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Team Middle East

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 8:23 pm
by LadyGrey1986
Hello everyone!

This is the place for those studying Arabic (MSA or colloquial), Modern or Classical Hebrew or Farsi, Please consider joining! There will be baklawa or Kunefe I promise!

Members:

Lady Grey: Syrian Colloquial and MSA
Nikolić: MSA and Levantine Arabic
Saim: Modern Hebrew and Levantine Arabic
Geoffw: Hebrew
Zenmonkey: Hebrew
Ogrim: MSA
Systematiker: Hebrew
Zireael: MSA

List of (Free) Sources

Arabic

FSI-Modern Written Arabic
FSI-Levantine Arabic
FSI-Saudi Arabic (Hijazi accent)


The Mezzofanti Guild
The Arabic Student
Learn Arabic with Maha
Egyptian Arabic Dialect Course http://egyptianarabiccourse.blogspot.nl ... ction.html
Persian

Here are two sites for Farsi grammar:
http://www.persiandee.com/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 3NZ4hswXRO

And here are some sites for dialogues and monologues:
https://www.youtube.com/user/PersianPod101/playlists
http://www.persianlanguageonline.com/learn/
http://french.irib.ir/programmes/art-et ... sans-peine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTYq1a ... 4FrgYYZ4Hg

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 9:17 pm
by NIKOLIĆ
mar7aba!

I'm learning MSA and the Levantine dialect.

What are we supposed to write here? :D

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 9:44 pm
by LadyGrey1986
Marha7a Nicolic. Basically, the purpose of team Middle East is to create a sense of community among learners of the region's languages.
This is shamelessy copy-and pasted from emk. I am thinking of doing something similar for Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi.

you're thinking about something like "Team Beginner French", and if you don't plan for it to be part of TAC, I'd personally suggest the following. This is partly based on my experiences with Team Egyptian, and partly on watching TAC over the years, and partly on observing what sorts of forum things die off and what sorts thrive. This is just my personal opinion, not any sort of "official" advice! :-)

"The team should probably have at least two "leaders" who are regularly active on the forum, and who are unlikely to give up on French in the immediate future. Otherwise, there's a danger that the team will disappear very quickly.
You're welcome to ask for native speakers (or advanced students) who'd be willing to act as "godparents" and answer questions. (When FSI puts together teams of teachers, they often use several natives and one very advanced non-native, to help with stuff that natives might take for granted.)
There should be a team thread under "Language Challenges & Teams", with a list of members, a list of godparents (etc.), and a list of useful resources the team has found. It should also explain who can join the team and how (if the size isn't capped).
It would be good to plan some kind of fun monthly activities in a team thread.
Everybody who is in the team should subscribe to the other team members' (French) logs.
As for size, I don't really have a good feeling about how that would work with non-TAC teams. It's probably best to cap it at fewer than 10 active members, but I suppose you could move people to "inactive" status and add new active members as time goes on.

What do people think? Would this be a reasonable checklist for people doing non-TAC teams? Could we improve it?"

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:18 am
by Saim
Hey, I'm studying Modern Hebrew and Levantine Arabic. For Hebrew I'm already at B2 (I've been studying it for three or so years, including classes at uni) and am just expanding my vocabulary by reading ynet, whereas I'm a beginner in Levantine Arabic and am using Syrian Colloquial Arabic: A Functional Course and Teach Yourself Levantine Arabic. Here's a memrise deck I'm making based on the vocabulary in the former book.

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 7:35 am
by zenmonkey
In to follow, studying Hebrew with Assimil, Hebrewpodcasts101 and duolingo... MSA is on hold for the moment.

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 11:25 am
by geoffw
Well I'm always either studying Hebrew or telling myself I need to get back to studying Hebrew. At the moment I'm at least nominally working on it. I'd also like to see how other people are approaching Arabic--it's on my to-do list. (It will be a fine day whenever Glossika Hebrew and Glossika [spoken] Arabic are finished!)

This is not a promise to start writing a log again, btw...

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 11:40 am
by Zireael
Can I sign up? I'm learning MSA, currently roughly at A2 level.

Be warned that my log updates are very spaced apart, traineeship is eating my time...

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 11:43 am
by geoffw
Here's another free Arabic source I found:

https://www.madinaharabic.com/start_learning.html

The end goal of the site seems to be to help people learn to read so they can study the Qur'an. What I thought was really great about the site is that every word is hyperlinked to a sound file.

And don't forget the DLI Arabic courses! There's a TON of material there, too. FSI has a Hebrew course, also. You can do Hebrew for free at Duolingo, but for the moment Arabic only has the reverse tree from English (or a couple other languages). (There's also a Duolingo/ChineseSkill knockoff app for learning Arabic, but it looks like they only finished writing half of the lessons, tops, so far.)

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:38 pm
by Ogrim
Great initiative Lady Grey, شكرا.

Here I was on the brink of giving up my Arabic studies yet again, but seing a Middle East Team being formed I take it as a sign to pursue and stay the course إن شاء الله, so count me in.

Edit:
geoffw wrote:Here's another free Arabic source I found:

https://www.madinaharabic.com/start_learning.html

The end goal of the site seems to be to help people learn to read so they can study the Qur'an. What I thought was really great about the site is that every word is hyperlinked to a sound file.


The Arabic courses of Madinah Arabic also exist as an app at least available for iPhone and iPad (don't know if there is an Android version). It is very useful for revising stuff when you are travelling for example.

Re: Team Middle East

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:17 pm
by LadyGrey1986
Great to see all the enthousiasm! You make my day. Learning Arabic is defintely a marathon and not a sprint, and it is easy to lose motivation. I am very curious about everyone's motivation to learn Arabic ;)