Hey Ogrim,
I hope you are well. I've spent a good portion of various parts of my day reading through your log from page 1 to 22. I haven't read anyone else's log so thoroughly. It's a very interesting read. I didn't read every single post, but certainly covered more of your log than I have anyone else's. I don't mean to compare and say that your log is better than whoever else's because you're the cool kid on the block. No, your log is simply interesting to me given your life and relationship with languages, which are for the most part languages I am studying, have studied, want to study or am interested in from a distance. And when I arrived at whatever page it was (16 or so), I re-read your replies to my questions regarding languages in your life. Very interesting.
Then there's Arabic, a language I've never really had an interest in until recently. Your journey with Arabic is engaging for me as a reader, it's drawn me in. The Langenscheidt course looks like it suits your needs perfectly, yet for me, were I to ever begin learning this language, it's not an option simply because I do not understand German beyond crude basics at best, and heavily relying on fading knowledge of Dutch sentence structure and verb conjugations. Anyway, I noticed you were not impressed at all with the Assimil Arabic course, which I was disappointed to read, truth be told. That's a shame. If I go down an Arabic path at some point, I'd definitely be looking at courses from a French base either entirely, or predominantly. I've got far too many English based courses in several languages that will last me a lifetime and then some, thus, a French base is certainly a preference. Any recommendations offhandedly? If not, no problemo, I can certainly do my own research, and I have been distracting myself with Amazon.fr searches of various kinds. Let's just say my wish lists are far far far too long for a supposedly non-avid reader.
On a side note, I also enjoyed your brief descriptions of Costa Rica, a country I visited for a month 10 years back and thoroughly enjoyed, your insights on Nice and Grasse, your revival of Greek (and visit to Corfu) and reigniting Dutch... it's all interesting to me! Can't say I read much about your Russian, but if I ever take on that language (it scares me, but so does Arabic!), I know that I'll be revisiting your log among others.
So, I had a couple of points I wanted to raise with regards to Arabic dialects and variants. It is such a fragmented language, which makes sourcing learning resources tricky, and actually means that despite the apparent good amount of resources available out there, well when you narrow your chosen dialect down, there's much less to choose from. On the other hand the richness and the diversity of the language, or group of languages/dialects, well is fantastic, but yes admittedly challenging. Okay, so here I'm quoting you from almost two years ago:
Ogrim wrote:I am kind of frustrated by how difficult it is to find good beginner courses in Arabic. At least I am happy I purchased that Linguaphone course back in the 80s (the course is a 1981 edition), because it meets most, if not all of my "requirements" for a good course.
Choices are limited for courses it seems, not just due to dialectal variations, but also, naturally due to one's specific requirements. Just commenting, not searching for too much of a response there necessarily.
Ogrim wrote:Many other courses fail in my view because a) they only use transliteration, as is the case of some of the Colloquial Arabic courses (which by the way teach dialects, not MSA), or they have the transliteration on the same page as the Arabic text. I sincerely believe that this is an obstacle to learning to read the script well. You easily become distracted or even dependent on the transliteration and the "temptation" to go straight to the transliteration rather than trying to figure out the Arabic script will always be there.
I want to quote someone from Amazon.com commenting on the
Hugo Arabic in Three MonthsO. Shanaa wrote:First off, I am a student of Arabic and have been studying both Modern Standard Arabic (fusHa) and Levantine Colloquial Arabic ('amiyyeh) for awhile. Additionally, I am Palestinian, so I'm quite familiar with what is and isn't suitable for the real world.
Most Arabic books are terrible, terrible books. The problems are numerous, including: teaching you the rather user-unfriendly writing system in the first chapter and writing in Arabic script after that, having script that's way too tiny, leaving out diacritics that are vital for learners, teaching you tourist phrases in incorrect Arabic and other such things, leaving out grammar or using way too much grammatical jargon that you can't make any sense of it....
This book is different. When I found this book, I looked through it and instantly noticed that it teaches spoken Arabic that was very familiar to me - this is the same Arabic I hear spoken in my house! (The author is Jordanian; the dialect taught by this book is used mostly in Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.) I was very surprised, as no other book I had come across taught the spoken Arabic that is /actually used/ in Arab homes and businesses.
Other reviews were disappointed because of the use of the transliteration system and the complete absence of Arabic script. One must understand that colloquial Arabic and modern standard Arabic are quite different. The former is what you speak, the latter is what you read with and give speeches with. Colloquial Arabic /is not written./ Thus, one shouldn't expect a colloquial Arabic book to use Arabic script. I found that the transliteration system was the clearest one I have come across yet AND that it really facilitates learning.
Also of vital importance is that this book explains grammar in a lucid way instead of getting bogged down in jargon, as most other books do. There are very, very few resources for people wanting to learn the nuts and bolts of colloquial Arabic and this book does an excellent job of it.
I very highly recommend this book.
Note: As I said, this book teaches the dialects used in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Arabic dialects do differ in varying amounts from each other. If you use this book with the intention of using it in Egypt, it will work well enough; if you read this book and then go to Morocco or Algeria, it will be essentially useless. Do your research on dialect differences.
Okay, I'm not attempting to promote Hugo's courses. I do like them, but that's not
my the reviewer's point that I want to emphasise. I also read similar complaints regarding transliteration for other beginning Arabic courses. So, I think this reviewer has a point. It seems colloquial spoken Arabic should not necessarily be represented with the Arabic script. Maybe there's a legitimate place in such courses for transliteration and that place is not necessarily to simply make things supposedly easier for the learner, but more to do with (as per the reviewer above) colloquial Arabic not being a written language?
I also read that MSA is the language used in media, official speeches, newspapers. Are you expecting to understand colloquial Arabic down the track, or through improving your level of MSA? Or can we assume that those who would usually speak colloquial language in their hometown can and will easily revert to a kind of MSA spoken language with foreigners? As an offside thought, how prevalent is MSA throughout the Arabic speaking nations? Just some thoughts, and I hope this doesn't come off as aggressive (upon re-reading I seem to be lacking the diplomacy to make it sound nicer, because I am being nice here) - I mean only to pry in a friendly manner and open some discussion on the topic of variants of Arabic.
Xenops wrote:I recently watched "(Hotel) Beau Séjour", a short crime show in Flemish. I thought it was well done.
Hey Xenops,
I watched this series too. I rather enjoyed it as well, and thought it was quite well done too. My Dutch is fading though, and unlike Ogrim, my Dutch comprehension of Nederlands from Nederland is much better than Nederlands van België. Anyway, I second Xenops the recommendation Ogrim. I also enjoyed the Belgian series (in French) called "The Break". Slow to get moving but once it did, it drew me in and I really enjoyed the few twists later on. However, if you're looking for a German series, which I watched dubbed in French on Netflix, you cannot go past "Dark". I have recommended it already elsewhere on the forum. The first two series I mentioned above I'd give 8 and 7.5 out of 10, but for Dark, I'd rate it easily 9.5 or more. Definitely worth a look.