Arabic through semi-extensive reading

[thomas_dc]

287 pages of Harry Potter number two done. And it was quite the struggle.
I'm taking a pause from Harry Potter now, because I think I can get more out of working with something that has a more direct translation. According to the amazon reviews of the Arabic HP books, the third book also suffers from this very neglectful translation practice, but it's supposed to get better from the fourth book and onwards - I'll save that for later though.

I hope to get around to watch the film "The night of counting the years" today - I read the subtitles in parallel English and Arabic a few days ago, and will surely have to pass over it several times, but I'm looking forward to seeing how much I understand. This film's script is the equivalent of roughly 12 book pages. I just prepared another film for reading the subtitles in parallel - the film "The message" and that one is about 30 pages, and quite a lot more advanced than the Disney film "Frozen".

As of right now, I've read 1225 pages of Arabic, and although the latest book didn't seem to help a lot, I do feel that there are more and more "recognizable" words, and some that I have assimilated too.
I'm now starting "Angles and Demons" by Dan Brown in Arabic. Some 600 pages, and it seems to be a much better translation than Harry Potter was, without being much more difficult. (Although it is still way beyond my level) Maybe I'll see some kind of breakthrough after this one?

[DangerDave2010]

Hi,

For my Arabic reading, I have finally settled for the Bible. The text is fully vowelled, and I have the audio, and translation, so it makes my life a lot easier. I will first read the text with the help of the aratatools.com text anotation, then listen to the audio twice, then listen a few more times over the next few days. At first it was painfully slow, but after having finished one book, I'm starting to gather speed.

I've also been watching anime, cartoon movies, and Korean serials, that are dubbed in MSA.

links for the bible with audio in various translations:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%EF%BA%97%EF%BB%9C%EF%BB%AE%EF%BB%B3%EF%BB%A6+1&version=NAV
https://www.bible.com/en/bible/67/luk.2

[thomas_dc]

Hi,

For my Arabic reading, I have finally settled for the Bible. The text is fully vowelled, and I have the audio, and translation, so it makes my life a lot easier. I will first read the text with the help of the aratatools.com text anotation, then listen to the audio twice, then listen a few more times over the next few days. At first it was painfully slow, but after having finished one book, I'm starting to gather speed.

I've also been watching anime, cartoon movies, and Korean serials, that are dubbed in MSA.

links for the bible with audio in various translations:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%EF%BA%97%EF%BB%9C%EF%BB%AE%EF%BB%B3%EF%BB%A6+1&version=NAV
https://www.bible.com/en/bible/67/luk.2

Thanks for your suggestion!
I think I might use the bible at some point as a kind of study material. At least as a last resort. I would prefer to base my studies on something that I'd enjoy reading a little more - not that there's anything wrong with the bible, but I think that a good crime novel or something with suspense would be better for my Arabic studies.. I just found this today: https://archive.org/details/mijobooks6 It's an audio book for the Arabic edition of the Dan Brown book "The Lost Symbol" - I don't know the quality of it, or if it's all there, though, but it seems promising. The books are relatively easy to find both in English and Arabic. As to the vowels.. It's always one of the big questions with Arabic, and I've spent some time worrying about this and reading up on different opinions and approaches to it. I've decided to learn to read without them - Arabophones do it, and when they come upon unknown words, they know how to pronounce it even without the vowels, so with enough experience and a good stomach-feeling I think this should be possible.. But I'm not sure it can be done without a lot of good audio input, so there's that!

[thomas_dc]

I'm some 50 pages into "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, and it's going much better than the horribly translated Harry Potter. While reading these 50 pages there are a few words that I've recognized as recurring, looked up and then remembered when stumbling upon them again, so I feel that I'm moving forward.

It's a little difficult to measure progress in other ways than that, but I hope than I'm learning more than just 4-5 new words in 50 pages. (My comprehension is still very low, and I rely heavily on the English text.) The way I am seeing it is, that there are different levels of learning going on.
1. Some words I'm seeing for the first time,
2. some I'm seeing again without recognizing them,
3. Some words I'm starting to recognize without understanding the meaning (getting it from the translation, but not seeing the corresponding word in the English sentence)
4. Then I'm starting to have a feeling or a general idea of a word
5. And lastly I either figure out the word from the translation/the context or I look it up and start to remember it when I stumble across it again and again.

If it works this way, I imagine that I'm pushing a mountain of vocabulary in front of me, and that the great majority are on stages 1,2 and 3.. After a lot of work, they start to spill over in 4 and 5, but for the most part they're not there yet.. If my theory holds water, I should start to see some kind of momentum or acceleration at some point. That's what I'm hoping. Otherwise 4 new words for 5 hours of reading isn't really that much of a result.

Has anyone else got any ideas about this?

[Expugnator]

When I get to Arabic I'll keep in mind most of your hints here and at the General Forum, thomas. I've read some Dan Brown in Mandarin, and while I find it overall harder than, say, Paulo Coelho, it has most of the vocabulary needed for a life in the XXI century. Parallel reading demands a lot of patience indeed, and I learned that combining it with 1 page of intensive reading (which can be from another material) is a solid strategy.

[thomas_dc]

When I get to Arabic I'll keep in mind most of your hints here and at the General Forum, thomas. I've read some Dan Brown in Mandarin, and while I find it overall harder than, say, Paulo Coelho, it has most of the vocabulary needed for a life in the XXI century. Parallel reading demands a lot of patience indeed, and I learned that combining it with 1 page of intensive reading (which can be from another material) is a solid strategy.

Thanks for your input!
I might try and cram in a little intensive reading here and there, however, I often find myself becoming too absorbed in the extensive reading and then never getting any further than that! I'll try and force it and see how it works.
Maybe I'll have a look at Paulo Coelho for future study. At some point I'd have to go search for something easy to do without the parallel text as well!

Edit: I just tried looking everything up for a short paragraph of 52 words. 17 unknown words, which means that I understand 68% of that paragraph which obviously isn't a lot. I'm quite sure that I'll forget most of these 17 words within minutes (already have!) but I can imagine that it would be very helpful to keep looking up a paragraph or a page here and there.

[DangerDave2010]

any good sites for books I wonder?

[nuncapense]

68% sounds really good! Seems to me like you're making fast progress. I tried using the bible once for L-R'ing Mandarin. There are so many audiobooks and translations available that it's a tempting recourse. Unfortunately I didn't stick with it, and all I can remember is how to mispronounce "Jesus said." I was reading the Gospels, and Jesus said a lot of things. Ya shu shu-ah.

[thomas_dc]

any good sites for books I wonder?

I've ordered a few through here: http://www.arabischesbuch.de/ (Germany)
I've also stumbled across this one: http://www.alkitab.com/ which is think is based in the US.

I'm sure there are some well stocked Arabic bookstores in Arabic too, but I haven't found any. Generally the prices are a little steep.

Otherwise, it's possible to go to a book's wikipedia-page and change the language to Arabic in order to see what the translation is called. Look for that in google and you might find it rather easily. (And if you add "pdf" to the search string, you're pretty sure to find a scan.. But you know..)

68% sounds really good! Seems to me like you're making fast progress. I tried using the bible once for L-R'ing Mandarin. There are so many audiobooks and translations available that it's a tempting recourse. Unfortunately I didn't stick with it, and all I can remember is how to mispronounce "Jesus said." I was reading the Gospels, and Jesus said a lot of things. Ya shu shu-ah.

Well I'm not sure it is as good as it sounds. I did another paragraph where I knew 72% of the words, but it still leaves out almost a third of the words that I don't know, which makes it all very confusing without relying on the English text!

[nuncapense]

Yeah I could see that it would be hard to understand the overall meaning with 70%, but what I was trying to say was that it also means you already know an awful lot of words.