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TAC14 - More French than Arabic

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
31 messages over 4 pages: 13 4  Next >>
Cetacea
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
booh.com
Joined 5117 days ago

80 posts - 163 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written)
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 31
09 June 2010 at 6:17pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the tip. I added وعد and also أعدّ (he didn't prepare)

لما / فقد / لم يعد Explained
1 person has voted this message useful



staf250
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Belgium
emmerick.be
Joined 5490 days ago

352 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German
Studies: Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 10 of 31
17 June 2010 at 5:20pm | IP Logged 
Hi Linda,
I've send the question in your blog to a christian friend of mine in Egypt.
Text here:
"Bonjour Paul,

Comment ça va chez vous?

J'ai repris depuis quelques jours mes études, c.a.d. les leçons que j'ai de toi. Quand le moment sera venu
pour recommencer les leçons chez toi je prendrai contact.

Sur un forum de langues il y a une personne avec une question spécifique, laquelle je copie ici:

" ... One subject I know almost nothing about is the contribution of Christian Arabs to the Arabic language.
I assume that the Bible was translated into Arabic long before the rise of Islam, but I haven’t seen any
classic Christian Arabic literature. Is it because it doesn’t exist or it is purposely suppressed? I don’t know,
but would like to find out. Any enlightenment from you on this subject would be greatly appreciated..."

Je crois que la personne est chinoise, elle est ingénieur en Yemen et elle étudie l'Arabe depuis 4 ans.
Les deux link sont 1. le forum et 2. la site web de la personne mentionnée.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=21088&PN=1&TPN=1
http://booh.com/
Je ne sias pas si tu as le temps de donner une réponse à la nommée Linda, je te remercie d'avance.
Au revoir Paul,
Staf "
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Cetacea
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
booh.com
Joined 5117 days ago

80 posts - 163 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written)
Studies: French

 
 Message 11 of 31
18 June 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged 
Arabic:
Transcribed and translated a short video clip from TV series “Sadaqa Wa’dhu” in Classic Arabic.

Thanks Staf for asking your friend. Egyptian Christian translated the Bible to Coptic in the early years of Christianity, but I have never seen or heard of an Arabic Bible before the Quran. There were plenty of Christians living the Arabian Peninsula before Islam. Unless they were all reading in Greek, they probably had the Bible in their language.

Italian:
I haven’t done as much as I would like to. Just finished Lesson 3 of FSI Headstart Italian, and read about half of “Il Piccolo Principe” while listening to the audio version. My Italian friend is going to be here in less a week, we’ll see if I can whip up something nice to say to her.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cetacea
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
booh.com
Joined 5117 days ago

80 posts - 163 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written)
Studies: French

 
 Message 12 of 31
19 July 2010 at 11:04am | IP Logged 
It’s been a while since I updated my log. Problems with electricity and internet have made blogging and surfing difficult. And because of my relocation, I probably won’t have time to update it for the next month or so.

Here is a photo from my balcony after a violent rain storm.



Arabic

Answered some questions from Louis regarding reading Arabic, Yemen and religion.

Louis wrote:

a) How do I improve my Arabic reading speed? Although I am only two weeks into studying, I am in an Arabic class for 6 hours every day. I have built up a vocabulary of about 50 words and can obviously read and write the alphabet too. My problem is not recognizing words quick enough. Is it really as simple as "read more" or "expose yourself to more Arabic"? I've begun to label household items with Arabic notecards, much to my family's dismay. "Get that chickenscratch off my drawer," I can recall my mother saying. xD


Actually I did something similar, just not labeling household items. I bought a dry erase board, and wrote new words on it everyday and erased known ones. If I kept forgetting a word, I’d write it in really big red letters. Some students used easel pad paper and posted them all over the wall. Besides the standard advice of “read more”, I’d like to add three points:

   1. As a beginner, you should concentrate more on listening than reading. It’s more important to be able to recognize a word hearing it than reading it.

   2. Try to read each word as a picture, not letter by letter. When you read word “book” in English, you recognize it in one glance, you don’t actually read b—o—o—k. Same goes with Arabic, try to memorize words in their entirety and only read letter by letter when you run into new words.

   3. If you have spare time left after your 6-hour class and homework, you may want to try Quran recitation (tajweed) which is quite helpful to improve your pronunciation and letter-recognition. You don’t need to understand the Quran to benefit from it. Open this site http://www.mosshaf.com/web/ and just follow along. The recitation is very slow and clear, and the text is highlighted in sync with the audio so you don’t lose your place.

Click here to see the rest of the questions.

Posted a short essay حبي للأدب العربي My Love for Arabic Literature

Transcribed a news story with difficult words translated and explained. Al Jazeera News Transcript

Italian
Though I'm not "studying" it formally, I am able to push my friend to speak it with me as much as she can. I have to admit it's difficult for us not to revert to English. I can understand some basic conversations, but I am not at where I can carry on a conversation, and I don't think I'll get there by the time my friend leaves. That's OK though. With my extremely limited knowledge of Italian, I know I'll be able to manage when I go to Italy.
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Cetacea
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
United States
booh.com
Joined 5117 days ago

80 posts - 163 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written)
Studies: French

 
 Message 13 of 31
08 January 2011 at 1:49am | IP Logged 
I started 2011 with no internet in the house! (Gasp) Who would've thought that ordering DSL from AT&T could be such an ordeal. As the ordering process drags on, I won't get internet probably until next week. Meanwhile, I have to rely on wifi at my local library. So apologies to my teammates garyb, Metaflower, janalisa for lagging behind.

Now on to my language goals for 2011.

French
I'm starting from A1 and hopefully will reach B1/B2 through L-R. The resources I have on hand are:





- Stieg Larsson's Millénium Trilogy (1-3) books and audio books in French.
- Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy books in English which I will get from the local library.
- Bilingual texts from http://www.bilingual-texts.com/library/french/

I listened to Le Petit Prince last year but didn't feel that I benefited much due to its short length.

As I'm new to L-R, I really don't know how many pages I can get through per day. The Millénium books have a lot of advanced vocabulary so I'm expecting a rough start.

Arabic
I recently returned to the US after having worked in Yemen for over four years. I consider Yemen my second home and miss it terribly. Here is a photo I took last year just to remind myself how beautiful Yemen is.



Now I no longer have the opportunity to speak Arabic on a daily basis, I would like to maintain what I already know. There are several novels I brought back with me that I'd like to read, but I don't think I'd be doing much academic study.



When I lived in Yemen I had very little exposure to other Arabic dialects. It wasn't until I came back to the US that I got to hear a wide range of dialects thanks to the diverse population in Northern California. I noticed that I can understand Gulf and Jordanian dialects without any problems. Levantine and Egyptian require more concentration, and I occasionally have to ask the speaker to explain certain words. Moroccan and Algerian dialects sound foreign to me, but I can more or less get the gist of the conversation.

Persian
I've been to Iran a couple of times and really enjoyed my time there. The country is immensely beautiful and the people are friendly. I thought about picking up Persian many years ago, but because of my stay in Yemen, I had to put it on the back burner until now. My local community college offers a couple of Persian classes, but they are mostly for Iranian students who want to get an easy A. The instructor would start a topic and the student would participate in the discussion in English or Persian. There is no language instruction in the class despite the course title being "Intermediate Persian" I haven't had much luck finding good instructional material except this one:

Farsi - A Complete Course for Beginners by Living Language


Does anyone know if FSI or DLI has Persian courses available online?

1 person has voted this message useful



ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5935 days ago

2150 posts - 3229 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 14 of 31
08 January 2011 at 2:05am | IP Logged 
Good luck with French, Persian, and Arabic!

As for Persian resources in English, there are a couple others:
- Colloquial Persian
- Teach Yourself Modern Persian

Spoken World is very good though--I've used their Swahili course to completion, I've gone through about a third of the Farsi one, and my Polish one is in the mail.

Once your French gets better you could also try using Assimil's "Le Persan Sans Peine," although I've had considerable trouble getting a hold of a copy.

!موفق باشيد

Edited by ellasevia on 08 January 2011 at 4:56am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Quabazaa
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5402 days ago

414 posts - 543 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French
Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 15 of 31
08 January 2011 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
Hi Cetacea! Ah it's sad to hear you are no longer in Yemen (it looks gorgeous!) but hopefully you can keep up your Arabic. I like your idea of reading the Millennium series, I am trying to improve my French as well, so perhaps I will do the same thing if I can find the audiobooks in French.
Good luck for this year :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Élan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5237 days ago

165 posts - 211 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 16 of 31
17 January 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged 
Cetacea wrote:
Does anyone know if FSI or DLI has Persian courses available online?


Yes, I believe there is a DLI course available. You can find information about it in this thread. I think I have around here somewhere else well and I'd be happy to send it to you if you can't find it elsewhere. I personally didn't like it--the script was so difficult to read! But maybe you will enjoy it more since your eyes are already used to reading that alphabet via Arabic.


Thank you for sharing the pictures of Yemen. I have some friends from there but I still tend to forget how beautiful it is. :)




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