#arabic lessons

[mentations]

[arabic-langblr]

Arabic learning event

Hello, lovely people (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

As discussed in this post, I will launch the Arabic learning event starting from July 5th, 2024 insha'Allah starting from the very beginning. I'm so excited!

If you're interested in joining, and for more information I'll redirect you to this link.

[h0neytalk]

Favorite VERY BASIC Comprehensible Input Sources I’ve Found (all free)

These are all for Italian and Arabic (MSA + Levantine dialect) and suitable for A1! I’ve found the very early stages are the hardest to find stuff for but also when it’s the most boring to be confined to flashcards and memorizing so hopefully this helps. Also it keeps me from losing these links.

Italian:

Curioso come George (Italian Curious George, honestly a lot of kids shows can get tiring but Curious George doesn’t hit that “annoying” pitch while still being simple) (link is to one episode but you can find tons in the related vids) (also segments are themed so you can find ones that roughly correlate to a unit of vocab like weather or clothes)

Ardea Digitale Schoolbooks (schoolbooks for children that you can download as PDFs along with workbooks/worksheets)

Arabic (MSA)

Read Learn Play Arabic (cannot speak highly enough of this one it’s so good and there’s so much and idk how it isn’t talked about more)

Cartoon Network MENA (good just because the material is recognizable, obviously usefulness of vocab/level is gonna vary by show)

Arabic (Levantine Dialect)

Sesame Street! Aka Ahlan Simsim. (Some segments are more advanced than others obviously but it’s incredible for learning the sound of the dialect and is also not grating for adults imo) (free on YouTube)

Lingualism Diaries (not nearly as beginner friendly as Read Learn Play but definitely doable within a few weeks assuming you know the alphabet) (also has audio versions)

I highly recommend lingualism.com for a ton of Arabic materials in all sorts of dialects/levels but they’re mostly paid (not expensive! But not free) and this post is meant to compile free stuff.

[harf-e-kun]

When Nizar Qabbani said — 'Days will pass, and you'll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality.'

We all felt that....

[rainofthetwilight]

so I wanted to practice doing a lil poetry, and guess what I did....of course I based it off two silly lego characters from the silly lego pajama men show, what else bro

I hc that arin writes poems, so this was an oppurtunity lmao. I had this idea in my mind for a while but it was only now when I decided to actually do it, and I am honestly pretty proud of how it turned out!

so yeah, Ig this is a poem he wrote for sora! augdhsjsjs your honor their friendship makes me INSANE....(currently sobbing over what's probably gonna happen 👍)

this was some real great practice tbh, click to see the text better btww

[stuckinapril]

I’m actually so in love w my schedule right now. Daily 8-hour study sessions, reading before bed (slowly but steadily working my way through It by Alexa Chung & At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell, among others), snacking on so many tasty fruits, volunteering every week, organic chemistry research every day, marathoning Audrey Hepburn movies bc I’m officially obsessed w her, flash cards on the treadmill, deep-conditioning my curls while studying, I live at my local library and coffee shops and my favorite boba place, going out w my friends on the weekends, carving pumpkins and watching spooky movies w my bsf, vibing to songs on sunset walks, and like actually minding my own fucking business. I would ask for nothing more

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[mashriqiyyah]

From the wonders of

Allāh's preservation of you,

and your dignity with Him,

and His sufficiency for you..

Is to remove from your life:

whoever has no goodness in them for you

and no sincerity within them towards you.

“Is Allāh not sufficient for His servant?” [39:46]

[schizononagesimus]

okay guys esl problem. can someone tell me if theyve ever noticed tense issues in my fics? i dont really fully understand how english works with past and present tense... like if i were to say "X crawled up onto the bed, looking at Y..." would that still be correct, or do i always have to say something more like "X crawled up onto the bed and looked at Y..." because oftentimes i feel it sounds clunky. help?

[mentations]

[h0neytalk]

Practicing the Arabic Alphabet

I honestly lucked out so much taking Arabic in college and learning basic MSA reading/writing/grammar from an excellent professor but I’m gonna compile the most useful things we did in class here to help people learning on their own (this isn’t focused on resources, just strategies, might do a separate post with worksheets and videos but they’re pretty easy to find):

Get the alphabet in front of you. We had a packet with a page for every letter with the letter written in the three positions, pronunciations, names, and lines to trace and write like 100 times. And then a page with all the diacritics. These sheets abound for free online. Make yourself an alphabet packet. Watch copious videos/listen to recordings going over the letters and how they sound. Repeat it back. Work in chunks and don’t move to the next set until you can recognize and write the current set.

Tracing! Learn to write the letters right to left and with the proper order from day one. This sounds obvious but people in my class were still drawing letters left to right as isolated shapes next to each other so idk maybe it’s not. Having nice handwriting in Arabic is both satisfying and absurdly helpful. Learn how the letters connect. Spend more time than you think is necessary on this.

Write English words and sentences phonetically using diacritics and Arabic letters. Do not worry about translation and spelling. Just make the connection between shape -> sound. Use anything you have. Lists of names, entire pages from books and magazines, texts from friends, menus. Literally anything. Work through how to make those words with the new alphabet. You will learn a surprising amount about the language and pronunciation by doing this. How do you translate sounds that don’t exist? What about multiple sounds where English only has one? Read it back with the accent.

Transcribe English phonetically. Same as above but do it without the English in front of you and just listening. Make that voice to visual connection.

Hand write word lists once you get to vocab. Then type them on your laptop and phone (if you want to be able to type in Arabic, also highly recommend a keyboard cover with the letters next to the Latin alphabet). Copy all the diacritics even though that’s not necessarily how native speakers do it. I have a notebook that looks like it belongs to lunatic toddler because it just has the same words and snippets written over and over again lmao.

Finally, transcribe Arabic. If you can use something with a transcript or captions to check your work even better! But don’t check for perfect spelling, check you used mostly the right letters and marks. You will definitely smash some words together and miss a silent or elided letter or something but try and hear the difference between ع and ا or ق and ك etc. The more sources you use the better.

We did this for one full semester of 50 minute classes 3 times a week while sprinkling in some basic vocab towards the second half. It felt like forever at the time but I never lost my ability to phonetically read and write in Arabic despite 4 years of complete non-use while living in America in an area without any significant Arabic-speaking population or language presence. It is absolutely CHISELED into my brain.

[necromancy-savant]

I went on the podcast, talked like a Tumblrina the whole time, and now they think I'm funny and interesting and my ass is getting a second episode. Tune in next time to listen to Seeking and Straying and discuss my terminal blorbo disease

Fr though these guys are awesome and made me feel like a rock star. AND they taught me all about DC culture and DC-specific AAVE

[academic-vampire]

“…for anything we wish to do, good or ill, our teeth are our only recourse.”

-Franz Kafka, “Jackals and Arabs”

[httpshujii]

SOMEONE HIT ME AND TELL ME TO STUDY AGH