apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6655 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto
| Message 9 of 27 01 January 2011 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
I'd recommend reading through a basic grammar book, grabbing a few dictionaries/phrase
books with sample sentences, head over to BBCArabic armed with Google Translate as needed
and work from there. For more day-to-day stuff (i.e. not news) there are themed
dictionaries, as well, like Oxford's Picture Dictionary, Harrap's Arabic Pocket
Vocabulary and others. Just slowly build your skills one interest at a time, finding
listening and reading passages that are authentic.
I really have not found any suitable pre-made course that beats this method, but I can't
stand textbooks for more than a week or two, so your mileage may vary.
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pigsonfire Newbie United States Joined 5080 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Cantonese
| Message 10 of 27 02 January 2011 at 3:59pm | IP Logged |
Why can't we vote in the poll?!?!??!
1 person has voted this message useful
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apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6655 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto
| Message 11 of 27 02 January 2011 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, the poll is broken.
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pigsonfire Newbie United States Joined 5080 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Cantonese
| Message 12 of 27 02 January 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
apparition wrote:
Yeah, the poll is broken. |
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It is fixed now!! :-) :-)
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5852 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 13 of 27 02 January 2011 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
liddytime wrote:
Préposition wrote:
I cannot vote (Newbie status, probably?), a..... |
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Hmmm, I'm not sure. I looked on the forum "rules" and they didn't say anything prohibitive regarding newbies and polls... |
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I can assure that every forum member has the right to vote in a poll. I have read in the Technical room that the poll doesn't work. It's possible that a poll gets disabled in a different room. Therefore I have transferred it back to the General Discussion room. It should work now, so please try to vote here.
Fasulye
Edited by Fasulye on 02 January 2011 at 6:40pm
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6234 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 14 of 27 03 January 2011 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
Préposition wrote:
...
After years of students complaining about Al-Kitaab, my university decided to change the textbook and went for
Yale's "Ahlan Wa Sahlan", and I must admit I found it far less depressing than Al-Kitaab .... |
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Thanks for fixing the poll!!!
I reviewed Ahlan wa Sahlan and really liked it & I just ordered it. I does appear much more user friendly than Al Kitab!
I think my game plan with be to use AWS with the new French Assimil Arabic course. This should present a good mix of grammar with vocabulary!
1 person has voted this message useful
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Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 5119 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine)
| Message 15 of 27 03 January 2011 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
liddytime wrote:
Thanks for fixing the poll!!!
I reviewed Ahlan wa Sahlan and really liked it & I just ordered it. I does appear much more user friendly than Al
Kitab!
I think my game plan with be to use AWS with the new French Assimil Arabic course. This should present a good
mix of grammar with vocabulary! |
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Hah, I most definitely didn't fix the poll, but I'm glad to see I was wrong to think newbies couldn't vote! Anyway,
good luck with AWS, it'll probably one tough cookie to learn Arabic with, but then again, all the textbooks are, and
at least, this one has nice pictures and a workbook, haha.
1 person has voted this message useful
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6234 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 16 of 27 06 January 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged |
liddytime wrote:
Andrew C wrote:
Why not just read "Modern Literary Arabic" by David Cowan? - It's a
concise introduction to Arabic, which I have found invaluable over the years. |
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I just now picked it up on Amazon for 7 bucks. It looks like an awesome (ageless) book! |
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"Modern Literary Arabic" arrived yesterday.
What an amazing book! It describes Arabic syntax so clearly! It is really hard to believe that it is over 50 years old.
Thanks for the rec!
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