When French people visit Tunisia, they often feel that they can get the full Tunisian experience without learning the local dialect. While it is true that many Tunisians speak French, Charlotte Dozias, a French student who took one year of Tunisian Arabic classes at WALI, insists that learning Tunisian Arabic (Tunsi) is essential for anyone who wants to understand Tunisian culture and society. Charlotte’s self-directed classes at WALI helped her reach her long-time goal of reading a book in Arabic, and her Tunsi classes even got her invited to spend one of the biggest Muslim holidays with a Tunisian family.
Charlotte emphasizes that it’s not necessary to be fluent in Tunisian Arabic to connect with Tunisians—the simple fact of making an effort allows foreigners to understand locals on a deeper level.
“I’m not fluent in Tunisian at all,” Charlotte says. “But just the fact that I was trying to have conversations in Tunisian in everyday interactions, you can feel that there’s more opportunity for a deeper connection. If you only stick to French, it’s a bit superficial.”
Learning the local dialect opened new doors for Charlotte, such as when she was invited to spend Eid, a holiday marking the end of Ramadan, with her friend’s family in a coastal city. She helped the family prepare the day’s meal, even volunteering to help clean the intestines of the sheep they had slaughtered that morning.
“I was really proud because, of course, everybody was speaking Tunisian, and I was actually able to keep up,” Charlotte says. “I really felt like part of a Tunisian family.”
Although Charlotte was working full-time at a local company during her year in Tunisia, she still made it a priority to fit Tunsi and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) classes into her schedule.
“The first day I arrived in Tunis, the director, Wissem, invited me to the Institute and said, ‘Let’s see how we can make this work with your schedule and how you want to learn,’” Charlotte says. “The school was very flexible with my work schedule, since I could only come at night or very early. There aren’t many institutes that do that, so for me it was very practical.”
Charlotte learned Tunsi primarily with a book of practice dialogues that she read through with her teacher, Hassine. She especially enjoyed talking with him about subjects that were relevant to her personally.
“With the dialect, there’s a big emphasis on speaking skills. It’s actually really nice because it meant I was getting to talk about what was going on in my day-to-day life,” she says.
Because of her work schedule, Charlotte’s classes started early—7:45 am—so she especially appreciated Hassine’s uplifting energy while her brain was still waking up.
“It was a great combo doing the dialect with Hassine because he’s very young and talkative, so the classes were really friendly,” she says.
Charlotte also took MSA classes to complete one of her long-time goals: to read a book in Arabic. Several years before coming to Tunisia, Charlotte had bought the Trilogy of Nagpur, a famous Egyptian book, to try to read on her own. However, the language was more complicated than she had expected, and she soon found herself feeling overwhelmed and demotivated. When she came to Tunisia, she proposed reading the book together with her MSA teacher, Habib.
“Reading the trilogy of Nagpur with Habib was much nicer because he could explain the words and sentence structures to me,” Charlotte says.
After months of trying to push through the book on her own, Charlotte got the satisfaction of reading the Arabic Literature she’d always wanted to.
Overall, Charlotte’s favorite part of both Tunsi and Modern Standard Arabic was that her learning was self-directed.
“I loved it because I had the liberty to choose what I wanted to study,” she says. “It was guided, but if I wanted to switch and study Mahfouz’s literature, my teachers were happy to adapt.”
Outside of class, Charlotte’s success in Arabic was made possible by her personal commitment to practice in her workplace and with friends.
“One of my friends in particular really pushed me to speak in Tunisian with her, even when I was feeling lazy or tired,” Charlotte says. “She was really a motor for me to learn the language.”
Ultimately, Charlotte feels that learning Arabic—just like any language—is possible for anyone: it just comes down to the student’s willingness to practice.
“Learning any language is difficult, especially because Tunisian Arabic has some sounds that don’t exist in French,” she says. “And at first, yes, it’s a bit hard. But it’s just about practicing, practicing, practicing.”