Crispin's personal log: French, Russian, and Arabic

[Crispin]

So, I'm a total newbie here, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. I've been passionate about learning languages for a while now, but it's always been something I've kept to myself, because I figured no one else would be interested. I'd really like the chance to talk with other people pursuing polyglot-ism, though, so I've decided to try to keep a language learning log here.

Right now, I'm taking some university French classes (a phonetics class, a conversation class, and a composition class). I've just recently started learning Arabic as well. I'm using "Mastering Arabic" by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar as my primary resource for that, but if anyone has suggestions for further resources, I would be very grateful. My Russian is, sadly being neglected for the time being. I'm trying to read Идиот by Достоевский, but I'm making very slow progress.

I'm going to try to post on here at least once a week. Beyond that, I don't have any set goals, yet; I'll experiment a little and see what works.

[Elenia]

Welcome to the forum, Crispin! Good luck in your journey

[Monox D. I-Fly]

I've just recently started learning Arabic as well. I'm using "Mastering Arabic" by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar as my primary resource for that, but if anyone has suggestions for further resources, I would be very grateful.

Try www.madinaharabic.com . It's quite good for me.

[ancient forest]

I've just recently started learning Arabic as well. I'm using "Mastering Arabic" by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar as my primary resource for that, but if anyone has suggestions for further resources, I would be very grateful.

l think "Mastering Arabic" looks like a good choice for beginners. If you are interested in learning the Egyptian dialect, you could try the Michel Thomas courses that were designed by the same authors.

[Crispin]

Thanks. I am not certain what dialect I should study; I know that the Egyptian dialect is widely understood and is used in lots of TV series and movies, but I am really fascinated by Moroccan culture and history. I want to go to Morocco someday, so maybe I should focus on Darija. However, I heard that Moroccan Arabic is drastically different from other dialects, and is practically incomprehensible, so perhaps choosing that is not very wise.

[Marah]

I think the Egyptian dialect is quite close to MSA. You can guess a lot of words. Darija is a bit more different and not only because of French or Spanish loanwords, there's also the Berber influence!

[ancient forest]

Even though a dialect like Egyptian would likely be more useful outside of the Maghreb region, I would not necessarily let that stop you from learning Moroccan Arabic if that is what you are interested in. It is true that Moroccan Arabic sounds a lot different, but that is mainly due to the phonology. If you take a Standard Arabic phrase like: ‘fi l-kitaab’ (in the book) and put it into Moroccan Arabic, it looks like: ‘fli-ktab’. You can see that all of the consonants are the same, but the vowels are different. The changes in vowels do not look like much on paper, but it can be difficult to understand actual speech when those changes happen all over the place.

Other changes can occur in terms of grammar. Even though the following examples all have the root letter k, t, and b which give the meaning of 'writing', there are other differences in terms of grammatical prefixes and suffixes. For example, an imperfect verb in Standard Arabic starting with –n always indicates the first person plural (we). So ‘naktubu’ means ‘we write’ in Standard Arabic. In that example, the final –u can be dropped out in conversational speech, as in ‘naktub,’ without any change in the meaning. However, dropping the final –u in Moroccan Arabic changes the meaning completely from plural to singular. In addition, there is a ‘ka’ prefix at the beginning of imperfect verbs. Therefore ‘ka-nketbu’ means ‘we write’, but ‘ka-nakteb’ means ‘I write’. Egyptian Arabic uses the prefix 'ba/bi' instead of 'ka' resulting in 'bi-niktib' for 'we write" and 'ba-ktib' for 'I write.' Notice that Egyptian 'ba-ktib' is similar to Standard Arabic 'aktubu' in that neither use the prefix -n for the first person singular. Also, deleting the -u at the end of the Moroccan verb makes it singular, whereas the Egyptian form remains plural without -u.

Standard Arabic: 'aktubu' I write, 'naktubu' we write

Moroccan Arabic: 'kanakteb' I write, 'kanketbu' we write

Egyptian Arabic: 'baktib' I write, 'biniktib' we write

I think it would be possible to overcome the differences in phonology and grammar with some practice, but the bigger problem is a lack of materials for Moroccan Arabic. Certainly there are less materials for Moroccan Arabic than there are for dialects like Egyptian or Levantine. One book with some dialogs is ‘An Introduction to Moroccan Arabic and Culture’ by Chekayri. It assumes some background with Modern Standard Arabic, but you could take a look at the ‘Moroccan Arabic Phrasebook’ by Lonely Planet in the meantime to learn the basics. Another way to learn Moroccan Arabic would be to take online lessons with a native speaker.

[Crispin]

@ancient forest: Thank you for the help; that clears some things up. I think for now I will focus on learning MSA, but I probably will work on Darija more once I get past the basics.

[Crispin]

FR: Cette semaine, je n'ai pas fait beaucoup en français. Je continue à lire Les Pêcheurs d'Islande de Pierre Loti; c'est obligatoire pour mon cours de composition. C'est un roman vraiment déprimant, ce n'est pas du tout le type de livre que je choisirai si j'avais le choix. Le seul caractère que j'aimais est mort, et maintenant ça m'est égal ce qui se passe avec les autres.

РУ: Наконец, я прочитала десятую главу Идиота. Я пока ещё не понимаю что произошло, это была очень сложная глава. Теперь, я надеюсь что всё будет лучше и яснее. По грамматике, я почти ничего не делала. Мне будет приходиться больше изучать, но пока я хочу работать со французким и арабским языками.

AR: As I've only just begun to study Arabic, I spent most of my time this week just experimenting with different methods to see what worked best. I started working a bit with FSI drills, but they were pretty hard; I may wait until I am more confident with the alphabet before I work more with those. My biggest concern right now is the phonology of Arabic; it seems so difficult. I can almost never tell ه from ح and cannot for the life of me pronounce ع. I've created an Anki deck of minimal pairs with recordings to try to accustom my ear to these sounds.

Generally, I'm disappointed with the progress I've made this week. I was too disorganized and distracted to study really effectively. This happens to me a lot, which is one of the main reasons I started this blog. I need to try to hold myself accountable for my progress. Does anyone have any systems of organization and motivation that work well for them?

[Zireael]

Crispin, don't worry about telling ه from ح. (I'm hard-of-hearing, so I can't distinguish not only between those two, but also between ق and ك for instance). Also I second the Madinah website recommendation.

Russian, how you tempt me...