Which reminds me: the peeps at ConU told me to buy the books now and read up on Arabic writing before starting the class in fall, because they want everyone in class to have a basic familiarity with the alphabet. I can't afford the books for a couple more days, so I found an on-line resource and have been looking over the writing during my breaks at work, &c. It's not really the easiest script in the world to learn, mostly because of the fact that 22 of the basic alphabet's 28 letters come in 4 variants, depending on where in the word they fall. So, whereas I can find a standalone T� or W�w, I have a harder time recognising a T� that falls somewhere in the middle of a bunch of squiggles. Oh, and Waw is a letter that breaks the flow of a word, so it only has two variants instead of four.

You see where I'm going with this?

It's key, here, to think of Arabic as a script with only a cursive version.

I also tried to write out a few things, eh? I suck. It'll come with practice, I know, but it's so weird to see what looks like very elementary squiggles, and be absolutely unable to get the proper dimensions right.

Gr.

I can't wait for fucking conjugations.