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Studying Arabic

How difficult is it to pick up Arabic as a beginner?
Arabic speaker here :smile:

It is definitely a difficult language- however if you love it I'd definitely say go for it. With the right resources, you'll be absolutely fine. It's a beautiful language and quite poetic.
Arabic is a very difficult language to learn unless you dedicate a lot of time.
It will defiantly take more time than other languages to learn.
I do not speak Arabic however speak Farsi in which is very similar to Arabic.
My father has been teaching it to me since I was young, now being 17 and still don’t know everything.
It isn’t like any other language where you can learn all of the words in the dictionary.
Some sentences are also said backwards if you accurately translate them, some phrases have cultural meaning and are considered politeness, however they won’t be considered polite but weird in English ect...
No harm in trying however
Original post by Emilyyy00
How difficult is it to pick up Arabic as a beginner?


Don't do it to yourself
Reply 4
Original post by Emilyyy00
How difficult is it to pick up Arabic as a beginner?


So how do i learn it?:
There are many courses out there, but the one i completed and i feel is best for English speaking people are the Medina Series. Not only are all the books for this course free and online, you have people who have produced far more summarised and to the point tutorials and lectures which save an incredible amount of time.
The Medina books come in three volumes, and you can download them for free on the official website here: http://www.lqtoronto.com/madinaarabic.html
The best lectures i have ever seen teaching these have got to be the summarised, yet comprehensive ones on this youtube channel;
Medina Book1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHHCQMGIzlJtaKFzl7dzvuPdlAktclJUledin
Medina Book2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe-aPVZYx1lH4CSVh_WkZEUrfsUF-japn
Medina Book3: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl7FSzR4VMXnK9lAZNs3KaX_fLhTHuU4D
Furthermore, there is a website with even shorter videos that can be used as a revision guide or to help introduce concepts in a clearer way that should be use to supplement the above:
Year 1 summarised Arabic grammar: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBv6B6E0IuHgw7symFQKGdqaWgS5yYP31
Year 2 summarised Arabic grammar: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBv6B6E0IuHhF7Z0CZiq222KUj0aUnDMv
All Medina series resources, handouts, grammar books: http://www.lqtoronto.com/downloads.html
Medina Arabic conversational drills: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS4jnMwZk3wopoTkXo689FwbpiDYJ0W4B

Building vocabulary

It is essential the language is more to you than abstract words on a page, and that you do not only learn grammar , but you greatly build your vocabulary too. I would use this first, and I also highly recommend to anyone with an Android Phone, or with a Laptop or device, to download the free Anki Software here: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Once you have done so, download a deck of vocabulary by searching for 'Arabic words MSA' as well as 'Medina book 1 vocabulary' and 'Medina book 2 vocabulary' and 'Medina book 3' vocabulary. Anki uses spaced repetition, which is highly effective in learning vocabulary and you are shown a certain number of new words per day, as well as repeats of words you've been through. If you do this over a long period of time it can help you accumulate more vocabulary.
Just as a warning, before embarking on this book try to get to at least half way through book 3, because you may not understand why a certain word has five forms in the table, if you do not understand how Arabic can use the same three letter root in order to change the meaning of the word. Here are some of the best resources to do that:
The following PDF contains 83% of Quranic words by use. If you learn this small document you know 83% of the words used in the Quran by use: https://ia600406.us.archive.org/18/items/80Percent/80_percent.pdf
Feel the language is real
In order to make the language feel real, rather than just abstract words on a text you have no connection to, i highly recommend watching subtitled, quality Arabic cartoons. The following are some of the very best:
1. Tales of Women in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7pVItspz0nvtJTN2xkpUn1E
2. Tales of humans in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7oGrRjriW4H6R-LaJwmDFnV
3 Tales of animals in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7rzH2ClknLpzbPHR5yLWC32
4. Muslim scientists: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7rjuFulohTxs0zq7RYl0AJN

Dictionaries:
I don't recommend using one until you finish the Medina series, however, once you understand roots of words, different verb forms, and are good with morphology, the following dictionaries are great, and all free online and the most recommended:
1. al-Mawrid: http://kalamullah.com/Books/alMawrid.pdf
2. Hans Wehr searchable dictionary: https://giftsofknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/hans-wehr-searchable-pdf.pdf
Dictionaries like this can be confusing for English speakers, and so this is a great video as to how to use the Hans Wehr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcQw_yMkm3I

Useful resources to supplement the above:
1. Fundamentals of classical Arabic: http://kalamullah.com/arabic.html
2. Learning the Arabic of the Quran: http://kalamullah.com/arabic-language-of-the-quran.html
3. Word-for-word Quran translation (one of the best!): Volume 1: Volume 2: Volume 3
4. Essentials of Arabic verbs: http://kalamullah.com/Books/Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar 2nd Ed.pdf
5. 101 rules of Arabic grammar: https://www.scribd.com/document/362303444/101-Rules-of-Arabic-Grammar-pdf
6. Umar series [Biography of the Prophet and the early conquests , and while we Shias differ on details, a lot of it is neutral and in classical Arabic subtitled into English]: https://archive.org/details/MBC-Omar-Series
7. Modern standard Arabic picture book: http://www.shiplife.com.br/downloads/arabic.pdf
8. Basic Arabic vocabulary picture book: https://www.scribd.com/document/241062227/Arabic-Vocab-for-Basic

Further advanced books:
Once you have completed the Medina Series, the same author of those books has written some excellent further books to strengthen ones Arabic:
1. Selections from the glorious Quran: http://www.lqtoronto.com/sfgq.html
2. Surat al-Hujurat: http://www.lqtoronto.com/hujurat.html
3. Nur al Nur: http://www.lqtoronto.com/nurunalanur.html
4. From Esfahan to Medina: drvaniya.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/From-Esfahan-to-Madinah-With-Lexical-and-Grammatical-Notes.pdf
5. Salawayh story book 1: https://www.scribd.com/document/61410066/Sahlawayhi1
6. Salawayh story book 2: https://www.scribd.com/document/61203309/Sahlawayhi-2
7. Salawayh story book 3: https://www.scribd.com/document/61203325/Sahlawayhi3
Original post by Sabby888
Arabic speaker here :smile:

It is definitely a difficult language- however if you love it I'd definitely say go for it. With the right resources, you'll be absolutely fine. It's a beautiful language and quite poetic.


How long do you think it would take someone who has never studied it to get a good grasp of it?

:pika:
Original post by HopelessAgony37
How long do you think it would take someone who has never studied it to get a good grasp of it?

:pika:


I honestly couldn't say for sure (it's one of my main languages so I was taught it when I was small). However I'd recommend if you're serious about it - spending a semester abroad in an Arab country or something - Lebanon, Egypt - if that's an option for you - even a few months can really give you a good foundation. I know people who have, from scratch, reached advanced speaking level in a language in about 6-9 months. It's definitely doable. But it depends on you as well, how intensely you will be studying it.
I've taken Arabic for a year as part of my masters and I can say it'll take up a lot of your time but it's doable. I'm not the best at languages, but after a year I can ask and answer a good deal of questions (enough to make small conversation and enough to get by when travelling in an Arabic-speaking country), express opinions, desires and judgements, make requests, and explain myself and my actions to an extent. I'm far from fluent but in the majority of day-to-day circumstances I can get by, though I won't sound classy doing so. I'd say my grasp is decent. It's also worth mentioning that I'm talking about Fusha/Modern Standard Arabic; if you learn a dialect of Arabic (and if you do, go with Egyptian Arabic because it's widely understood), it will likely be more difficult.

A lot of people are put off by Arabic having a non-Latin alphabet. It's actually probably the easiest part of Arabic to learn and takes a couple of weeks, and because Arabic doesn't use short vowels (they exist but they won't be used outside of the Qur'an and exams) pretty much every word you hear is phonetic and therefore reasonably easy to spell (though some letters, like Saad and Siin, do sound very similar in use).

If you have any questions or specifics you want to know about, feel free to shoot me a message and I'll answer as best as I can!

Original post by KianKhosravi

I do not speak Arabic however speak Farsi in which is very similar to Arabic.
r


Gonna have to pull you up there with the greatest of respect, Farsi is an Indo-European language, syntactically closer to languages like Hindi and Bengali than Arabic. This is the same overarching language group as English. In terms of lexicon it shares many similar words with Arabic due to the Arab Conquests of Peria and, later, the conquest of much of Arabia by Persianised Turks such as the Saljuqs and, later, the Ottomans. That said, learning words is the "easy" part of a language; learning how to construct sentences using syntax and grammar is the hard part, and that's where Arabic trips English-speakers up.
Arabic is a Semitic language like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Maltese, and therefore evolved entirely differently to European languages and so generally it takes Europeans much longer to get their heads around the changes to grammar and syntax. By and large, Farsi is significantly easier to learn than Arabic for an English-speaker.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 8
Original post by Tawheed
So how do i learn it?:
There are many courses out there, but the one i completed and i feel is best for English speaking people are the Medina Series. Not only are all the books for this course free and online, you have people who have produced far more summarised and to the point tutorials and lectures which save an incredible amount of time.
The Medina books come in three volumes, and you can download them for free on the official website here: http://www.lqtoronto.com/madinaarabic.html
The best lectures i have ever seen teaching these have got to be the summarised, yet comprehensive ones on this youtube channel;
Medina Book1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHHCQMGIzlJtaKFzl7dzvuPdlAktclJUledin
Medina Book2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe-aPVZYx1lH4CSVh_WkZEUrfsUF-japn
Medina Book3: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl7FSzR4VMXnK9lAZNs3KaX_fLhTHuU4D
Furthermore, there is a website with even shorter videos that can be used as a revision guide or to help introduce concepts in a clearer way that should be use to supplement the above:
Year 1 summarised Arabic grammar: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBv6B6E0IuHgw7symFQKGdqaWgS5yYP31
Year 2 summarised Arabic grammar: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBv6B6E0IuHhF7Z0CZiq222KUj0aUnDMv
All Medina series resources, handouts, grammar books: http://www.lqtoronto.com/downloads.html
Medina Arabic conversational drills: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS4jnMwZk3wopoTkXo689FwbpiDYJ0W4B

Building vocabulary

It is essential the language is more to you than abstract words on a page, and that you do not only learn grammar , but you greatly build your vocabulary too. I would use this first, and I also highly recommend to anyone with an Android Phone, or with a Laptop or device, to download the free Anki Software here: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Once you have done so, download a deck of vocabulary by searching for 'Arabic words MSA' as well as 'Medina book 1 vocabulary' and 'Medina book 2 vocabulary' and 'Medina book 3' vocabulary. Anki uses spaced repetition, which is highly effective in learning vocabulary and you are shown a certain number of new words per day, as well as repeats of words you've been through. If you do this over a long period of time it can help you accumulate more vocabulary.
Just as a warning, before embarking on this book try to get to at least half way through book 3, because you may not understand why a certain word has five forms in the table, if you do not understand how Arabic can use the same three letter root in order to change the meaning of the word. Here are some of the best resources to do that:
The following PDF contains 83% of Quranic words by use. If you learn this small document you know 83% of the words used in the Quran by use: https://ia600406.us.archive.org/18/items/80Percent/80_percent.pdf
Feel the language is real
In order to make the language feel real, rather than just abstract words on a text you have no connection to, i highly recommend watching subtitled, quality Arabic cartoons. The following are some of the very best:
1. Tales of Women in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7pVItspz0nvtJTN2xkpUn1E
2. Tales of humans in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7oGrRjriW4H6R-LaJwmDFnV
3 Tales of animals in the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7rzH2ClknLpzbPHR5yLWC32
4. Muslim scientists: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7hgjybLl7rjuFulohTxs0zq7RYl0AJN

Dictionaries:
I don't recommend using one until you finish the Medina series, however, once you understand roots of words, different verb forms, and are good with morphology, the following dictionaries are great, and all free online and the most recommended:
1. al-Mawrid: http://kalamullah.com/Books/alMawrid.pdf
2. Hans Wehr searchable dictionary: https://giftsofknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/hans-wehr-searchable-pdf.pdf
Dictionaries like this can be confusing for English speakers, and so this is a great video as to how to use the Hans Wehr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcQw_yMkm3I

Useful resources to supplement the above:
1. Fundamentals of classical Arabic: http://kalamullah.com/arabic.html
2. Learning the Arabic of the Quran: http://kalamullah.com/arabic-language-of-the-quran.html
3. Word-for-word Quran translation (one of the best!): Volume 1: Volume 2: Volume 3
4. Essentials of Arabic verbs: http://kalamullah.com/Books/Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar 2nd Ed.pdf
5. 101 rules of Arabic grammar: https://www.scribd.com/document/362303444/101-Rules-of-Arabic-Grammar-pdf
6. Umar series [Biography of the Prophet and the early conquests , and while we Shias differ on details, a lot of it is neutral and in classical Arabic subtitled into English]: https://archive.org/details/MBC-Omar-Series
7. Modern standard Arabic picture book: http://www.shiplife.com.br/downloads/arabic.pdf
8. Basic Arabic vocabulary picture book: https://www.scribd.com/document/241062227/Arabic-Vocab-for-Basic

Further advanced books:
Once you have completed the Medina Series, the same author of those books has written some excellent further books to strengthen ones Arabic:
1. Selections from the glorious Quran: http://www.lqtoronto.com/sfgq.html
2. Surat al-Hujurat: http://www.lqtoronto.com/hujurat.html
3. Nur al Nur: http://www.lqtoronto.com/nurunalanur.html
4. From Esfahan to Medina: drvaniya.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/From-Esfahan-to-Madinah-With-Lexical-and-Grammatical-Notes.pdf
5. Salawayh story book 1: https://www.scribd.com/document/61410066/Sahlawayhi1
6. Salawayh story book 2: https://www.scribd.com/document/61203309/Sahlawayhi-2
7. Salawayh story book 3: https://www.scribd.com/document/61203325/Sahlawayhi3


Many thanks

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