Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5189 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)
| Message 9 of 30 05 January 2011 at 9:29am | IP Logged |
osteoblast wrote:
Those are great tips, Andrew. I greatly appreciate it.
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You're welcome :)
osteoblast wrote:
I spoke for the first time with a friend over the phone for an hour. There was a lot of um....however my friend was very patient so he listened and corrected me... as of right now it does seem quite impossible to learn in 3 months. However, I am optimistic. One thing which I learnt is that I need to get a phrase book. Does anyone know any such book in English? A lot of the times I was asking, how do you say this ____. Having a phrase book would aid tremendously. Thanks. |
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I recommend the Arabic Berlitz Phrase Book and CD (Berlitz Phrase Book & CD), which you can get for GBP 5.31 on Amazon. It's in MSA (many phrase books are in Egyptian Arabic [because it's more useful in tourist situations] but they don't always say so) and it's got the Arabic script as well as an accurate transliteration. I don't know if the CD is any good, but I think the book itself is well worth the money.
EDIT: I just had a look at the book online and the transliteration is usually OK, but sometimes annoying (e.g. both hamza and `ain are sometimes transliterated as ' and س and ص are both transliterated as "s" [in fact I think it's the same with all emphatic consonants. grrr - how annoying]). But as you can read Arabic, this shouldn't be a problem.
Edited by Andrew C on 05 January 2011 at 9:42am
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osteoblast Newbie Canada Joined 5073 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English
| Message 10 of 30 05 January 2011 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
I am also considering the following option:
1- Speak for one hour to my friend in FuSHA.
2- Speak for one hour every other day and memorize phrases the other.
3- Speak for half an hour and spend the other half an hour memorizing phrases.
What do you think is best?
And thoughts about Al-Arabiyatu Bayna Yadayk?
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Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5189 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)
| Message 11 of 30 05 January 2011 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
osteoblast wrote:
I am also considering the following option:
1- Speak for one hour to my friend in FuSHA.
2- Speak for one hour every other day and memorize phrases the other.
3- Speak for half an hour and spend the other half an hour memorizing phrases.
What do you think is best? |
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If your friend is a good teacher then number 1 is the best. But you worried me before when you said you were having to say "how do you say this?" all the time. I always think this is not a good question to ask - it means your friend has to think of an answer on the spot and it might be that Arabs don't even say what you are asking.
What you need is some natural input - it might be a written conversation in Arabic you could practice together or a short newspaper article or an extract from one of your text books.
Otherwise I would go for number 3 - little and often is usually best.
osteoblast wrote:
And thoughts about Al-Arabiyatu Bayna Yadayk? |
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I don't know this book, but quickly looked at it online. It's all in Arabic! I don't know how anyone can learn a language on their own solely in that language. But I know the other book you are studying is the same, so perhaps you can do it. Also I suspect this book isn't all that different from the madina one you're already studying.
Edited by Andrew C on 05 January 2011 at 3:53pm
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osteoblast Newbie Canada Joined 5073 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English
| Message 12 of 30 05 January 2011 at 4:54pm | IP Logged |
Al-Arabiyatu Bayna Yadayk comes with a audio CD for conversation Arabic. http://www.dhikrullah.com/knowledge/arabic/al-arabiyatu-bayn a-yadayk/
It was because of the CD I was interested in this.
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ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7096 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical)
| Message 13 of 30 17 January 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged |
If you go to http://shahid.mbc.net/media/programs and sort the list by اللهجة (dialect), you will find a decent number of them in fusHa. Now, some of them are actually a mixture between Saudi dialect and fusha or they will speak with a strong Saudi accent so you will have to look through them. One that I know is in fusHA isالقعقاع بن عمرو التميمي. I don't know if you've heard of him, but I think he is a guy mentioned in the Quran. It might be good to have a TV show to watch instead of always having to listen/read the news and religious material.
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lavender Newbie United States Joined 4696 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (classical)
| Message 14 of 30 15 January 2012 at 7:53am | IP Logged |
You can find videos of Al-Arabiyatu Bayna Yadayk 1 and part of the second book being
taught on youtube by greenlanemosque. The book is written entirely in arabic, but this guy
speaks English and gives some extra bits of information along the way.
I'm about 21 lessons into the first book. It doesn't specifically discuss grammar, but you
definitely use it. I didn't learn to speak my native English by learning grammar first
either. I like to think that worked out just fine :)
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Insomniac Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4806 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (classical)
| Message 15 of 30 18 January 2012 at 1:52am | IP Logged |
Osteoblast - there is one little known place where you can immerse yourself completely in fusha arabic - The
European Institute of Islamic Sciences in France. No dialect, no English. Everyone I know who has spent an
academic year there has come out completely fluent in fusha.
Some people can't understand the logic of learning spoken fusha/MSA but believe me brother I know where
you are coming from.
Andrew - yes it's very common for even second or third generation Muslims to memorise the Quran here in
the West word for word, sound by sound. More impressive so that 99% of these don't actually understand
the meaning and we're certainly not talking about super intelligent prodigies, it's very common. In fact it's
stated in the Quran that one of it's miracles would be that it would be memorised by many and preserved,
but anyway that's another discussion altogether :)
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Insomniac Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4806 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (classical)
| Message 16 of 30 18 January 2012 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
Also Arabicpod.net do some nice podcasts, mostly in MSA.
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