Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

[bolaobo]

I finished L'Arabe L53 and Le Persan Sans Peine L61. I also learned and memorized Quran Surah 104-105.

My pace has remained consistent and I'm happy with my progress. I've managed to mostly avoid dabbling in new languages although I regret barely having any time to study Turkish.

In a way, I haven't fully committed to Turkish which is why I haven't gone full-throttle yet. Nevertheless, I can't see myself not learning it eventually since it intersects so strongly with where my interests are.

Progress is also slow because I'm studying Ottoman Turkish, but I think this comprehensive approach will help me later on if I want to branch out to other Turkic languages or Chagatai. I could certainly be going at a much more brisk pace if I were just studying modern Latin alphabet Turkish, but after using dual-script Devanagari/Urdu Anki cards to learn the Urdu script, I just think the dual-card approach is too powerful to not take advantage of.

I'm not officially using an Ottoman Turkish resource, but I refer to The Routledge Introduction to Literary Ottoman and the aforementioned Ottoman Turkish Conversation Grammar as needed. I need to refer to these quite often to figure out how something in Ottoman is actually spelled when Wiktionary doesn't have it. Wiktionary is good for individual words but not conjugated verbs and particles.

I want to add a dedicated Ottoman resource to my repertoire and I've been oscillating between the above two. The Conversation Grammar is without a doubt more comprehensive, but it's much older, and was written before the language reform so it doesn't make the comparisons to modern Turkish that are sometimes helpful. It also has an overwhelming amount of content/exercises that are somewhat repetitive, so lately I've been leaning towards the Routledge tome since its academic, densely-packed vocabulary is a better complement to Assimil's input approach and will take less time to go through while still clearing up some orthographic points.

The problem with Routledge's offering is that it's really hard. Literally in the first reading, there are i+3 and i+4 sentences that will be a challenge to do in Anki. So I guess I've been putting it off until I have more base vocabulary.

Despite this rant about Turkish, Arabic is still my focus. I will be working hard on finishing the latest A New Arabic Grammar chapter and unfortunately, another Assimil lesson filled with tourist vocabulary!

[bolaobo]

I finished Le Turc sans peine L12, A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 17, Le Persan L62 and L63, L'Arabe L54, and Speaking Eastern Arabic L20

Clozemaster: 902 day streak in German and Hindi, over 1,000,000 points passed in German (8645 mastered sentences for German)

I memorized Quran Surah 99-103. I know 99-114 pretty well now, but I don't feel 100% secure in my memorization of some of them. I'm starting to make minor mistakes in recitation (such as forgetting a و or ف) or changing wording without affecting meaning so I'm going to have to keep on top of this. It continues to help me learn Arabic since a lot of the surahs are repetitive and re-use the same structure for sake of rhyme such as frequently using form IV active participle which helps drill structure and patterns without memorizing tables.

I haven't given up on Latin and Japanese yet and I still sneak in quick 15 minutes sessions when I can. If I choose to seriously focus on these later (likely with Japanese, maybe with Latin) I feel like I'm in a good spot. It's the same with Spanish and Italian, although I get consistent daily practice with those in Clozemaster.

Russian, Akkadian, and Hebrew are still being maintained half-assedly. They don't cost much time to maintain but I don't know much so it's easy to forget. They're definitely regressing but if I were to change goals someday I could pick them up faster.

Assimil Arabic is still going well. I want to go through it faster and get to Perfectionnement, but it's a lot of information to take in and I feel like my slow and methodical approach across different domains will be more rewarding in the long-run and help retain information.

To put things into perspective, I have a total of 33,940⁩ Anki reviews in Japanese, 22,881⁩ reviews in MSA, and 7,236⁩ reviews in Levantine Arabic. In other words, I still have more reviews in Japanese, but just barely. I can't really do a difficulty comparison since I already know Chinese, but my Arabic will definitely not be better than my Japanese anytime soon, especially written. Arabic truly is a monster of a language. If we assume that Arabic is about twice as time-consuming as Japanese given my Chinese background (using numbers from here), I will need roughly 66,000 Arabic reviews to get to where my Japanese is now. Obviously it's not an exact science since there's knowledge transfer from Persian and Urdu but I think I'm in the ballpark for just how much effort I'm looking at to get Arabic to where my Japanese is at, let alone my stronger languages.

[bolaobo]

I finished Le Japonais Sans Peine L94, L'Arabe L55 and L56, A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 18, Le Persan L64, and Le Turc Sans Peine L13.

Don't worry, I'm still here! Despite the long absence, I'm doing well and did not get hit by a bus.

For years now, I've been almost singularly focused on languages, but I picked up a new hobby: running (and some supplemental strength training to keep things balanced). This wasn't really planned but just kind of happened one day. Running lets me enjoy the morning summer air and has been good for my cognitive and physical health. I ran a 5K last Sunday and finished in 28 minutes, which I'm happy with considering I'm still a novice who's barely been running at all. I ran cross country and track in middle school (almost 20 years ago now...) and did powerlifting through most of college, but I've been neglecting my fitness for almost a decade now which is no good if I want to live a long, language-filled life!

I'm still learning languages and probably still spend much more time each day studying than running, but whenever I pick up a new hobby, I tend to spend a lot of time researching and dissecting information so that's what I've been doing. Sadly, mostly in English, but I also needed a mental break and I knocked 20-30 minutes off my daily Anki reviews. which has made reviewing less painful. Reviewing STILL takes longer than I'd like, which shows just how crazy these last few years have been and how much of a backlog I've created for myself. I can't really get my daily reviews much shorter though without seeing things start to deteriorate though since even for my strongest languages I need to at least see some cards daily.

I need to get better time management skills and start managing these multiple hobbies. So it's full steam ahead on languages again as best as I can manage. For most of my languages, except the ones that were already decaying before the break, I haven't felt any decline in memory and I actually feel sharper in many of them. It's been a good test of how well Anki and Clozemaster can keep me maintaining multiple areas of study even when life gets hectic or my time suddenly decreases.

When time has been tight, I've tried to at least get some Arabic study in, since it represents my biggest passion and challenge and want to always be chipping away at it no matter what.

For this next cycle, I'm going to try to manage time better and get some more serious language work in. We'll see how it goes. I'm always maintaining (it's become a daily ritual like drinking coffee) but this log keeps me accountable and moving forward with new lessons.

[bolaobo]

I finished L'Arabe L57 and L58, Le Persan L65, Le Turc Sans Peine L14 and A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 19

Clozemaster: 18,869 mastered sentences, 990 day streak

Alas, what was once a weekly update thread has turned into a thread where I post every one or two months.

Nevertheless, I'm still holding steady. I haven't missed a review day, and I still average quite a bit of time a day just reviewing cards. My only change I've made is I now use Clozemaster in multiple-choice mode instead of listening mode. It allows me to get through reviews much quicker and I get more input, at cost of being easier. Listening was taking too long and was of dubious utility since they're all computer-generated voices anyway.

My passion for languages hasn't really subsided. I spent quite a few hours today studying / adding new cards and enjoyed every minute of it. It's pretty normal for me to cycle through hobbies but languages are the one hobby I have that never goes away completely. Adding a new hobby (running/fitness) along with my daily reviews still being quite lengthy even on a good day means making fast progress is slow unless I spend 5 hours a day, which isn't really sustainable for my current life situation. Oh, how I wish I could be like Professor Arguelles who once had the opportunity to study 16 hours a day!

That being said, to keep my progress steady and avoid falling into the trap of moving so slowly I eventually lose interest, I need priorities. That'll be Arabic, which will require a final push the rest of this year to get to where it should be. If someone were to hold a gun to my head and tell me I must choose only one language to study for the rest of my life, it would be Arabic, so the choice is quite easy for me. I'll still work on other languages to avoid too much regression, but not as much as I used to, especially since a lot of them maintain themselves just with some daily exposure such as French, Spanish, German, and Chinese. Persian, Japanese, and Hindi are not in danger of immediately disappearing since I have a small base and lots of reviews, and I don't really care about my languages less developed than those. As for Turkish, I work on it in Duolingo/Clozemaster daily and I'm going through Assimil really, really gradually.

The latest lessons in Assimil for Persian and Arabic show a definite increase in difficulty, and despite my parallel use of two other Arabic resources, the Assimil Arabic lesson still has tons of new words and some sentences that aren't even n+1. A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 20 introduced several new verb forms, which would usually be overwhelming but I had already been exposed to them often in Assimil. For a language as hard as Arabic, the comprehensive multiple textbook approach is paying off even though it slows me down considerably in the short-term.

I don't want to set any goals to accomplish by the end of the year. I just want to keep studying, do reviews consistently, and keep my passion for languages kindled. We'll see where I land.

[bolaobo]

I finished Speaking Eastern Arabic Lesson 21, L'Arabe L59, and A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 20. The next chapter in Levantine Arabic introduces صار, which seems to be nearly identical to the Chinese particle 了 placed in different part of the sentence. That concept was refreshingly easy to grasp.

19,177 mastered sentences in Clozemaster, with a 1011 day streak in Hindi and German and 800+ day streaks in French/Chinese, French/English, Spanish/German, and Simplified Chinese / English.

684 day streak in Duolingo. I've been doing one daily Turkish lesson to keep streak and nothing else.

Slowly making some progress and knocking out lessons. I studied other languages too (including Assimil L95 the most boring Japanese lesson of all time), but Arabic was the bulk of the new material. As you can probably tell from the lack of updates, I've put the memorization of the Quran on hold for now in order to make more progress on my textbooks, but I'm still maintaining the surahs I've memorized with occasional errors that I correct.

This year, I've mostly been able to keep my wanderlust for new languages in check, although perhaps that's only because I'm already doing so much! Occasionally I'll get the urge to start studying Swahili or Pashto or Bengali or something, but the time just isn't there and my Arabic motivation is still going strong. I did start doing Portuguese reps from Spanish in Clozemaster, but that's so little time a day I don't even count it as studying.

At my current pace, I'm not going to finish L'Arabe by the end of the year even though it only has 77 lessons. It would have been nice, but I don't want to rush it, and it's a lot of material to memorize. I could probably finish it if I put everything else on hold and stopped studying A New Arabic Grammar and Levantine Arabic, but I don't think it's worth it to take such a single-tracked approach to a language as diverse and vast as Arabic. Perfectionnement will come, and I'm really looking forward to it. I also want to finish Le Japonais sans Peine, since I'm so close and it's just silly to leave it with 4 lessons left.

Persian is still rather boring and I meander through lessons. Compared to Arabic, it just feels so....watered-down. Being an Indo-European language, it just doesn't scratch that exotic itch that I have. I know at a high-level Persian is rich and literary, but I'm not there yet and I'd rather focus on Arabic which is so indispensable for the Islamicate world. I'm still enjoying Hindi/Urdu, but I add fewer new cards because I get more exposure from daily reviews and Clozemaster.

Outside of the usual languages I study, there is so much more I want to get to a higher level. I want to finish the Perfectionnement courses for German and French and eventually Spanish. They seem very fun and I'm one of those weird people who enjoys textbooks. But I have some work to do elsewhere and I already get enough practice with those languages daily that they are not at risk of real atrophy from lack of exposure. I plan on studying languages for the rest of my life, so unless I get bored, there will be time!

[bolaobo]

I finished L'Arabe L60-L63, Le Turc Sans Peine L15, A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 21, and Le Persan Sans Peine L66.

I also memorized Surah 97 and Surah 98 of the Quran.

I passed 2,000,000 points on Clozemaster. This doesn't mean that much to me, but it's a nice round number to report!

Finally some good progress to report! I got 4 lessons of L'Arabe finished, including one review lesson. It's been a perfect fit with A New Arabic Grammar which is covering the same verb forms. I'm anxious to continue with these books and continue to level up my Arabic.

I haven't been doing much serious reading, but I've been listening to podcasts while cooking and doing housework. I have been doing some listening to Nihongo con Teppei and Español con Juan, understanding a surprising amount of the latter despite not paying full attention and barely studying Spanish.

On a more passive level, since my comprehension is so poor, I've been listening to the Egyptian radio version of One Thousand and One Nights. I don't know if I've posted about this before, but I've been aware of it for a while and my comprehension is slightly better than before. I still have a long way to go but when my Arabic gets better, I think this will be a great source of learning and it appears to be well-acted and high-quality. It seems to be mostly in MSA, but I do hear Egyptian pronunciation and some words/phrases that I recognize as dialectical from my Levantine studies. My time would still be best spent studying MSA if I want to understand this show better.

During all this time, I've still been running and ramping up weekly mileage, but I don't listen to anything while running. I use it as a relaxation and almost meditation, and although I often multi-task, I don't think I need to be studying languages during that time, even though it's tempting to try to get more time in. My tentative plan is to run a 10 mile race in November and a marathon in May, which will require a lot of training, obviously, but with good time management I have no doubt I can handle the workload.

[lichtrausch]

Persian is still rather boring and I meander through lessons. Compared to Arabic, it just feels so....watered-down. Being an Indo-European language, it just doesn't scratch that exotic itch that I have.

Has Arabic ruined the whole Indo-European language family for you?

[bolaobo]

Persian is still rather boring and I meander through lessons. Compared to Arabic, it just feels so....watered-down. Being an Indo-European language, it just doesn't scratch that exotic itch that I have.

Has Arabic ruined the whole Indo-European language family for you?

I guess you could say that. But I've always been a bit of an "exotic" guy. After all, my first foreign language was Chinese so it's not too surprising that I'd be bored with something that feels too familiar (it's also especially close to Hindi). Persian isn't going anywhere and I plan on putting serious time into it eventually regardless.

I finished Le Japonais Sans Peine L95 (4 lessons to go), A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 22, and L'Arabe L64.

I continue to chip away at the never-ending challenge that is Arabic. For my other languages, I'm doing just enough to not go backwards, as usual. I have a much better hang of the grammar now and I spend less time memorizing vowel markings (since I can infer more often) so my focus is shifting to vocabulary, of which Arabic certainly is not lacking either.

Assimil is switching to some touristy dialogues (I'm so sick of carpet shops!!!) and A New Arabic Grammar is drilling the final verb forms. Assimil is good for teaching me new vocabulary and getting used to hearing it spoken, as well as occasionally being exposed to unfamiliar grammar, while the grammar book has been excellent for drilling things I know and improving my comprehension speed. Once I finish Assimil, I should probably just start Perfectionnement but Arabic Reader by Chaim Rabin also catches my eye. I risk overextending myself too much so I should probably stick to one book along with A New Arabic Grammar no matter how tempting a reader might be

In terms of misc. resources, I found what appears to be an exact transcript of the first episode (and part of second) of the Egyptian broadcast of One Thousand and One Nights which might be worth studying in detail sometime. I also found a dual-language Arabic-English with footnotes of Tale of the Barber's Fifth Brother in the back of an open-domain grammar book. While translations of this tale are everywhere, having one with footnotes and an exact correspondence between languages is not as easy to find. Unfortunately, it's not voweled so you can't have everything.

I've had a little more time to study lately since I'm nursing some overuse aches from running. Since I can't run as often, I've been able to focus on Arabic and it's felt good to be able to go full-throttle on languages.

[bolaobo]

I finished L'Arabe L65 and L66, A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 23 and Speaking Eastern Arabic L22

Sorry to my other Islamicate languages, but I haven't been able to dedicate much time to you!

I'm continuing to chip away at Arabic. Reviews just for MSA have been averaging over 30 minutes in Anki which is close to where my Japanese was at when I was studying it hard a while ago. The time investment is beginning to pay off and I can feel improvement coming.

I finally finished the latest Levantine Arabic chapter. Despite not spending much time on it lately, it doesn't feel that different than MSA really, and I'm beginning to get a handle on decoding dialect and the pronunciation changes. It's still not a focus of mine but I want to be able to at least understand it. I'll probably want to add Egyptian eventually but I haven't felt the need yet since it doesn't feel that different and I don't want to spread myself too thin with resources.

As I start to make a more concerted effort on Arabic, it's been tempting to start adding output cards, either cloze completion or entire sentences. But I'm hesitating because it would make reviews much harder, and I'm unsure if it would be worth the increased workload. I'm already making 2 cards for each sentence (one listening, one vowel-less reading) and adding a third card might be too much. I'm also not sure how effective it would even be, because the only language I'm able to produce in besides English is Chinese and that was done "naturally" without SRS (although I did have to do production exercises in university). Undoubtedly forcing myself to produce spontaneous MSA would improve my retention of words, but I don't know if it'd be worth the time cost over just doing more input.

Nevertheless, it's something I'm seriously considering, because if I would like to be able to actively produce (or maybe even think in) more than English and Chinese someday. I'll continue to contemplate my decision.

[bolaobo]

I finished L'Arabe L67 and L68, Le Hindi / Hindi ohne Mühe L41, A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 24, Le Persan L67, and Le Turc Sans Peine L16

I'm able to knock out Arabic lessons faster now because I'm getting a hang of grammar and it's just a matter of vocabulary. I'm sure more intense grammar lessons will be coming up in the future but it's been a nice break and it's allowed me to get more practice in without being swamped with tables and exceptions. I'm also putting in more time because I want to finish these damn books!

On the topic of books, I'm still struggling with polyitis and choice paralysis in terms of deciding which languages to study on any given day and which languages to set aside. I'm nearing the end of several books, but there are some languages I'm unsure what my goals even are.

I hate forgetting languages, which is why I maintain everything, even some random Bulgarian sentence I put into Anki two years ago. So the more I add, the more my long-term workload is going to be. But I also enjoy the process of learning itself, oftentimes more than reading and actually using languages. So I don't want to avoid learning if it's something I'm motivated to do.

For the sake of myself and whoever is interested, here is a quick overview of where some languages stand in terms of priority. Ones near the bottom are...more likely to be dropped.

Chinese/French/German: I already consider myself as "knowing" these on a passive level, but they can be improved. My German especially needs improvement but I feel no affinity for it at the moment. I'm pretty sure my French has surpassed my German in some formal reading contexts due to all the time spent reading Assimil books. I have no regrets and these are important langauges that will be with me for life.

Classical Arabic / Modern Standard Arabic: Highest priority, highest motivation. No hesitation here. MSA is essentially the same thing so I'm able to focus on the modern language without much sacrifice and still maintain some utility.

Persian: My ultimate goal is Classical Persian. I want to finish this Assimil book to get a base and then start specializing in what I actually picked up the language for. I have no intention of going to Iran and taking out money from the bank. I want to read the classical poets!

Levantine Arabic: I much prefer studying MSA. But unless I go full Classical Arabic, I need to know how to understand at least one dialect since it's often interspersed with MSA.

Hindi/Urdu: Meh, I enjoy it when I study it. But I have no long-term goals to focus on. Urdu poetry is almost wholly dependent on Arabic/Persian so it's hard to justify studying over those. I don't want to forget Devanagari but I'm not interested enough in Indian culture to go full Sanskrit, at least not yet. I suffer from "sunk cost fallacy" a lot when judging this language because I've already put so much time into it despite having no real goals.

Japanese: I kind of enjoy it? Japanese media might be a nice diversion, except I haven't been enjoying it as much as my nostalgic childhood memories suggested I would. The main reason I have kept it up is because the fact that I already basically know almost every Kanji and it seems silly to miss out on Japanese when it comes so much easier to me and I would be missing out on a very unique culture.

Turkish: Similar case as Urdu, except my level is much worse. I'm mildly interested in modern Turkey, but I'm more interested in the Ottoman Empire. Sometimes I contemplate just switching full-time to Ottoman instead of going through Assimil lessons about buying carpets and meeting classmates. Nevertheless, it seems like a solid textbook written by the same author that wrote the Arabic and Persian textbooks. I like the gentle learning curve and having native audio which Ottoman likely wouldn't have. Turkish is one of the hardest languages for me right now to decide what to do with and whether to abandon or not.

Spanish / Italian / Portuguese: I barely study these as-is. I picked them because I feel like I "should" know them as low-hanging fruit but I have no reason to. Nevertheless, these are easy enough that even 5 minutes a day is enough to improve them or at least maintain.

Latin: Like the above, but Latin is actually hard. I picked this up because I felt like I "should" know it, but I feel no affinity for it. If I were to learn a Classics language, I'm actually more interested in Attic Greek. Latin is important for the Classics but my plate is full right now and I can't dedicate the time to it that it needs. But I can't quite bring myself to abandon it. It's hanging on for dear life with a minimal amount of review each week.

Akkadian: Not enough interest to justify time investment right now, and I'm worried about effort not being worth reward for someone not in academia since the corpus is limited and often deals with mundane subject matter.

Hebrew/Russian: I felt like I "should" know these, but like Latin, no affinity right now. I'm happy I know Cyrillic though and it's come in handy.

Ukrainian/Bulgarian: These were meant to serve as introduction to Slavic family, but I have no interest in that family right now.


The logical choice would be to focus heavily on Arabic, with everything else taking a backseat but eventually finishing the Hindi and Japanese textbooks sometime in this lifetime. If something rusts a little, it's not the end of the world. Eventually, I guess my goal is to get multiple languages into the "advanced reader" territory where I'm slowly dissecting texts above my level. I've found I can mostly maintain skill in languages with very little time spent a day as long as it's passive skills.

This is basically my time management strategy right now. I try to do new Arabic sentences everyday, fitting in other languages on days when I have more time and keeping up Anki reviews. It's been working well.

Looking at the above "back of the napkin" analysis, it seems I'm most interested in the impractical. I enjoy MSA/Classical Arabic the most and formal Persian. When I try to learn a practical language or everyday colloquial speech, I get bored. This will help me decide how to spread my time in the future. I would be a good candidate for dead languages and classical languages I guess.