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Where to begin in learning Arabic? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Erica1990 Newbie United States Joined 4673 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 26 30 January 2012 at 4:03am | IP Logged |
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I have been wanting to learn MSA for quite a while and now have the funds (to buy textbooks, etc) to do so. What learning resources should I use? Are the al-kitaab books any good? How many hours a day should I study? Is it possible to reach a proficient level thru self-study alone, or will I eventually need to get a tutor? Any suggestions/recommendations? Thanks in advance!
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4880 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 2 of 26 30 January 2012 at 8:21am | IP Logged |
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Let's start with the bad news! There is no "good" place to start. There's a shocking
lack of resources for Arabic, and even the normally good programs like can be weak when it comes to Arabic. If you know this going in, it'll save you some of the frustrations we've all faced. Know that you'll hit roadblocks with each program, and know that you'll have to take multiple approaches for each breakthrough, and you'll be fine. My current thoughts, subject to change: 1. Start with Alif Baa. Learn the basics of the alphabet. Do not even think about skipping this step! 2. Do a couple chapters of Living Language or Teach Yourself. It will be too hard to finish the books at this point, but you'll get a sense of the language's structure. Make sure any book you buy contains the Arabic script as well as a transliteration. Every book transliterates differently, which is a total pain. 3. Give Michel Thomas (Egyptian, I think) or Pimsleur (Levantine) a shot. Neither is MSA, but they'll help you to learn to "listen" to the sounds. That's six months right there, if you average about 30" a day. My impression is that al Kitaab is geared more towards classroom instruction. You can pass, at this point, on Assimil and FSI. They might come in useful down the road, but not at this point. Linguaphone intrigues me, but I don't know anyone who's done it. Edited by kanewai on 30 January 2012 at 8:23am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| KSAKSA Groupie Australia Joined 5136 days ago 65 posts - 99 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Gulf) | Message 3 of 26 30 January 2012 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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^^ Great suggestions above...
Definitely learn the alphabet - it isn't that hard and won't take you long and it will help immensely with your pronounciation. Michel Thomas is quite a good course to kick off with, as mentioned above, it isn't MSA but a lot of the work on there is applicable to MSA. Arabicpod.net is a great resource too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6253 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 26 30 January 2012 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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Arabic will test your motivation in ways you can't imagine.
So I have been doing Arabic self studying without any previous knowledge of any language that could potentially help me with Arabic (like Persian, Turkish Urdu and similar). You can learn the alphabet in one day with no problems. Textbooks wise, I used Assimil only (the new edition) and I found it to be incredibly good, at least for me (then again, I'm a huge Assimil fan and supporter, but that's a personal taste in the end). That has been supported by youtube with Arabic songs and clips of people speaking in Arabic with subtitles. In the end Arabic is definitely not as difficult as some make it believe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4880 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 5 of 26 30 January 2012 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
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One other thing I'd recommend is to download the Microsoft Maren (or similar) toolbar.
It converts the "Arabic text alphabet" to Arabic script. So if I type: "9aba7 alkheir" ... with the language toolbar set to Arabic / Maren I get: صباح الخير This has helped me a lot when making vocab lists, or typing up summaries of each day's lessons. I still have a hard time with Arabic dictionaries, so I find I need to keep my own running vocabulary list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5823 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 6 of 26 30 January 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged |
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I agree entirely with Kanewai about the frustrations of learning Arabic. I find it a fascinating language, but I have lost count of the number of times I have given up, only to be drawn back to it.
I've been using 'Mastering Arabic' (only 3 more chapters to go!) and I think it makes a good introduction to the language if you are a complete beginner. The good points are that it goes at a steady pace in the beginning, it doesn't overwhelm you with new vocabulary and grammar points, it has a nice 'fun' layout and there is quite a lot of supplementary material to reinforce what you are learning. (a workbook, grammar book, and a book for learning the script). The bad points are that it crams all the finer points of Arabic verbs into about 3 chapters, which leaves the student with a very rushed overview and little chance to consolidate this complicated aspect of Arabic. Some of the topics and vocabulary are IMHO not very appropriate for beginners. (There is a whole chapter on government ministers convening meetings with foreign ambassadors) And there isn't enough audio to help make the transition to native material. You certainly won't have mastered the language by the end of the book. There is also a 2nd volume, which I have bought but haven't started yet. It doesn't look bad, each chapter deals with a specific theme (family, education, health etc), and seems to reinforce some of the material in the first book and also fill in some of the gaps. Each chapter also focuses on a particular Arab country, giving you an audio sample with transcript of the dialect as a taster. However, again, I would say that grammar is covered very briefly with few exercises to consolidate. I have used Linguaphone and reached Lesson 7 or thereabouts. I liked it, listening to the large amount audio meant I had Arabic words and phrases constantly buzzing in my head. However I got to the stage where I felt overwhelmed by the amount of new vocabulary. Maybe if I were to focus solely on Arabic I would go back to it. One of the problems with it, though, is that you will come across case endings in the dialogues with no explanation as to why they are there. This led to me giving up on it in frustration before reaching the end of lesson 2. It was only a year later, when I had a better understanding of how the cases worked, that I felt able to go back to it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4923 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 26 04 February 2012 at 4:32am | IP Logged |
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What about DLI MSA? Is it good?
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| WonderJet Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4703 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: French | Message 8 of 26 05 February 2012 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
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I just started studying Arabic myself, and I immediately saw that it's fundamentally
different from studying something like French or Russian, where there's just one standard form of the language that everyone reads and speaks. Of course, there are regional flavors, as there are with English, but Arabic is different. No one speaks MSA at home, so you either need to limit yourself to the written word or double up with a regional dialect so you can actually have a natural conversation with someone. I chose Egyptian Arabic as my spoken dialect because I know a few native speakers from work, plus the dominance of Egyptian movies and music in Arabic entertainment. As for texts, I can say that Teach Yourself Complete Arabic is very good, but it's not easy. It's the kind of book that hands you a real world writing selection of a few paragraphs along with a glossary of fifty words. Clearly, that approach has its benefits and drawbacks. It's not bad, but it's weird to know the word for "conquer" before the word for "ball". I also have Mastering Arabic. I've done a few chapters and find it more lighthearted and probably easier to work through while staying motivated. My brother and I started this year off with a two week challenge, starting from zero and putting up a two minute video in Arabic after fourteen days. The intro is here and my final video is here. I averaged a little over four hours per day during that time, but a lot of the time was spent learning the alphabet (I still read frustratingly slowly) and evaluating different online resources and books to see what would stick. Definitely get a tutor if you can afford one, especially to give you guidance at the beginning, since the pronunciation and writing are so unfamiliar. My best general advice would be to keep it fun and make small achievable goals to keep yourself motivated. Edited by WonderJet on 11 February 2012 at 6:41am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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