Pharyngal Voiced Fricatives and Love

Two days ago I went to a conference entitled Feminism: From Theory to Practice among the Bedouin women. It was presented in Hebrew and Arabic and attended by roughly 30 Bedouin women. In order to get something useful done with my time I alternated between watching the body language of the participants when each of the five panelists presented, and reading the book "The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read and Write it".

At one point in the book, the authors are describing one of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, which has no equivalent in English, and they write "The only real way to learn it is to listen to Arabs and practice incessantly," then they go on to say, "In scientific phonological terms, this letter is a pharyngal voiced fricative."

Huh?! A what?

I expect to be confused by listening to or reading Arabic, but that last sentence is in English and I still have no idea what it means.

Contrast that experience with this one. Yesterday I attended a much smaller conference with three of my colleagues, all Arab women. We were meeting in order to discuss options for a website I'm helping to create for the organization. At the beginning of the meeting they made apologies and explained that they'd be speaking in Arabic. Understandable. It's more efficient since their English, while infinitely better than my Arabic, is still cumbersome.

After being here for three weeks, I've realized that this is probably the way it's going to be while I'm here - I'm just not going to understand most of what is spoken.

Anyway, the meeting continues. Amny pulls up the site she and I worked on together and then she pulls up a rough draft I created using another program.  The women discuss the pros and cons of each for a while, and then there is a shift in the conversation. Even though everything is still being said in Arabic, it's clear to me that one of the three women has either recently fallen in love or is about to get married. They talk about this for a minute and then move back to pointing at the screen and discussing the websites.

During our debrief later that day Amny confirmed that the other woman was having a formal engagement party this weekend and will be getting married soon.

After the confusion of the day before, which exemplifies the daily confusion I've resigned myself to, it was uplifting to be reminded that sometimes I'll still be able understand and connect with the women I'll be working with regardless of language and cultural barriers.

Addendums, p.s.'s, and additional thoughts:
1. That one sentence aside, the book I mentioned is actually astonishingly good at explaining the Arabic alphabet.
2. Here is the link to the rough draft website I'm creating for one of the organizations. I'm testing out the pros and cons of using Blogger. Any comments, thoughts, feedback, suggestions, or criticisms are welcomed and appreciated. Daughters of the Desert.