to learn the basics must be appreciated and shows some respect to the country you are taking a salary from?

Ellie and Jason

We have been over here about 7 months now - Khamis Mushayt - We bought a phrase book before coming over to learn simple phrases - hello, goodbye, thank you, please etc etc. However now my husband is learning Arabic and can have quite in depth conversations with people. He is treated VERY differently by the Saudi people than the other western staff are, and it has been widely commented upon that this British guy is learning Arabic and is actually quite good at it. Also my 3 and 5 year always use basic Arabic phrases, and my 5 year is learning Arabic at school.

You will get by with English alone - and a bit of sign language, as with most countries, but if you are planning on living and working here, and your superiors are Saudi then I would say make an effort tbh, my husband now has quite a few Saudi friends.

Ellie
xxx

Bahtatboy

[QUOTE=expatwanabe;8550970]Waiting for a date to fly out the Jeddah to finalise a job offer, how many Expats in the ME have made the effort to speak Arabic.
QUOTE]

6, but 5 gave up.

norsk

[QUOTE=Bahtatboy;8553013]

to follow on from Ellie's comment yes you do get some kudos from knowing arabic, but to be honest you don't need to speak much more than the basic phrases before that is bestowed upon you. if you do go ahead and learn how to speak fluently they will all respect you for it, but i don't think it matters at the end of the day. it may however open up new things career-wise which are otherwise closed to expats (especially in Saudi).

it's kind of like spain to be honest. it is considered rude to live there if you can't even be bothered to learn to say hello and how are you, but most people speak english so not really a huge issue if that's all you know.

one benefit of knowing arabic is that you can negotiate much better. i brought along a colleague when i was buying a car and he managed to get me a 30% discount whereas I had not been able to get more than 15% before that.

samSG

i can list down all the arabic terms i've learned in the past 10 months. people always seem to smile if u make an effort.

asalam malaikum
walaikum salaam
shukran / shukria (Urdu)
afwan
aiwa
la
kaif halik
kaif
wala
hamdallah
hamdullilah
marhaba
bokra
inshallah
mashallah
fattura
iftar
isha
magrib
duhur
mabrook

Bahtatboy

All you need to remember is that the Arab-speaking world is run by IBM.

Insh'Allah
Bukra
Marlesh