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FSI Modern Written Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 27 19 August 2011 at 6:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Has anyone done at least part of this course? I'm thinking of using it for my next step in Arabic, but would like to hear from anyone who's used it first.
My big question is, How far is the FSI Written Arabic course from any Arabic actually spoken on the street ... particularly in North Africa? There are over 60 recordings that are online, so it's not all writing. My current plan is to crank up my literacy (I know the alphabet, and can read individual words, but certainly not a whole text!), and then try to swing over to a colloquial derja afterwards. The goal of Part 1 of the FSI course is to learn to read newspapers, and so this could be fantastic. Part 2, if I get to it, appears to introduce dialects. The vocabulary list also has items like "Phoenicia" and "Carthage" and "Scipio Africanus" in it ... so it sounds like it gets a lot more interesting than the other FSI courses! But I don't want to invest a lot of time if it would turn out to be just an academic exercise. My ultimate goal is to be able to talk to people. The other option is to continue on with an Eastern Dialect course (either Syrian colloquial or Pimsleur Eastern) and then switch over to a Maghrebi dialect. edit: is there any way to move this to the proper room? The next forum down seems more appropriate. Sorry about the poor aim! Edited by kanewai on 19 August 2011 at 8:33am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6028 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 27 19 August 2011 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not even remotely close! FSI MWA is a great course if you want to get better at reading or understanding (news broadcasts etc...) formal Arabic. This, obviously will help your "Arabic" considerably .. so I would not consider it a waste of time. But if you primarily want to speak with North Africans, you could probably find better options. Check out "A Basic Course in Moroccan Arabic" by Richard Harrell. It is old but has a ton of recordings on a mp3 disc. No Arabic script though which is annoying. DLI has a FSI style Syrian Arabic course that you can get at Syrian Arabic if you decide to go that route. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 27 19 August 2011 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks. I suspected that. I might plan on doing the first third of the FSI course, just to improve my literacy.
The Harrell book gets mixed reviews, but it's the only one out there, eh? Any idea how close Moroccan is to Tunisian? I know they're both called "derja" and both have a Berber base ... but can't find a definite answer online. I do have an Assimil book on Tunisian Arabic, but it's more of an extended phrasebook than a language course - so I'd need to have a stronger base for it to bve effective. I have six months before I leave for Tunis, so I have some time to experiment! I am a bit appalled that such a significant language has so few resources out there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6028 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 27 20 August 2011 at 5:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I think they are relatively similar but I'm not sure if they are mutually intelligible. Perhaps they are similar to, say, Spanish and Italian. I have heard that Tunisian Arabic has a very strong French influence and is actually closer to Maltese than it is to Standard Arabic.
You may want to use the Assimil book on Tunisian Arabic for the vocabulary and the Harrell course for more of the grammatical structure of the language. The funny thing is, I had a friend who spent a year in Tunis to learn French! You may be better off brushing up on your French first and learn darija once you are there! ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5631 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 5 of 27 20 August 2011 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, if you decide to learn Moroccan Arabic, this book looks good. There is a sample chapter online. An Introduction to Moroccan Arabic and Culture 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 27 19 September 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sometimes the answer is staring at you so clearly that you don't even see it ...
From the top: -The best Arabic learning materials deal with MSA -There are very few good resources for learning regional Arabic -Most people recommend learning MSA first, then moving on to regional Arabic - MSA is a written language, but not spoken on the streets My first conclusion: I don't want to spend my time learning a language that no one speaks. I don't have the time! Where are all the *&%! resources for spoken Arabic??? What's wrong with this world? Grrrr Forgetting all the while that ... -It's much easier to learn to read a language than to hear it or speak it And somewhere along the line, the pieces all fell into place: I can work my way through the FSI Modern Written Arabic course, and not worry about speaking or forming my own sentences or any of that. And that will make the course so much easier. And honestly, my reading comprehension for Arabic is really poor, so this will really benefit me. I know that this is exactly the advice that a lot of you were giving, but I think I was hung up on the idea that studying MSA meant reading/writing/speaking/listening, and that seemed to be too much to tackle. Edited by kanewai on 19 September 2011 at 10:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6028 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 27 20 September 2011 at 5:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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And remember, the dialects haven't diverged from MSA THAT much!
If you have a solid ground in MSA you should be able to pick up a dialect fairly quickly. Plus, you will be able to understand what is happening on the news shows! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 4913 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 8 of 27 20 September 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I admire everybody who can work with this FSI written arabic course. I can't. I can barely read the arabic texts because of its bad printing.
So if you like, kanewai, you might share you experiences, how you work with the course, at which pace etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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