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Where to begin in learning Arabic? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| KSAKSA Groupie Australia Joined 5136 days ago 65 posts - 99 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Gulf) | Message 9 of 26 10 February 2012 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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^^ The second video is coming up as unavailable, WonderJet.
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| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6220 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 26 11 February 2012 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||
Kanewai echoes my thoughts exactly. Arabic is really, really tough because of (among many other things) the diglossia. I strongly believe you have to choose one or the other (MSA or dialect) to begin with to get a grasp of the structure of this extremely complex language. I tend to tackle it every year and get rapidly burned out (this year included!) because I to like learning languages in order to speak with people. Contrary to what you may find on this forum, outside of academia, NOBODY speaks MSA with each other. ( my personal experience - disagree if you wish but this is my experience) They will speak a dialect. & chances are whatever dialect they speak will NOT be the one that you studied (Murphy's law of Arabic!) ... That being said, I would still start with MSA because it will give you the best foundation in Arabic and each dialect does borrow from MSA in its own way. First things first: learn the alphabet!!! It really is not that hard and will give you more results per time unit invested than anything else with the study of Arabic. Alif Baa is a great first step. Do this before you do anything else. Living Language and Teach Yourself are both actually pretty good and do a decent job of explaining the basic concepts of MSA. This living language course is quite good and you can get it used on amazon with cd's for about 5 bucks! ie=UTF8&qid=1328927804&sr=8-1">http://www.amazon.com/Complet e-Arabic-Basics-Basic- Courses/dp/1400021235/ref=tmm_abk_title_1?ie=UTF8&qid=132892 7804&sr=8-1 As kanewai said, the transliteration is annoying with them; why couldn't they use Arabic script?! I tried to use Al-Kitaab for self-study and failed miserably. Don't bother with Al Kitaab unless you are in a class setting. It really isn't geared towards independent learners. The DLI course is excellent but is also hard to use on your own. Unless you have a ton of free time and are extremely motivated, DLI is an expressway to Burn-out-ville. I did get through a good deal of the FSI Saudi Course earlier this year. This is much more user friendly than the DLI course for self study. The Saudi Dialect is also pretty useful as it blends many of the words from MSA, Egyptian, Gulf and Levantine dialects. Again...annoying transliteration! I believe kanewai can attest that the FSI MWA course is extremely monotonous and painful. Stay away unless you are a true masochist. Once you get a decent grasp on MSA, if you are interested in jumping to a dialect you will probably have a good idea which one you want to concentrate on. Yes, Egyptian probably makes the most sense unless you have a definitive reason to do one of the other ones. Don't try to do both MSA and a dialect at once like I did. It will only confuse and frustrate you - take my word for it! There is a reason Arabic is classified as one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. It is complex and it takes serious time and effort to learn well. It is also very interesting which may be why I keep punishing myself trying to learn it year after year. Tune in next week when I explain how to burn out in the rest of the Category IV languages including Korean and Mandarin ...ha ha ha...mostly kidding... Edited by liddytime on 11 February 2012 at 4:54am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| WonderJet Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4703 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: French | Message 11 of 26 11 February 2012 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the heads up. Should be all good now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Erica1990 Newbie United States Joined 4673 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* | Message 12 of 26 11 February 2012 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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thanks for the suggestions everybody. i ordered the living languages ultimate arabic 2009 book off of amazon and it looks pretty good. I'll be starting it today.
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| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6220 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 26 11 February 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
You should be fine with ultimate arabic. I would still do Alif Baa first, but I think ultimate arabic does teach the alphabet. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mezzofanti Octoglot Senior Member Australia mezzoguild.com Joined 4739 days ago 51 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Arabic (Egyptian), Irish, Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Korean, Georgian, French | Message 14 of 26 14 February 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to learn MSA specifically, you should get a copy of A New Arabic Grammar |
Haywood & Nahmad, and use the free audio material on the Defense Language Institute website which is far better than anything else you'll find online. Don't waste money buying the expensive products suggested by others here. It's not necessary. Most of the replies you've received here are from early 'learners' with an 'Arabic is a really, really tough' attitude. Nonsense. Once you get over the initial (and brief) hurdle of the alphabet and guttural pronunciations, it's one of the easiest languages you'll ever study (same with other Semitic languages really). Dialects are important if you plan to travel to the Arab world, but if you're learning Arabic for work or to able to read the news, MSA's all you need to worry about. If you need any further advice I'll be glad to help! Good luck :) 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 15 of 26 14 February 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Not an opinion shared by FSI, who have been in the business of teaching languages intensively for several decades. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mezzofanti Octoglot Senior Member Australia mezzoguild.com Joined 4739 days ago 51 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Arabic (Egyptian), Irish, Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Korean, Georgian, French | Message 16 of 26 14 February 2012 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been 'in the business' of specializing in Arabic for the last decade of my own life and I'm telling you that's nonsense. Dialect variation exists everywhere so that's not a measure of how difficult a language is. I'm fluent in Egyptian and when I've spoken to people from Morocco and Iraq, they've simply 'Egyptianized' what they're saying (just as I, as an Australian, can use a quasi-American accent to help learners of English understand me better). Why tell this guy to waste his money on something like Alif Baa? Have you ever googled 'learn arabic alphabet'? There's plenty of 100% free material that others have put up which he can use. Same goes for the other basics of Arabic. One other point I'll make is that Arabs tend to be some of the most willing-to-help people you'll find on language exchange sites. They love to help people learn Arabic because for cultural and religious reasons they take a lot of pride in their language and are very hospitable. Arabs on LiveMocha will be more than happy to converse with you and do their best to help generally. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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