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Approaches to Reading Arabic script | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7234 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 1 of 4 30 July 2007 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am curious as to what approaches learners of languages which are written (more or less) in the Arabic script take when first learning to read.
The obvious difficulty for me is that when I come to a word I don't know, not only do I have to look up its meaning, but I also have to look up its pronunciation, since I don't know which vowels, if any, are missing. And I rarely seem to encounter texts where the voewls are marked. I understand that I could try to learn the words through context, but even then I still wouldn't know how to pronounce the word. Is one able to eventually guess the pronunciation of a word with enough background, or is this just one of the difficulties in learning to read one of these languages? So far, all I can think of doing is collecting flashcards with the meaning and pronunciation written on one side. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6467 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 2 of 4 30 July 2007 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since noone else is answering, i'll give it a try. I have been told that it will start making sense sooner or later. And yes, you will be able to guess the pronounciation. I guess you know that most of the words in arabic have them three root vowels. The rumour goes, that all the derived verbs and nouns made from the roots follow a rather strict set of patterns.
An example: take a look at any dictionary, that has arranged the words by the root, and you will see that every verb has many "forms", as in verb form I, form VII, form IX etc. These derived verbs follow a fixed "voweling" - .i.e. all the verb form VI verbs will be taXaaYaZa (X,Y,Z- root consonants). All the nouns made from this kind of verbs will have, again, a fixed "voweling" = taXaaYuZ(un). In a similar fashion all the nouns that are "the place where something is done" kind of nouns will have one (or a few) possible ways of "voweling", same as "the one who is doing something" kind of nouns (like english "baker", for example). Of course, the trick is to guess which kind of word it is and which pattern to apply. The question is, how? We can only hope that one day there will be a click, and it will all become clear. I hope someone will give a better answer, because i'd like to learn a better trick for guessing myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6952 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 3 of 4 30 July 2007 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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It sounds like you need to try one of the "listening-reading" methods. They should do wonders for you.
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| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5145 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 4 of 4 01 October 2016 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
I wonder just how many forms an Arabic verb have? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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