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Arabic and missing short vowels | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5678 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 9 of 18 14 December 2011 at 1:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
All valid points Renaçido, except you seem to have overlooked the fact that SRC isn't a native speaker of Arabic wishing to become literate in the language. It's quite understandable that someone might feel daunted by a new alphabet in which short vowels are generally omitted. The inconsistencies of English spelling for a native English speaker are not comparable in difficulty with those for a student about to embark on learning Arabic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| SRC Newbie United States Joined 5826 days ago 31 posts - 33 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 10 of 18 14 December 2011 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's largely what I'm saying - even though English spelling is rife with inconsistencies, at least there's something there to jog your memory. But, if I'm understanding this, in Arabic you'll be relying on other words in the sentence to provide context as to the word's function, and knowing the function helps you further decode how the word would be pronounced. This linkage of function and pronunciation is rather rare in English, with a handful of exceptions such as "wait a minute, there's a minute amount left over," as an earlier poster pointed out 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Voodie Tetraglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4650 days ago 17 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek | Message 11 of 18 15 December 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As someone has already mentioned, the ability to read Arabic depends greatly on how well you know the grammar. After 2,5 years of studying Arabic I can read newspaper articles and understand up to 90% of the words if the topic is familiar to me. Even if I don't know the word I often pronounce it correctly just because I know the grammar.
Although sometimes it's tricky. For example, the 1st, the 2nd and the 4th forms of most verbs look the same in Present/Future. And even though it's clear that y-Q-B-L is a verb, it can still mean "he meets", "he kisses" and "he approaches" and sound differently. There is one more problem which seems much more complicated to me at this stage, and this is the syntax. If I understand 9 words out of 10 in an English or a German text, I will either grasp the general meaning of the sentence or even guess the word relying on the context. But with Arabic I can understand all the words but one, but without it the sentence is just falling apart, cause it governs several other words, each of which has several meanings and so on... 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Fortwenster Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4831 days ago 24 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1 Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 12 of 18 17 December 2011 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, I;m worried about that too. Plus, broken plurals, the verb forms, etc. seem like they'll be daunting.
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| SmilingStraw Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4756 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 18 19 December 2011 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Broken plurals seem like a pain, but so far I've only used basic materials, so I ahaven't encountered too many problems.
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| Voodie Tetraglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4650 days ago 17 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek | Message 14 of 18 20 December 2011 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Plurals look scary, but in fact, it's not a big deal. Of course you have to learn them in the beginning, but soon you start finding parallels between the form (and the meaning as well!) in the singular and in the plural. For example:
kabiir - kibaar (big) Saghiir - Sighaar (small) I don't know the rule, but I assume that adjectives of this type (CaCiiC) denoting physical characteristics have a (CiCaaC)-type plural. Other examples (qaSiir - qiSaar (short); Tawiil - Tiwaal (long)) only prove this. But when the adjectives of this type refer to a mental characteristic or a person, they usually have either СuCaCaa' or aCiCCa' plural. For instance: khabiir - khubaraa' (specialist) Tabiib - aTibba' (doctor) To be honest, I doubt that a non-Arab can develop this kind of intuition to immediately guess the correct form of any new word. But when you get used to it, you usually can shorten the list of possible plurals to 1-3, depending on the word. A native speaker will probably correct you, but you will be understood, anyway. Edited by Voodie on 20 December 2011 at 2:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Renaçido Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 4930 days ago 34 posts - 60 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin | Message 15 of 18 25 December 2011 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for the questions he asked later ("how incredibly long does it take to build up even the most rudimentary reading skills?" "[D]oes the student still struggle with reading a restaurant menu after 4 years of college-level study (assuming the menu is in MSA)?"), I think it varies a lot from the specific circumstances of each student. (Plus I don't think college-level study is that great anyway, following my own experience with college Spanish students (which accounted their different learning paths).) I don't think I could reply this well, but if you wanted to learn to read restaurant menus in Arabic in particular, you would do well learning a lot culinary vocabulary. (I still have problems reading English-language menus after 10+ years studying it, but that's mostly a cultural thing I think. In fact, I'm going to some Thai restaurant in about an hour and a half from writing this post. I'm looking at the menu which I have right next to the laptop, and I've no idea what this "Cashew Nut" thing.) Anyhow, how students cope with unknown words in an Arabic text is pretty similar to how natives do it in rough terms.
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| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4595 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 16 of 18 25 December 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ths s wrd. W cld wrt Nglsh n ths wy.
This is weird. We could write English in this way. But, you have to master spoken English 1st in order to write it like this. Edited by Camundonguinho on 25 December 2011 at 7:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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