Arabic through semi-extensive reading

[hp230]

I do have a problem with the pronunciation of Arabic, and I think it would be best if I did watch more movies or study audio in general - it can just be a little hard to come by good material in MSA.

On an HTLAL thread last year, native Tunisian-Arabic speaker HP230 said:

For the arabic learners I would recommend historical Syrian series. In these series, MSA is really well spoken and appreciated from the arab community ( maybe beacause it shows our glorious era). I personly found them far more interesting than any other MSA spread by the PR.

So I guess that's where you should look. Too bad they didn't list any specific examples .

Hi, I actually stumbled across some of these series at some point. Here's one called Al Kawaser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3rSlxfPjuA - The only problem is that i can't find any transcripts or subtitles. But I think I'll definitely try and watch these series!

Actually, this kind of series is rarely produced nowadays due to the war in Syria. However, it's a tradition that arabic channels diffuse at least one of them during the holy month of Ramadhan. I don't expect you to wait that long for it (this year it will be in June), but that's not the problem. As you mentioned, most of the time there are no subtitles. I can give you nontheless some titles if you're interested. I've watched this one for exemple few years ago:"Tarek ibn Zied" Youtube link and I liked it a lot.
"Beb el Mourad" youtube link
"Omar" Omar
This last one was a very successful series 2 years ago,it was the first brave series to treat the beginning of islam since the movie "The message"
PS: you can watch documentaries also, they're generally commentated in MSA.

[thomas_dc]

Actually, this kind of series is rarely produced nowadays due to the war in Syria. However, it's a tradition that arabic channels diffuse at least one of them during the holy month of Ramadhan. I don't expect you to wait that long for it (this year it will be in June), but that's not the problem. As you mentioned, most of the time there are no subtitles. I can give you nontheless some titles if you're interested. I've watched this one for exemple few years ago:"Tarek ibn Zied" Youtube link and I liked it a lot.
"Beb el Mourad" youtube link
"Omar" Omar
This last one was a very successful series 2 years ago,it was the first brave series to treat the beginning of islam since the movie "The message"
PS: you can watch documentaries also, they're generally commentated in MSA.

Saha! Those are some great resources! I'm looking forward to watching them! For now I might put them on hold for a while until I've built a little more vocabulary (and am more likely to understand the series without being able to study the vocabulary beforehand)
I remember finding "Omar" a while back and it really seems unusually well made - it's hard to keep focus without understanding much, though. The same goes for documentaries.. But I'm looking forward to being able to get into that - especially in order to get a more natural sense of vowels and pronunciation.

At some point (when I've gotten a stronger foundation in fus7a) I'll start studying Algerian dardja. There seems to be some series available, as well as some comedy, but since I'm foremost a reader, it's quite a challenge for me to learn a language that's not written.
I've heard that the Tunesian dialect is a little more different than Algerian and Moroccan, because it doesn't have the same amount of Berber vocabulary.. How do you see this difference?

Thanks again for the links. They're definitely going to come in handy!

[thomas_dc]

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.

It's quite interesting that it seems to be pretty consistent. I've done this with 4-5 paragraphs now, and I've ended up with 68-75% comprehension in all of them so far. I think that I'll continue doing this throughout the book - Hopefully the percentage will gradually rise.

Have you tried counting your known words in your Spanish reading?

[nuncapense]

Because of this thread, I just tested it on one page of Harry Potter. It was an interesting exercise because I don't normally notice which words I don't know and which I do. Not that long ago I was around 70%. Today I got 98%, but I don't think that's accurate. A lot of the words I knew from context, and from their similarity to English or to other words: if you have given me the same 300 words in a randomly-ordered list, my percentage would be quite a bit lower.

[thomas_dc]

Because of this thread, I just tested it on one page of Harry Potter. It was an interesting exercise because I don't normally notice which words I don't know and which I do. Not that long ago I was around 70%. Today I got 98%, but I don't think that's accurate. A lot of the words I knew from context, and from their similarity to English or to other words: if you have given me the same 300 words in a randomly-ordered list, my percentage would be quite a bit lower.

98% - not bad at all! How long did it take you to move from 70% to 98%?

[nuncapense]

I wish I had kept better track. Back in September or October, as I was starting to do more reading, I really couldn't understand the gist of most of what I was reading. I keep feeling like it's not that % of words known that matters for me, that something else is going on, where the brain just gets more skilled at following sentences, but then I keep proving myself wrong when I look for words I know or don't know. This past summer, I was able to read Harry Potter 4, but it was painfully slow. I think I had actually started the book last February, and didn't finish it until this summer. Now that I mention it, I'm not so sure I did finish it. The copy I bought had actually fallen apart. As I read, I lost more and more pages, until the book was just a cover and the introduction. In testament to how long it took me to read it, I can say I carried the book with me as my sole reading material from DF through Oaxaca state, and into Guatemala and back, probably leaving pages in buses and hotels along the way. I had even rejected a few copies I'd seen on the metro in favor for my copy that came from an expensive and famous book store. I'm way off topic! But maybe I should go back and edit my book list.

Since you're more experienced at this than me, what's your take on continuing to read easy books or moving on to harder books? When you were reading French, what did you do?

[hp230]

I've heard that the Tunesian dialect is a little more different than Algerian and Moroccan, because it doesn't have the same amount of Berber vocabulary.. How do you see this difference?

The three dielects are different from each other, but we can obviously understand any dielect when it's spoken in a normal pace.
I don't think that the difference is about the amount of Berber vocabulary (In south Tunisia, people speak Berber language all the time). I can't really find any clear reasons to the dielect differences (the phenomenon exists even within the same country), and when you see the people in the borders between Tunisia and Algeria for example, they speak almost the same dielect. The relatively huge difference is between the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Lybia) and the Oriental arabic world. For us we can understand easily what they say, but the opposite is not true. It's mainly because the three countries mentioned above were french colonies (Algerians speak a lot of French by the way).
So, if you're going to learn a Maghreb dielect, it would be easier if you have some French in your pocket . We mix a lot of Arabic with French and we even make french words sound like arabic. I don't know how to explain this but we sometimes conjugate french verbs like arabic verbs (you'll see what I'm talking about when you're there hopefully )

[thomas_dc]

I wish I had kept better track. Back in September or October, as I was starting to do more reading, I really couldn't understand the gist of most of what I was reading. I keep feeling like it's not that % of words known that matters for me, that something else is going on, where the brain just gets more skilled at following sentences, but then I keep proving myself wrong when I look for words I know or don't know. This past summer, I was able to read Harry Potter 4, but it was painfully slow. I think I had actually started the book last February, and didn't finish it until this summer. Now that I mention it, I'm not so sure I did finish it. The copy I bought had actually fallen apart. As I read, I lost more and more pages, until the book was just a cover and the introduction. In testament to how long it took me to read it, I can say I carried the book with me as my sole reading material from DF through Oaxaca state, and into Guatemala and back, probably leaving pages in buses and hotels along the way. I had even rejected a few copies I'd seen on the metro in favor for my copy that came from an expensive and famous book store. I'm way off topic! But maybe I should go back and edit my book list.

Since you're more experienced at this than me, what's your take on continuing to read easy books or moving on to harder books? When you were reading French, what did you do?

I moved on to harder books with my French, but it's important not to try and do something much too difficult that will end up killing the motivation.. I've found that moving on from something easy to something much harder may be an exciting challenge in the beginning, but then it can be pretty frustrating. I remember starting reading some of the French classics like Madame Bovary and Notre Dame de Paris, but the slow pace and the difficult language somehow killed the enthusiasm and momentum I had gained from reading thrillers filled with suspense (like Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson translasions)... Much of the "good" literature out there (It sounds snobbish, but I really just mean the classics) have their merit and qualities through subtleties and details that take some reflection to get to, and if your language isn't at a high enough level, it can easily end up just plain boring.. I didn't feel very good throwing the classics aside because I knew that I ought to appreciate this, but somehow, biting off more than you can swallow just becomes counter productive.. On the other hand there were some of those "classic" books that I did enjoy reading.. For example "Les Mots" by Sartre, but it might be because I was more interested than with the other books..

So 4-5 months of extensive reading had brought you this far. That's amazing!

[thomas_dc]

I've heard that the Tunesian dialect is a little more different than Algerian and Moroccan, because it doesn't have the same amount of Berber vocabulary.. How do you see this difference?

The three dielects are different from each other, but we can obviously understand any dielect when it's spoken in a normal pace.
I don't think that the difference is about the amount of Berber vocabulary (In south Tunisia, people speak Berber language all the time). I can't really find any clear reasons to the dielect differences (the phenomenon exists even within the same country), and when you see the people in the borders between Tunisia and Algeria for example, they speak almost the same dielect. The relatively huge difference is between the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Lybia) and the Oriental arabic world. For us we can understand easily what they say, but the opposite is not true. It's mainly because the three countries mentioned above were french colonies (Algerians speak a lot of French by the way).
So, if you're going to learn a Maghreb dielect, it would be easier if you have some French in your pocket . We mix a lot of Arabic with French and we even make french words sound like arabic. I don't know how to explain this but we sometimes conjugate french verbs like arabic verbs (you'll see what I'm talking about when you're there hopefully )

Well thanks for your insight.. Do you happen to know some interesting series, films or other in the Maghrebi dialects?
Luckily enough, I learned French before starting out on Arabic.. I'm pretty fascinated about listening to native Maghrebis code switching between Derdja and French. Sometimes you hear a sentence starting in Derdja, becoming French and then finishing in Derdja again!
Perhaps you know some good Arabophone Maghrebi writers who could be interesting to read? I was quite surprised that most Algerian authors write only in French!

[hp230]

Well thanks for your insight.. Do you happen to know some interesting series, films or other in the Maghrebi dialects?
Luckily enough, I learned French before starting out on Arabic.. I'm pretty fascinated about listening to native Maghrebis code switching between Derdja and French. Sometimes you hear a sentence starting in Derdja, becoming French and then finishing in Derdja again!
Perhaps you know some good Arabophone Maghrebi writers who could be interesting to read? I was quite surprised that most Algerian authors write only in French!

About the movies, there are plenty of them. 90% (or maybe more) of the movies produced in the arabic world are in dielects (especially egyptian stuff, it's everywhere). I don't know whether you've followed the Berlinale lately or not, but the silver bear for best actor went to a tunisian actor for the movie "Inhebbek Hedi". There are plenty of Maghrebi movies, especially algerian and moroccan, and even very good ones. We always hear of some maghrebi movie winning awards in Cannes or in Berlin, so you'll certainly find something to watch. Personnally, I don't always watch Maghrebi movies (or maybe at all), so I can't recommend any specific titles.
For the writings, it's totally the opposite. You won't find many books written in dielects, simply because dielects are not appreciated as written languages. MSA is much more interesting for the people here (to read), and even if you found texts in dielects, it would likely be about superficial topics, (it's mainly for amusement). Besides as you said, many Maghrebi authors write in French also (not only algerians), so you can discover some of the Maghrebi lifestyle in their french books. Again, I don't read for those authors very much (sorry). However, dielects are very popular on social networks, you can find plenty of facebook pages for example publushing dielect stuff. I don't know if that would be a good way to learn languages, but I use it for my German anyway.