Learning Arabic

I'd decided before getting to university that one of my extra-curricular activities had to involve learning a language because I've always learnt languages in some way or form throughout my education, so it would be hard for me to not keep on learning languages. I was torn between Russian and Arabic but eventually I chose Arabic because I thought it would be more interesting to learn a language that wasn't a European language and that has a different alphabet and numerical system to the roman alphabet and numerical system. I also thought that it would be a good way to learn about and gain a better understanding of the culture of the Middle East.


I thought Arabic would be hard but I soon learnt that it wasn't as difficult as it is often made to seem. Arabic is actually very easy to learn phonetically because their sentences are often much simpler than our sentences as they often don't use a verb, where we would use a verb. So, for example, when they say our equivalent of, "My name is (insert name)", the contents of their sentence will actually amount to a sentence, whose literal translation means, "My name (insert name)". This can admittedly be explained in part by the fact that they share a similarity with Russian by not having the verb, "to be" for simple sentences. Admittedly Russian has no present tense for the verb "to be" at all and I'm not entirely sure when Arabic sentences do necessitate this verb. The other odd characteristic I've noticed about the language is that it involves a lot of words, which would sound like colloquialisms or child speak to most Europeans, e.g. "omm", meaning "mother", "howa", meaning "he", etc.

Nevertheless, although Arabic is easy to learn phonetically, it takes a while to get used to writing the characters of the Arabic alphabet. I remember the first time, when I was introduced to the characters of the Arabic alphabet and I started trying to write them, it felt like I was back in year 1 or the receptionary year of primary school, when you're given lessons in how to write the letters of the roman alphabet, although it was harder than writing those letters because I'd never seen these characters before. One of the hardest characteristics to get used to when learning to write the Arabic alphabet, is that all of their vowels apart from "a" and "y" are represented by diacritics (a mark or sign added to a character/letter to change its phonetic form). The other characteristic of Arabic that it takes some time to adapt to is the way in which there is no Arabic equivalent for some vowels in our language, even though some words will be given a phonetic spelling that includes the letter. There are no equivalent Arabic characters for the letters "i" and "u, so you often have to substitute the letter "y" in for a word which has an "i" sound in it. Although they have a diacritic for "o", as is the case with all diacritics, it can only be represented in such a way, if it is a short vowel in the word, so you have to substitute in the Arabic character for "w", when you want "o" to be represented as a long vowel, naturally though this "logic" has taken a while to grasp! I can on the other hand say that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to get used to writing from the left rather than the right. In my most recent lesson, we were introduced to the Arabic numbers but I have a feeling that it will take a while to grasp those aswell because I can only remember the way in which 1 and 0 are written.

I think learning Arabic has also been good from a social point of view because the good majority of the people, who do it, study International Relations, so it means that I get to know people other than those, who live in my flat or study law. Some people would get around the problem of meeting people outside of their course or their halls of residence by joining societies but I haven't found any French or German societies, so that wasn't an option for me. I admit that I haven't made any close friends by doing Arabic classes but it still exposes me to new ideas, helps me to cultivate new skills and gives my mind a rest from law, so I think it's been a good activity for me to take up.

Internships

Naturally, as a law student it's important to think about doing internships. Although, a lot of people leave it until next year, I've decided to start applying this year because I have a lack of experience and because I want to have good chances of being employed, when I graduate. We also have to apply for training contracts in our second year, if we want to be employed by a law firm, in the year that we graduate and of course it's important to try and have completed an internship before applying for training contracts.


Originally, I focused solely on doing internships with law firms because I'm still set on working with law firms but as most of these firms won't accept many first year students, I've decided to apply to a wider range of employers. At first I wasn't so keen on applying to do internships with the banks because I didn't know if I could feign enough of a keen interest in finance/economics to make it worthwhile. I ended up changing my mind when other first years told me that they had applied to the banks and that this had in turn led to interviews and eventually some internships. I decided that I had to stop being so narrow minded, when it came to internships because I've got to try and have as much experience as possible, that relates to law because I'll be graduating in a tough economic climate, so I'll need to have the option of being employed by other firms such as banks, in the event that I can't get a job with a law firm.

I've applied to DMH Stallard because they're more receptive of applications from first years but I'm not planning on making any other first year applications to law firms. Otherwise, I'm currently applying to Barclays Corporate (ie. the part that doesn't relate to investment banking) and Deutsche Bank. I've decided to apply for internships in their risk departments because this relates to the drafting of policies, so I feel that it would be a good internship for me to pursue as someone, who enjoys contract law.

Nevertheless, when it comes to answering the questions, which require between 100-300 words, I find that I struggle. I've therefore only submitted one application so far. I'm planning to finish my other two applications but I find it hard to try and think of the qualities, which distinguish me from any other candidate. I've gotten better at answering these sort of questions now that I've had a gap year and I have a chance to get used to filling out application forms and work out what my weaknesses are, when answering questions. So from this point of view, I'm definitely glad that I had a gap year even though it wasn't necessarily the most exciting year of my life.

I found that DMH Stallard's form was the easiest to complete because they tend to just ask you why you want to work there and why you want to be a solicitor, although as a firm with a upper limit of 300 words, they've made me write the longest answers. Barclays tends to ask you more of these long questions but they ask for a maximum of 250 words. I'd tend to say that Deutsche Bank was in a way more annoying because they ask you about the way in which they're distinguished from other banks, what you're greatest contribution was during periods of work experience and if you hate maths, then be aware that they make you do a numeracy test. Nevertheless, they only allow you to give answers of 100 words at most, so there's less to worry about in that respect.