ancient forest wrote:Hashimi wrote:So basically, most verbs and nouns are the same in MSA and Hijazi. Just learn MSA + the function words of Hijazi + the intonation, and don't pronounce the final vowels of MSA (e.g. say "akalt" or "akalit" أكلتْ not "akaltu" أكلتُ)
If you want to take the approach of modifying MSA to sound less bookish, I think that the Formal Spoken Arabic Fast Course and Basic Course work really well. The Fast Course is easier, but the Basic Course assumes an intermediate level of MSA before starting it. There are a lot of dialogues to listen to, and that is actually what the bulk of the course is based around. The nouns and verbs are not used in exactly the same way as MSA, but there are used in a very similar way. It then uses function words that are common across the Arab word, but it defaults to Levantine when they are different, so it represents a sort of mix between MSA and dialects. It is categorized in Badawi's (1985) continuum as level 3 by Ryding:
Hi ancient forest, I just want to clarify what you mean by Formal Spoken Arabic Fast Course and Basic Course. Is the former the DLI Saudi Arabic Headstart course you're referring to and the latter ('Basic Course' as you've written) the FSI Saudi Arabic (Urban Hijazi Dialect) Basic Course that you are referring to?
If you feel that the 'Basic Course' assumes an intermediate level of MSA, I think it is not a good course for me to begin with. I was looking at beginning with one MSA course and one Saudi Arabic course at the same time. Perhaps it might be better for me to begin with the Saudi Arabic Headstart course before tackling the FSI Saudi Arabic Basic Course, then. This together with what Hashimi has mentioned with regards to Assimil has me thinking that in terms of rating certain courses as particularly good or bad, Hashimi has been perhaps strongly influenced by the pace of the course and maybe how complex the course in question might be. For me, an absolute beginner in Arabic, starting of with faster-paced courses or courses assuming some background understand of MSA, is not a good idea.
Again, you mean the DLI Saudi Arabic Headstart course, right?ancient forest wrote:it is clear that this course represents a cross between MSA and Colloquial Arabic in an attempt to make it easier for students who can speak in MSA to build on their MSA knowledge and communicate with native speakers.
ancient forest wrote:Hashimi wrote:Michel Thomas Arabic course is useless.
I would not go so far as to say that it is useless. I think that it has a lot of shortcomings. That is for sure, but it is easy enough for beginners, which I think is good because it helps beginning students to gain more confidence before tackling other courses. Arabic is not easy, and I think that easy courses can be used even if they have shortcomings.
I'm glad you are putting yourself in the learners shoes here. Perhaps MT would be okay for me, given I need a LOT of hand-holding with such an alien (to me) language. But, the question reamains, would learning some Egyptian dialect be of any use to me moving to Riyadh or would it just serve to confuse me?
ancient forest wrote:PeterMollenburg wrote:As for the dictionary, well here perhaps we differ as well. I have two very thick French dictionaries sitting beside me - one French only, the other FR-EN-FR. Why? Well, I just like paper sometimes, and I feel our reliance on technology is a little unhealthy.
The most useful paper dictionary in Arabic and English is Hans Wehr. The only issue with it for beginners is that the words are arranged by root letters and the verbs are categorized by ten forms, which makes it difficult to use until learning some Arabic morphology. That is why I think that it is enough for beginners to rely on using the glossaries in textbooks and using online sources until enough Arabic morphology is learned to use dictionaries properly. Another dictionary that is useful for advanced studies in Classical Arabic is Lane's Lexicon, but you would not need that for quite a while unless you are just interested in collecting dictionaries.
The reason I was keen on the French trilingual dictionary I had come across, was that, wherever possible I want French to serve as my base language. I'm not keen on purchasing a different dictionary because it's more highly regarded if it's only slightly better than the trilingual dictionary I came across (my wife could use the English, myself French). Still, I have my doubts about the trilingual dictionaries functionality in reality. In the end I think it's a good idea I just stick to the electronic dictionary Hashimi provided a link to, which has English and French and work out later if I need something else, as it sounds like I won't be needing something like that for a while.
Still, I had read about the Hans Wehr dictionary and did see that it was regarded as one of the best (if not the best), but in the end I drew my focus closer to the Al-Mawrid trilingual dictionary as the Al-Mawrid Arabic-English dictionary seemed almost as good as the Hans Wehr dictionary or even equally regarded, I just thought I'd then drop down a rung and go for the trilingual one even if I did lose several thousands of words (I am unlikely to need them).