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Levantine Arabic resources | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6959 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 1 of 10 04 September 2010 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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I'd like learn to speak Levantine dialect (& eventually understand/read MSA). But I think I'm going to need to use several (if not more) sets of materials to get very far, and the available materials* are mostly based on different sub-dialects.
It's widely noted that native speakers have little difficult coping with different sub-dialects, but I was wondering if these sub-dialects differ enough to cause real problems to a learner? Also could anyone confirm which sub-dialect is used in Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic - which would seem to offer an easy way in? * - Palestinian: "Eastern Arabic" Rice & Said; "Speaking Arabic" Elihay; "Colloquial Palestinian Arabic" Isleem; "Course in Levantine Arabic" McCarus (no commercially available audio AFAIK); "Cours d'arabe parlé palestinien" Halloun; "Yalla Nihki Arabi/Let's Speak Arabic" Othman; probably quite a lot of Hebrew-language material - Syrian: "Syrian Arabic" Liddicoat et al; "Eastern Arabic" Pimsleur; A Reference Grammar Of Syrian Arabic Cowell; DLI Syrian Arabic materials (assumes MSA background) - Lebanese: "Spoken Lebanese" Feghali, "Arabic You Need" Harb - Syrian/Lebanese "Shou fi ma fi?: Intermediate Levantine Arabic" Chouairi (assumes MSA background) - Jordanian: "Living Arabic" Younes, Hugo's "Arabic In Three Months" Asfour - ????: ; "Levantine Arabic for Non-Natives: A Proficiency-Oriented Approach" Hussein - and any I've missed? Edited by onebir on 06 September 2010 at 9:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5116 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 10 04 September 2010 at 4:54pm | IP Logged |
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You might find the following FSI book useful:
Levantine and Egyptian Arabic Comparative Study As the title says, it's actually a comparative study, but if you ignore the Egyptian part, you have a nice mini grammar of Levantine Arabic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5371 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 3 of 10 04 September 2010 at 8:44pm | IP Logged |
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FSI has a Levantine course in phonology, that is reminiscent of their basic courses
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Arabic%20Le vantine 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5068 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 4 of 10 04 September 2010 at 9:01pm | IP Logged |
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Do you plan on going to one of the countries in which Levantine is spoken? To me it makes no sense to learn a dialect unless you're going to be staying in a country where it's spoken. I also think MSA is far easier if you don't know any natives because there's many resources in it.
Also being literate will help you a great deal in an Arab country. Learning a dialect is also said to be easy after having a base in MSA as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6959 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 06 September 2010 at 2:39am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for pointing out the FSI resources. In particular it hadn't occurred to the that the grammar comparison might be useful for one of two dialects on its own.
Does anyone actually know anything about the degree of similarity between the levantine sub-dialects? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5371 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 6 of 10 06 September 2010 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
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From what I understand, the difference is comparable to that of Brazilian and European
Portuguese, Quebec and Parisian French or that of Azerbaijani and Turkish 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 6893 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 7 of 10 06 September 2010 at 7:16am | IP Logged |
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Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian are all more similar to each other than to Iraqi, Egyptian, or the Gulf dialects, but they still have a lot of differences in vocabulary as well as accent (Syrian and Lebanese are the closest of the group though). However, if you were to master 1 of them you'd have no trouble talking with someone who spoke a different dialect. Now understanding what he is talking about to his friends will be more difficult, especially if he's from a very rural area. You know how they say that in England if you go a few miles to the next village they've got a different way of talking? It's kind of the same way in the Levant.
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| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6959 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 8 of 10 06 September 2010 at 9:30am | IP Logged |
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Thanks again for the info - it seems like there are more resources than I initially thought for each dialect (edited into #1), so it should be possible to concentrate more on one sub-dialect.
It also seems that - pronounciation wise at least - differences between urban Palestinian, and Damascus (central-urban) Syrian varieties are not so great: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Levantine_Arabic So I guess I could start with Pimsleur & either continue with Syrian or Palestinian resources (& I guess at that stage take a look at some Jordanian/Lebanese materials to see how confusing I find them...) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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