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A question on arabic dictionaries | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4337 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes  Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 4 05 October 2014 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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After consulting several sources and doing some soul-searching, I've made up my mind on what dialect of Arabic I'd like to start learning next year (Levantine, concretely Lebanese), so I'm currently at the stage of gathering materials. Mind you, I've not studied MSA before so essentially I'm starting from scratch.
Now, here are the facts. I really like paper dictionaries when I'm studying, so I'd like to get myself one, but an Amazon search failed to turn one up for Lebanese Arabic. However, when I simplified the search to just "Arabic dictionary", it returned a lot more hits; not "Egyptian" or "Lebanese" or "Gulf" Arabic, just simply Arabic. I'm sort of guessing these are MSA dictionaries, but I'd still like the input: if you're studying dialect as opposed to standard Arabic, would using one of these dictionaries be helpful or confusing? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6692 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 4 05 October 2014 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are a dictionary on Syrian arabic that has good reviews.
But you have discovered the problem with learning a dialect first :) If you learn MSA first you would discover that most (90%+) of the non 300 most common words is either MSA or extremely close to the MSA counterpart. Nydell for example writes in her excellent book Conversion from Standard Arabic to the Levantine dialect that one that is B2 in MSA will need about 60-80 classroom hrs of Levantine to understand just about anything. To produce is of course an other matter :) This quote is interesting as well "Then, once you have a foundation in day to day conversations you’ll be able to use those bigger words you have learned in MSA (like United Nations and political science) because they are more often used in the spoken dialect as well." (from: alpsbeirut.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/what-is-the-difference- between-modern-standard-arabic-and-spoken-arabic/) But since you are starting with dialect you should perhaps try to get that Syrian arabic dictionary? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4337 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 4 05 October 2014 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great advice! Thank you very much. Yes, I was afraid that starting by the specific rather than by the general would give me problems like this.
Thing is, I saw an interview by Benny Lewis to an Egyptian national with lots of travel experience, and I consider it pretty rational advice not to start by MSA if your aim is to visit a country and talk with its people. I admit that at this point I have no such goal, but the spur on which I decided to study Lebanese Arabic is s one of those "someday I'd like to visit (___)" wishes... and also an excuse to study a completely new language. :P However, I decided to start with Levantine because I figure the basics (grammar and important vocabulary) would probably be the same, and because I heard MSA is literary, not conversational. If this is a mistaken impression, it'd be good to know beforehand--I always can start by studying MSA as a knowledge-base and then moving on to Levantine when I feel confident about speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C2 Newbie United Kingdom naturalingo.com/free Joined 3724 days ago 4 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 4 05 October 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
If it's this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dictionary-English-Arabic-Georgetown -Linguistics- Languages/dp/1589011058/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=14125 40434&sr=1- 1&keywords=Syrian+arabic+dictionary it is good but English-Arabic only, so of limited use to a learner. You could try The Olive Tree dictionary, which is for Palestinian. Levantine is a good Arabic dialect to go for as it is widely understood and not too different from MSA. Edited by Andrew C2 on 05 October 2014 at 10:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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