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Arabic Study Group | ||
Tags: Study Group | Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5016 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes  Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 16 01 March 2014 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wanted to have another go at Arabic and I was wondering whether a couple of us should get together and form a study group like the one we had last time.
I think it didn't work last time because the members of our group had such diverse interests. Perhaps if we agreed to use the same book, we could motivate each other. Anyone interested? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3941 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 16 01 March 2014 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe. There isn't an Arabic TAC group, is there?
What are your interests (and your level of Arabic, for that matter)? Looking at that thread, which is before my time, I see it's AR/FR, which would work well for me, as my French is very comfortable, and Maghreb culture is a big draw to me. You notice [below my name] I put "Arabic (Egyptian)", that's really just because it's that for which I can most readily find study materials. For the moment I want to get my Arabic to a decent level in any dialect, with Tunisian/Moroccan having the most charm for me, even if not objectively the most useful. Edited by DavidStyles on 01 March 2014 at 8:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5016 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 16 02 March 2014 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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There may be other Arabic TAC groups, but I was hoping we would do a regular study group. The idea of a TAC is to learn the language as fast as you can. Here, we can set our own pace. The focus of the group would be to stay the course, albeit at a more manageable speed.
Here's an excellent article from a DLI journal that describes the dialect-MSA conundrum (A shout-out to daristani who posted it way back in 2010). I think there are two major takeaways: 1) We should start with MSA first before moving on to a dialect. 2) The Egyptian dialect has the most songs and films, which makes it ideal for study. P.S.: I know very little Arabic. I know the alphabet. I have some idea about nouns, verbs and have done some noun-sentences(joomla-ismiya). Oh, I would like to learn Gulf Arabic, but I understand why Egyptian might be a more pragmatic choice. Edited by napoleon on 02 March 2014 at 8:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DinaAlia Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 3932 days ago 24 posts - 49 votes Speaks: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian*, English, French Studies: Greek, Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Icelandic Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 16 02 March 2014 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Where do I sign up? Here?
How will it work? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5016 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 16 02 March 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Welcome. It's wonderful to have you with us. Now, as far as the details are concerned, if we decide to study MSA, we have a plethora of courses to choose from. The courses for MSA that come to mind are: FSI Modern Written Arabic (3 Volumes): This course was produced by the US government and is currently in the public domain. The course is very old. It still teaches that Libya is a monarchy, so, this is pre-Gaddafi material. Overall, a great course to improve reading and listening comprehension. The only problem with it is that it teaches very little grammar. Even if we only complete the first book, we will be able to read newspapers and get the gist of news broadcasts. DLI Modern Standard Arabic: An old course, but it's free and it has great drills. The Madinah Books (3 Volumes): This is not free, but cheap. The pdfs of all 3 books have been made available online by the author. This course was made for non-Arab Muslims who wanted to study Arabic. This course is very heavy on grammar, a perfect complement to the FSI MWA course, IMHO. The best thing about this course is that it has accompanying video lectures. The instructor, Mr. Asif Mehrali, is a great teacher and his enthusiasm is infectious. I see no reason why we should ignore this resource just because it has religious connotations. Once we decide what book we want to study as a group and agree on a pace, say a lesson a week, we would post regular updates on our progress. What do you guys think? Edited by napoleon on 02 March 2014 at 7:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DinaAlia Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 3932 days ago 24 posts - 49 votes Speaks: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian*, English, French Studies: Greek, Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Icelandic Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 16 02 March 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds good to me.
The PDFs are of eerily good quality for something from Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Fsi- ModernWrittenArabic-StudentText Here is a link to the Madina books that works beautifully on my laptop: http://www.madinaharabic.com/printable_ebook.html Those two are a good curriculum for me now; they are both PDFs, and I learn better from reading than from listening. Could we perhaps leave the video lectures as optional, or make it an alternative to one of the others, or something? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5016 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 16 02 March 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Have you looked at the Madinah books? They are completely in Arabic. That is why I think the lectures might help because they are in English. But feel free to skip them if you want. P.S. Here's the audio for FSI MWA Vol. 1 Edited by napoleon on 02 March 2014 at 10:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3941 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 16 03 March 2014 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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My resources for Arabic are so far very minimal. Most things I've found online have been unsatisfactory (to me and my preferred ways of study, in any case).
I got an Anki deck to teach me the alphabet, learned that very quickly, and am now happy with my knowledge of such. I got a large Anki deck of vocabulary, but found without a context or an ability to actually use the words I'm learning (due to a lack of knowledge of grammar on my part) it wasn't very engaging to me, so I discontinued that one for now. I got a "Arabic in 15 minutes a day" book (it's intended as a 3-month course), but found that it still lacked what I really needed to give me more than just phrases. I'll get Michel Thomas Method Arabic, as that series usually provides a good springboard into a language's core grammar in a non-obfuscatory fashion. Then, with that decent working knowledge to get me started, I'll dive into deeper grammar knowledge and of course expand my vocabulary. I like the idea of video lectures in principle; the ones to which you linked seem reluctant to load at present though. Edited by DavidStyles on 03 March 2014 at 12:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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