Mostly Arabic with Maiwenn

[Maiwenn]

Goals for the week (10 --> 16 February 2020)
- 200 words/day Close but no cigar.
- Publish at least one writing on italki for corrections Sort of... sent it to a teacher instead.
- 2+ italki classes Did 4!
- 7 chapters سيدات القمر Read 8!
- intensive study/transcription of a short Moroccan Arabic video No transcriptions. Worked on a movie instead.
- 7 chapters Reckless by Cornelia Funke (for a little bit of German) Read 7!

Goals for the week (17 --> 23 February 2020)
- 200 words/day (need to find some writing prompts, turns out I can write a lot when given some direction)
- Publish at least one writing on italki for corrections (seriously... what am I so afraid of?)
- 4 italki classes
- 7 chapters سيدات القمر
- 7 chapters Reckless

Last week was overall good. I saw that there was Moroccan Arabic for glossika so I tried it out. I tested into the B2 level. Three days and ~50 sentences later, I finished up the course. :lol: I've also got MSA and German going on there. It's been nice to try out, but I don't know that I'll continue with it. I've tried to keep Arabic audio going as much as possible. It helps that I have my Kitab Sawti account, but there are also incredible amounts of available (free) content on the internet. Here are some of my favorites:

MSA/youtube
Crash Course بالعربي World History lessons presented in a comical manner (it is the Arabic version of John Green's Crash Course, produced by DW عربية)
DW Documentary Lots of subjects, lots of content. If stumped, you can usually find the same documentary in English/German.
جعفر توك formerly known as Shabab talk. I just linked to the most recent episode (you can't forbid me from my love!) as the videos are just hosted together with other DW videos. (Are you sensing a theme in where I find videos? DW honestly just makes great content.) Each episode covers a new subject and invites guests from around the Arabophone world. Lots of dialects mixed in with MSA.
France 24 Arabic News, some culture. You can stream the channel live. This one is of particular interest to me as I live in France and so am usually already somewhat familiar with the topics. The news generally covers MENA and French news.

Podcasts
NHK News Japan -- Arabic <15 minutes, concise review of world news. For the podcast, click on بودكاست near the bottom to download through itunes or استمع to listen directly through your browser.
بعد أمس "After yesterday" daily news podcast from Al Jazeera.
فايكنغز This is by far my most random discovery. An Arabic language audio show on Vikings (presumably in the same vein as the tv show Vikings, but I've never seen it). The voice actors are great and it is well produced.
ألف ليلة وليلة 1001 Nights from the same producers as the Vikings podcast. Also well produced with great voice actors.
BBC Extra
The following podcasts are more dialect heavy:
عيب & everything produced by sowt. Just fantastic production and interesting topics.
جسدي People talking about their relationships with their bodies in the context of societies.
يا رايح Five stories of Arab immigration.

This list has even more podcast recommendations (in French, English, Italian, and Arabic).

Additionally, I wanted to mention that Jokha Alharthi (the author whose book I'm reading) has a few short stories and their English translations available on her website. (You just have to select "English" or "عربي" at the top depending on what you want.) I haven't read them yet.

[Maiwenn]

Goals for the week (17 --> 23 February 2020)
- 200 words/day (need to find some writing prompts, turns out I can write a lot when given some direction) 5/7 did some traveling this weekend and... just did not write
- Publish at least one writing on italki for corrections (seriously... what am I so afraid of?) Noooope. This did not happen. Still. :oops:
- 4 italki classes Actually did 5!
- 7 chapters سيدات القمر
- 7 chapters Reckless 2/7

Goals for the week (24 February --> 1 March 2020)
- 1000 words/week (trying to be a bit more reasonable with my expectations for this week)
- PUBLISH SOMETHING, ANYTHING on italki or the new lingualism forum
- 4 italki classes
- 7 chapters سيدات القمر
- 7 chapters Reckless

I had two italki lessons (one MSA, one Darija) today and my brain is a bit tired. My partner is away for work at the moment and I've been making a point of speaking to him in Arabic during our phonecalls. It's always easier than I imagine it will be, but my level is probably lower than I give myself credit.

I realized I'd never shared this resource produced by the Académie de Versailles: https://audio-lingua.eu/spip.php?rubrique11 The site houses recordings in different languages organized by CEFR level. Unfortunately, there haven't been any new Arabic recordings since 2013, but it's still a nice resource to have.

This weekend, I went to see Un divan à Tunis. Un vrai bijou. I might go see it a second time, that's how much I enjoyed it. Linguistically, it's always interesting (to me, anyway) to listen to Tunisian Arabic. Despite Tunisian Arabic and Moroccan and Algerian Arabics being grouped together under the umbrella term Maghrebi Arabic, Tunisian is sometimes less comprehensible to me than, say, Lebanese Arabic. This probably has more to do with exposure than anything. I've binge watched Lebanese series, but have only ever seen two movies from Tunisia.


I should be finishing the italki challenge with 12 hours. Whoo! Assuming I don't have any cancellations (the first two weeks were plagued with last minute and after-the-fact cancellations, which wasn't great), that is. I'm very proud of myself for scheduling lessons with new teachers and talking, talking, talking. It's definitely forcing me to mix up my vocabulary and identify weaknesses. Yay!

[tarvos]

What Arabic are you focusing on? Moroccan Darija, right? And how much of what you do is MSA?

I'm planning to tackle Arabic at some point, but I think I'm going to go with Levantine Arabic as the main dialect because my interest is mostly in Israel and Lebanon (I also focused on Hebrew at some point). Though Moroccan would be useful here because of the huge amount of immigration, although we have loads of Syrians too these days, as well as Iraqis.

[Cavesa]

It took me some time to finish reading your log and it was worth it. It is one of my favourite ones. Not only because the idea of starting to learn Moroccan Arabic has crossed my mind a few times already. But in general, you're achieving great things and sharing lots of useful insights, thanks for that!

[Maiwenn]

What Arabic are you focusing on? Moroccan Darija, right? And how much of what you do is MSA?

I'm planning to tackle Arabic at some point, but I think I'm going to go with Levantine Arabic as the main dialect because my interest is mostly in Israel and Lebanon (I also focused on Hebrew at some point). Though Moroccan would be useful here because of the huge amount of immigration, although we have loads of Syrians too these days, as well as Iraqis.

Tarvos! I wrote a reply to this, but then spent so long pondering what the actual proportions of my study is MSA vs Moroccan Darija vs other dialects, that I never got around to pressing submit. To be honest, it varies a lot. At the time, I was doing 2:1 MSA:Moroccan in terms of skype lessons. Right now, as I am consuming more written material, the balance naturally tilts toward MSA. Moroccan Darija is mostly just speaking, some tv, and occasional texting for me. For MSA, I read, write (some, not enough), speak, and listen to the news/audiobooks/dubbed shows on netflix. I also consume some shows and podcasts in Levantine and Egyptian Arabic.

I think you would really enjoy Levantine Arabic. There's a lot of reallyyy great podcasts in Jordanian and Lebanese Arabic. Also, some of the best Arabophone cinema is Palestinian. In terms of interesting content, I would definitely go with Levantine Arabic. Add to that that you're interested in Israel and Lebanon and Levantine Arabic seems to be the clear choice.

I hope you're feeling better!!

[Maiwenn]

It took me some time to finish reading your log and it was worth it. It is one of my favourite ones. Not only because the idea of starting to learn Moroccan Arabic has crossed my mind a few times already. But in general, you're achieving great things and sharing lots of useful insights, thanks for that!

I'm so honored! (Seriously, I fan-girled a bit when I saw this post.) Thank you!!

----

I took a bit of a hiatus from language learning in March (though I kept up with clozemaster and some everyday conversation) because a cousin asked me to translate her article from English into French. I delved into academic articles written in French in the domain (it's very niche) to familiarize myself with the vocabulary and to remember how academic writing is in French. It was a relief to get it done (and to get feedback from actual French people that it was good). Since then, I've been back at it, though I haven't reprised skype lessons yet. I've been reading قلعة هاول المتحركة (Howl's Moving Castle) and just finished watching Queen Sono dubbed in Arabic. I make a point of watching every Netflix title dubbed into Arabic that's not intended for children/teens (though I do watch those, too). I've also reprised reading Reckless for a touch of German. And of course I've been watching/reading plenty of COVID-19 coverage.

I decided to make a list of covid-19 related hashtags displayed on different Arabophone channels:

Jordan
خليك بالدار Stay at home
شدة وبتزول Crisis and it passes (notice the ب which is a feature of Levantine Arabic)
Yemen
معا ضد كورونا Together against Corona
Dubai
خلك في البيت Stay in your home
Gulf (not sure where the channel is actually located)
وعينا يحمينا Our awareness protects us
Egypt
احمى نفسك احمى بلدك Protect yourself, protect your country.
Tunisia
سلامتك و سلامتي مسؤوليتنا الكل Your safety and my safety is the responsibility of all of us
أقعد في دارك Stay in your home
Morocco
نبقاو فالدار We stay at home
Algeria
قوا أنفسكم و أهليكم Protect yourselves and your family
إبقوا في منازلكم Stay in your homes
معاكم في دياركم With you in your homes

I found this exercise an interesting one to highlight the linguistic diversity of Arabic and different vocabulary preferences.
Home/house can be بيت ,منزل ,دار, stay is expressed by إبقوا ,أقعد ,خليك/خلك

Also of interest, this translator has made a glossary of English --> Arabic covid-19 related vocabulary:
https://twitter.com/MariamAboelezz/stat ... 1293242369

Hope everyone is happy, well, and staying at home (if able)!

[Mista]

You are probably a good person to ask this: If I buy a DVD with Arabic dubbing, will it be MSA or is could it be something else? I'm currently most likely to go for children's movies, if that makes a difference.

[Maiwenn]

Most likely, yes. That said, up until the release of Brave, Disney dubbed all of its movies in Egyptian Arabic. They are now dubbed in MSA, though apparently now have some dialogue in Egyptian Arabic. Most children's cartoons are dubbed in MSA, but I imagine there are exceptions. If there's a particular title you have a question about, let me know and I can check it out.

An article on the debate over what form of Arabic should be used in Disney dubbing: https://communitytimes.me/2018/09/24/di ... na-bassel/

Apparently the shift to MSA in Disney came from a partnership with Al Jazeera: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=320024783

[Mista]

Well, the one I already have is Pinocchio. The only reason I have that one is that I happened to find it at amazon.de (which is a quite good source for Russian and Turkish dubbed DVDs, but this one is the only one I have found with Arabic speech). I would therefore appreciate any recommendations for movies/cartoons at about that level, and especially where I can order them.

[Maiwenn]

I thought this was going to be a simple thing to respond to, but it turns out it's not! :) It would seem that Disney re-released Arabic versions of older films, including Pinocchio. If the recording sounds "older" it's probably Egyptian (or you can check out the song "No Strings on Me" and see which one it sounds like).

Here's "No Strings on Me" in MSA (the ج in the corner is for Al Jazeera's children programming, so clearly part of their collaboration):

And the original in Egyptian Arabic


I mostly use Netflix and Prime Video for content (and there's a lot on youtube as well, including legally). I'm not sure what Netflix's offerings in Norway are, but here are a few Netflix-produced titles which have Arabic audio here in France and I would assume elsewhere:
*Trollhunters
*Carmen Sandiego
Boss Baby
Fast Furious Spy Racers
*Alexa & Katie
*The Worst Witch
*No Good Nick
The Big Show Show
Go! Live Your Way
Team Kaylie
Family Reunion

I starred the ones I've actually watched. If you search "audio in Arabic" on Netflix and then select that option you can see a selection of what is available (for some reason it won't show the full listing).
All the Miyazaki films also have Arabic dubs.

Thankfully, Netflix does specify when a dub is in Egyptian Arabic rather than MSA.