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Egyptian Arabic VS Eastern Arabic ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cordel Newbie IsraelRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6047 days ago 29 posts - 30 votes | Message 1 of 9 20 July 2008 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||
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What is the difference between those two ? Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic VS Pimsleur Eastern Arabic ?
I've checked the Pimsleur website and they sell both courses .The difference between them ,however ,is not so clear to me. Anyone care to elaborate ? thanx Regards , Cordel 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6694 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 9 20 July 2008 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Well the biggest difference is that the two Arabic dialects are different. The dialogue and vocabulary may be
different as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6245 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 9 20 July 2008 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say "Eastern Arabic" refers to the Arabic spoken in Syria/Lebanon.
You seem to be from Israel so if it is your goal to communicate with people from your immediate area you'd probably fare better with Eastern Arabic. If you want to be more widely understood I'd go for Egyptian - as Egyptian is widely understood because of the diffusion of Egyptian films and the leading role of Egyptian in Pan-Arabic pop culture. Using Pimsleur, of course, is your own choice... Edited by Gilgamesh on 20 July 2008 at 10:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cordel Newbie IsraelRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6047 days ago 29 posts - 30 votes | Message 4 of 9 20 July 2008 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you both for the comments. What would you recommend except Pimsleur ? To tell you the truth ,Pimsleur ,am I see it ,only gives you the kick start and then one must also use grammer and vocabulary books in order to get improved and take one more step in the familiarity with the language. I'm also using MT Arabic ,Teach Yourself ,On The Move ,and also Modern standard Arabic(Cambridge) Edited by Cordel on 20 July 2008 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6444 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 5 of 9 20 July 2008 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not a big fan of Pimsleur either.
I like this course: http://www.syrianarabic.com/ Which is pretty good at teaching grammar, unlike many courses for dialects. It also comes with sound files, and best of all, it's free. (edit: ups, it seems they are charging for for lessons 4-8. the rest, however, is still free) There are other resources for Syrian Arabic, including this grammar and dictionary but they are a bit out of date. This is a course that teaches Palestinian and MSA at the same time, I have the intermediate book and it is good. A bit on the pricy side, though. This is a good course for Palestinian Arabic, but it's in French so if you don't know that language you're out of luck. If you don't mind learning Arabic through Hebrew letters there are also some good courses (with audio) in Hebrew, Prolog's ערבית מדוברת and ערבית מדוברת בכיף byמשה שרון, Prolog also has some good dialect dictionaries. As for dialect differences, I don't see such a big difference between Egyptian and Eastern. The differences are there, for sure, but they are not so great as to hinder understanding (at least not for native speakers) Then again the differences between the dialects of different villages within a single country can seem quite vast. In any case, unless you're going to be speaking the language a lot it's probably a good idea to learn MSA first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6245 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 9 20 July 2008 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, I said that I am not a fan of Pimsleur. Maybe it's not even so bad. The thing is: I don't see why people would spend months on Pimsleur when they can achieve the same thing in, say, half the time. I don't "recommend" any materials, though; I mean, there are some that I could recommend to you but what I'm trying to say is that language learning is a lot about mindset. A language learning course is a useless tool, that helps you to get where you want but that doesn't get you there all by yourself. You have to be creative. By the way, I made that comment about Pimsleur because it's so horribly expensive, too... There is no way I would spend € 200-300 on something like that. If I want to be a trained speaking phrasebook I'll buy one of these courses I see in the supermarket all the time - for € 10. ;-) So, what materials would I recommend? Hm, I would say Assimil isn't too bad a choice; the Living Languages Arabic course is also quite okay. If you speak German and like an intellectual challenge I would recommend "Langenscheidts Praktisches Lehrbuch des Arabischen" to you. Wait, I just realise: I think you want to learn a colloquial dialect rather than MSA (Modern Standard Arabic). In that case I don't know about anything to recommend to you, I only know of some things that there are: "Colloquial" (Routledge) has some courses; Teach Yourself might have some (not that I'm saying these two series are fantastic programmes, but still, they don't cost you a couple of hundred bucks); the Living Languages Arabic course also covers four dialects but if you buy it, you have MSA as well. By the way: It covers Egyptian, Levantine, Saudi and Iraqi Arabic. Be aware that in most courses teaching the colloquial Arabic forms the writing is mostly "latinized" because dialects aren't actually written down. People basically write MSA, but speak their respective colloquial dialects. There are I believe some 'popular' newspapers and novels written in dialect, but I believe it's rather rare. I can recommend that Syrian course the poster before me recommend, as well. There's a Gulf Arabic course on the net as well (you can probably find it by looking for it via Google), but I guess that's not what you're looking for. So really: I don't know about the colloquial dialects. However, try to be creative! There are tons of ways to do things when it comes to language learning... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6627 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 7 of 9 24 July 2008 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Audioforum.com offers courses in Eastern Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic along with FSI MSA.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6014 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 24 July 2008 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
What, all at the same time? There is an argument in favour of that strategy: That all courses have holes, so lots of courses cover everything. But there's a bigger argument against it: Each course to some extent recycles and revises its vocabulary. They pace the course based on how much vocabulary they think you'll be able to remember. Now I reckon most vastly overestimate this. If you do lots of courses simultaneously, you risk overdosing on vocab. I'd recommend sticking to one course for as long as you can. If you start to get stuck or hopelessly confused, or you just decide that you hate it, switch to another and stick with that for as long as you can. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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