Al-Insomniyya

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http://www.slate.com/id/2120258/ I'm Trying To Learn ArabicWhy's it taking so long? Robert Lane Greene Posted Thursday, June 9, 2005, at 6:04 AM ET When I walked into Arabic class last week, Karam, my teacher, cheerily asked me how I was doing. I said, "Tamaam, hamdulillah," which means, "Fine, thanks be to God." But I was lying. I'd just spent a full day at work and was sitting down at a desk for two hours of mind-bending grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. I knew it would be a long night. I am not one of those people who dreads the thought of learning a foreign language. While everyone else was partying in high school, I was learning the Spanish past subjunctive and loving it. I studied German, French, and Portuguese in college. I speak decent Russian and have taught myself some half-decent rudimentary Japanese. Languages are usually fun. But Arabic is really killing me. I'm one of a growing wave of people trying to come to grips with...

TheLadyoftheHouse said: This subject is near and dear to my heart, so allow me to make a few points: No, there is not a “huge” difference between the three types of Arabic identified here. The difference between Old English and modern English is NOT analogous to the difference between Classical Arabic and MSA/dialects. Dialects are directly derived from the the Classical, just with lazier pronunciation and grammar observance. In fact, if you study dialects, you will often learn words from the Qur’an that are not taught in beginning MSA classes. About half of the Qur’anic vocabularly I personally leaned came to me by way of learning a dialect. Arabs who “don’t understand you” when you speak MSA to them are most likely uneducated. (By the way, Somalis don’t speak Arabic, they speak Somali, although their language is significantly derived from Arabic, it is not an Arabic dialect but a completely different langauge… I have studied both.) This fact has led many people to believe tha...

http://muslimmatters.org/2009/02/11/arabic-for-children-part-2-the-three-kinds-of-arabic/ The following simplification is needed before we engage in a healthy dialogue about the proper scope, strategy and execution of Arabic educational ventures regardless of the target audience being adults or children. Please note that my writing style is un-academic, popular science-ish by design. So be not offended if it doesn’t cater your suave intellectual taste for good writing. Colloquial Arabic is basically street Arabic. It is spoken in casual settings in contemporary Arab society. It varies from country to country (much like English does from the U.S. to Scotland). Learning colloquial Arabic is great if you are seeking to become a member of a particular Arab society, tourism, breaking the ice between yourself and some Arab acquaintances etc. On occasion, colloquial Arabic is so drastically different from standard Arabic that قلم QALAM can be pronounced ALAM or even LAM. Another...

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There are few differences between classical and modern grammar - anyone who is familiar with classical should have no problems at all with modern...the vice versa is not as true, but the problems should not be that large nevertheless. Some of the main differences are in: i) Syntax - (The way that words are arranged in sentences). The syntax of English is fairly fixed according to meaning- the difference between 'The boy hit the dog' and 'The dog hit the boy' is huge. This is because the syntax in an English verbal sentence is subject-verb-object. In Arabic however, I have the liberty and license to say both:ضرب الولدُ الكلبَ daraba al-waladu al-kalba, and ضرب الكلبَ الولدُ daraba al-kalba al-waladu. BOTH of these sentences would mean 'The boy hit the dog', even though I have swapped the words around. This is because the syntax of Arabic is extremely relaxed, due to the grammatical function of a word being dependant on its case ending (notice how 'wa...

Vocabulary growth Initially, in the infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Infants hear words and mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary . The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading and writing vocabularies are attained – through questions and education – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered. In first grade, an advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates into a wide range of vocabulary size in the fifth and sixth grade, when students know about 2,500–5,000 words. These young students have learned an average of 3,000 words per year, approximately eight words per day. After leaving school, vocabulary growth plateaus. People may then expand their vocabulari...