Study plan for Arabic

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Purangi
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Study plan for Arabic

Postby Purangi » Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:15 pm

Hello! Long time reader and fan of the forum, but this is my first post.

I had the chance to travel in a number of Arabic countries in the last few years and I have become increasingly interested in learning the language. I have zero experience with the script and no knowledge of any Semitic language, so it would be quite an adventure if I decide to go forward with this project.

I am looking for advice from people who have tackled Arabic before. If you could go back to your very first steps in Arabic*, what approach/plan would you recommend and what would you do differently? What are some of the best ressources available and in what order would you organize them?

*I use Arabic here knowing that there is a difference between MSA and the dialects, and this is also part of my questions: where should I begin?
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Re: Study plan for Arabic

Postby StringerBell » Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:30 pm

I don't have any personal advice on Arabic, but this post reminded me of the article on the Mezzofanti Guild site with the title "If I Started Learning Arabic Again, This is How I'd Do It": https://www.mezzoguild.com/how-to-start ... ng-arabic/

Donovan has a bunch of articles about learning Arabic, and I've found his posts to be quite useful even when they were about learning languages that I'm not interested in.
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Re: Study plan for Arabic

Postby Ogrim » Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:55 pm

Purangi wrote:Hello! Long time reader and fan of the forum, but this is my first post.

I had the chance to travel in a number of Arabic countries in the last few years and I have become increasingly interested in learning the language. I have zero experience with the script and no knowledge of any Semitic language, so it would be quite an adventure if I decide to go forward with this project.

I am looking for advice from people who have tackled Arabic before. If you could go back to your very first steps in Arabic*, what approach/plan would you recommend and what would you do differently? What are some of the best ressources available and in what order would you organize them?

*I use Arabic here knowing that there is a difference between MSA and the dialects, and this is also part of my questions: where should I begin?


Welcome to the Forum. We have a group called Team Middle East for learners of Arabic, Hebrew and other Middle Eastern languages. Feel free to join and post there as well.

I am still very much a beginner although I have been dabbling in Arabic (MSA) for a year or so. Here are the tips I would give anyone starting out (This is my experience with MSA, I'll come back to the dialect question at the end):
- You need to have time and be regular in order to advance in Arabic. I don't know what other languages you speak, but Arabic offers a lot of different challenges compared to learning Italian or Spanish or German or even Russian. If you are not a speaker of a Semitic language you get very little "for free".
- In my view there are not that many really good Arabic courses out there. I have tried both Assimil and Linguaphone, but ended up with a German-based course (Langenscheidt Arabisch mit System). Then there apps like Memrise which offers Arabic as well, and video courses are on sale at Udemy. You should look around and see what suits you.
- Be sure to learn the script well. Many courses will rely heavily on transliteration, but personally I think that is a mistake. Once you are in an Arabic speaking country or want to tackle a newspaper or book in Arabic you can no longer rely on transliterations.
- Arabic has a number of sounds which will be new to you, in particular consonant sounds. It is important to work on these if your aim is to speak Arabic well.

Finally: MSA versus dialects. There seems to be two schools radically opposed. One insists that you should always learn MSA first and only start learning a dialect once you have reached a high level in MSA. The other school says that you should learn a dialect first, because that it was people speak, and then learn MSA (just as native speakers of an Arabic dialect learn MSA in school). I would rather say that it really depends on why you are learning the language. If your primary aim is to go to Egypt, or Morocco, or UAE, and speak with people there, then focus on the dialect of the country(ies) which appeal the most to you. Or pick Egyptian, which seems to be the dialect most other Arabic speakers would readily understand. However, if your aim is to read and understand Arabic as it is written in books and newspapers, or spoken in news channels like Aljazeera, then go for MSA.

Another more prosaic reason to choose MSA is simply the fact that you will find more decent learning material than you do for any dialect. Also, the dialects are normally not written. Spoken Moroccan Arabic is supposedly very different from MSA, but Moroccan newspapers are nevertheless written in the standard language.

Whatever you decide in the end, good luck. Arabic is a fascinating language.
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Re: Study plan for Arabic

Postby ancient forest » Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:29 am

One of the beginning courses that I like is Mastering Arabic 1 by Wightwick and Gafaar with 2 cds. Despite the title, it is a beginning course in MSA that can help you to learn the alphabet and the basics of MSA. Learning a little bit of MSA can help even for spoken dialects, so that might be a good start regardless of whether you want to take the MSA or spoken dialect route. Then, you could follow that up with the second book in that series.

If you are interested in Classical Arabic, learning grammar and reading comprehension is really helpful. A beginning text I can recommend for that is 'Introduction to Quranic Arabic' by Kasem Kharsa. Although it does not provide a comprehensive coverage of the grammar rules, it is the easiest book available.

For spoken dialects, you can try the Arabic course by Michel Thomas. Actually the same authors, Wightwick and Gafaar, helped to design this course. It should be easy enough to work through as a beginner, and it is for the Egyptian dialect.
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