Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Robert Lane Greene, who writes for The Economist's Global Agenda, is learning Arabic. He brings an impressive linguistic past to the project, having studied Spanish, German, French and Portuguese in college. And that's not all: "I speak decent Russian and have taught myself some half-decent rudimentary Japanese. Languages are usually fun. But Arabic is really killing me," he tells readers of Slate.

One major problem Lane Greene notes is that in Arabic people don't include most vowels when writing. He cites the example of Maktab, or "office," which is just written mktb. "Vowels are included as little marks above and below in beginning textbooks, but you soon have to get used to doing without them. Whn y knw th lngg wll ths s nt tht hrd."

But that's only the beginning. In Arabic, the verb usually comes before the subject and object and a present-tense verb has 13 forms. There are three noun cases and two genders and the idiosyncrasies are intimidating. When the teacher explains that "numbers are marked for gender-but most numbers take the opposite gender from the word they are modifying — we students stare at each other in slack-jawed solidarity. When we learn that adjectives modifying nonhuman plurals always have a feminine singular form-meaning that 'the cars are new' comes out as 'the cars, she are new' — I can hear heads banging on the desks around me. I want to do the same."

Robert Lane Greene is a gifted communicator and one feels that he's got what it takes to survive in Egypt.