Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة
Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:49 pm
Back to عربي
I took a break for about a month to work on Norwegian, but Arabic is just too dang cool to stay away from.
As I mentioned in my final (for now) entry in my Norwegian log, I'm back to Arabic now because I watched a video on Lithuanian this week. That's how bad my Wanderlust is. A talk on Lithuanian's conservative Indo-European features came up in my YouTube feed and I thought it was really cool. Then I started looking at Slovenian, because although Lithuanian may have the most conservative declension system in terms of sound changes, Slovenian preserves the neuter gender and dual number, so even though it has one case fewer than Lithuanian it should have more items on the declension chart; unfortunately there don't seem to be many good resources for Slovenian, at least not in English. Lithuanian verbs have lost a lot of Indo-European features. What is the most conservative Indo-European verbal system in a modern language? Probably Greek or maybe Albanian. But of course if you want a really conservative language there's Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. Boy, Sanskrit is pretty cool. Hindi is also really interesting, and if I learned Hindi I would get a lot of Sanskrit vocabulary. Time to watch the Langfocus video on Hindi. Hmm, it looks like even Hindi, which has been heavily Sanskritized, still maintains a good amount of Perso-Arabic vocabulary. Time to look at Persian. Ooh, Persian is really cool.
I found a few cool articles about how easy Persian is to learn. In terms of grammar, it seems just as simple as Afrikaans or the Scandinavian languages, and the pronunciation doesn't seem to present many difficulties either. And this is what pulled me back towards Arabic: this article had a brief passage of Persian with the foreign words highlighted (Arabic words in yellow, country or person names in green, and one Western loanword in blue). Even without any vowels, I was able to understand the Western loanword and all of the green words, and I was also able to identify one Arabic word, وزير (wazīr, meaning government minister or assistant, familiar as the loanword vizier in English). There was also another word سفر (safar) that looked familiar as well, so I looked it up and it means departure, journey, or travel. Swahili has many Arabic loanwords including this one, but a Swahili syllable cannot end in a consonant so they added the vowel "i" at the end, and of course the Swahili word "safari" is very famous and was even re-borrowed into Arabic, so that was why it seemed familiar.
I had been considering abandoning my plans to learn Arabic before Hebrew and instead jump straight into Hebrew. This would likely get me to an intermediate level much more quickly, in as few as 6-9 months depending on how much I get distracted. By contrast, I estimate that going from 1) getting Modern Standard Arabic to an intermediate level where I can understand the news to some degree, to 2) getting Biblical Hebrew to a strong passive level where I can mostly understand Biblical passages, using a bilingual text to fill in what I don't understand and then finally 3) learning Modern Hebrew to a conversational level would take me an absolute minimum of two years but probably more (again, considering how often I get distracted).
But I would be sad to miss out on Arabic. Even at the very beginning stages, I am starting to feel a connection to a very large part of the world that I didn't have access to before, and on top of that I can even pick out the odd word here or there in Persian, Urdu, and any other language that uses the Arabic script. The way I'm going about learning Hebrew is bass-ackwards from the way anyone would reasonably advise someone to do it, but I think my motivation will stay higher because I'm doing it "My Way", even though the quick and dirty way would be much easier.
Reviewing
I listened to the audio from the first seven Assimil Arabic lessons. I have been doing a lot of audio-only reviewing lately and I think it's the way to go. A lot of people on this forum are very into native subtitles, but in my opinion if you do enough listening practice with your learning materials you shouldn't need native subs (unless of course you are deaf or hard of hearing). I'll try to review another 7 lessons tonight and then maybe I'll start the third week of lessons over. I think I had finished 19 lessons before I took a break.
I redid the first lesson of Pimsleur MSA. I can't remember if I did any other lessons before I took my break.
I only have three Duolingo skills that "broke" over the past month. I'll review them and get started again on new skills.
Anki Maintenance
I want to be better about maintaining my Anki decks for languages I'm not currently working on, but will probably return to. Considering that I tend to switch back and forth between languages, I would have an easier time transitioning if I kept all of my decks fresh. I deleted a few that I didn't think were that helpful. I'm going to try to maintain my decks for Norwegian, Inuktitut, Navajo, Biblical Hebrew, Epic Greek, and Modern Standard Arabic. It would take me just under three hours to clear out all my decks, but if I can keep everything up to date I should only have to spend a little bit of time on any given day maintaining my decks.
Progress-o-Meter™
عربي
: Pimsleur MSA
: Duolingo Arabic
: Assimil L'arabe
: Ahlan wa Sahlan Workbook
English
: The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
I took a break for about a month to work on Norwegian, but Arabic is just too dang cool to stay away from.
As I mentioned in my final (for now) entry in my Norwegian log, I'm back to Arabic now because I watched a video on Lithuanian this week. That's how bad my Wanderlust is. A talk on Lithuanian's conservative Indo-European features came up in my YouTube feed and I thought it was really cool. Then I started looking at Slovenian, because although Lithuanian may have the most conservative declension system in terms of sound changes, Slovenian preserves the neuter gender and dual number, so even though it has one case fewer than Lithuanian it should have more items on the declension chart; unfortunately there don't seem to be many good resources for Slovenian, at least not in English. Lithuanian verbs have lost a lot of Indo-European features. What is the most conservative Indo-European verbal system in a modern language? Probably Greek or maybe Albanian. But of course if you want a really conservative language there's Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. Boy, Sanskrit is pretty cool. Hindi is also really interesting, and if I learned Hindi I would get a lot of Sanskrit vocabulary. Time to watch the Langfocus video on Hindi. Hmm, it looks like even Hindi, which has been heavily Sanskritized, still maintains a good amount of Perso-Arabic vocabulary. Time to look at Persian. Ooh, Persian is really cool.
I found a few cool articles about how easy Persian is to learn. In terms of grammar, it seems just as simple as Afrikaans or the Scandinavian languages, and the pronunciation doesn't seem to present many difficulties either. And this is what pulled me back towards Arabic: this article had a brief passage of Persian with the foreign words highlighted (Arabic words in yellow, country or person names in green, and one Western loanword in blue). Even without any vowels, I was able to understand the Western loanword and all of the green words, and I was also able to identify one Arabic word, وزير (wazīr, meaning government minister or assistant, familiar as the loanword vizier in English). There was also another word سفر (safar) that looked familiar as well, so I looked it up and it means departure, journey, or travel. Swahili has many Arabic loanwords including this one, but a Swahili syllable cannot end in a consonant so they added the vowel "i" at the end, and of course the Swahili word "safari" is very famous and was even re-borrowed into Arabic, so that was why it seemed familiar.
I had been considering abandoning my plans to learn Arabic before Hebrew and instead jump straight into Hebrew. This would likely get me to an intermediate level much more quickly, in as few as 6-9 months depending on how much I get distracted. By contrast, I estimate that going from 1) getting Modern Standard Arabic to an intermediate level where I can understand the news to some degree, to 2) getting Biblical Hebrew to a strong passive level where I can mostly understand Biblical passages, using a bilingual text to fill in what I don't understand and then finally 3) learning Modern Hebrew to a conversational level would take me an absolute minimum of two years but probably more (again, considering how often I get distracted).
But I would be sad to miss out on Arabic. Even at the very beginning stages, I am starting to feel a connection to a very large part of the world that I didn't have access to before, and on top of that I can even pick out the odd word here or there in Persian, Urdu, and any other language that uses the Arabic script. The way I'm going about learning Hebrew is bass-ackwards from the way anyone would reasonably advise someone to do it, but I think my motivation will stay higher because I'm doing it "My Way", even though the quick and dirty way would be much easier.
Reviewing
I listened to the audio from the first seven Assimil Arabic lessons. I have been doing a lot of audio-only reviewing lately and I think it's the way to go. A lot of people on this forum are very into native subtitles, but in my opinion if you do enough listening practice with your learning materials you shouldn't need native subs (unless of course you are deaf or hard of hearing). I'll try to review another 7 lessons tonight and then maybe I'll start the third week of lessons over. I think I had finished 19 lessons before I took a break.
I redid the first lesson of Pimsleur MSA. I can't remember if I did any other lessons before I took my break.
I only have three Duolingo skills that "broke" over the past month. I'll review them and get started again on new skills.
Anki Maintenance
I want to be better about maintaining my Anki decks for languages I'm not currently working on, but will probably return to. Considering that I tend to switch back and forth between languages, I would have an easier time transitioning if I kept all of my decks fresh. I deleted a few that I didn't think were that helpful. I'm going to try to maintain my decks for Norwegian, Inuktitut, Navajo, Biblical Hebrew, Epic Greek, and Modern Standard Arabic. It would take me just under three hours to clear out all my decks, but if I can keep everything up to date I should only have to spend a little bit of time on any given day maintaining my decks.
Progress-o-Meter™
عربي
: Pimsleur MSA
: Duolingo Arabic
: Assimil L'arabe
: Ahlan wa Sahlan Workbook
English
: The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne