I apologise for not posting last weekend, but I was in London and therefore didn't have access to my laptop. I am in London again this Saturday, but I am writing this on Friday, so problem solved.
I am up to 16 hours a week of Egyptian Arabic self-study. I concentrate mainly on the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt book and CD. I am starting chapter 5, out of 14 chapters.
When I am tired or not really in the mood to sit at my desk and study, I listen to the Michael Thomas Arabic CD set. I am on the last CD out of 8 CDs, so I have pretty much finished it.
I have been using my Lonely Planet Arabic phrasebook, since it has a lot more vocabulary and is structured really well, although some of the sentences are a bit obscure. I don't know how often I will need to ask "Bitsadda fee makhluqat fada'iyya?" (Do you believe in extra-terrestrials?), but it's good to have options.
I am always thinking forward to my trip to Cairo. I am extremely eager to get going. I might even pull it forward a bit and go in the easter holidays. But it depends on money.
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Monday, 2 December 2013
Types of Arabic.
Sorry about the late post. I had some major coursework deadlines this weekend, and didn't have time to do anything else.
I surprised by the number of people who don't know about the different types of Arabic. So I will explain it to you.
Arabic is essentially broken down into two pieces.
Written Arabic, and Spoken Arabic.
Written Arabic.
Pretty much everything you see that is written in Arabic, is called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA is what 80-90% of Arabic books are written in, pretty much all the newspapers, almost every street sign, most of the Arabic websites etc etc etc.
Basically, if you see something written in Arabic, then it's almost certainly MSA.
The Quran is mostly written in MSA now as well, because the old style (Classical Arabic) is quite complicated and they want people to understand it.
Spoken Arabic.
There is NO standard spoken Arabic. MSA is the same everywhere you go, but there is no standard way of speaking Arabic. No matter what Arabic you learn to speak, there will always be Arabic speakers who don't understand you.
So choosing the dialect to learn is obviously very important. And the choice is huge. Wikipedia lists 16 main dialects.
The most widely spoken dialect of Arabic is Egyptian. This is because Egypt has 54 million native speakers, and Egyptian films are very prolific. So you will be able to communicate much more widely than many other dialects.
The next most popular dialect is Levantine Arabic, which spans speakers in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Strangely, this is the dialect most favoured by Arabic teaching resources. If your book doesn't specify which Arabic it is teaching you, then it is probably Levantine. E.g. Teach Yourself books.
I am learning Egyptian Arabic right now, but I want to learn to read MSA eventually as well. I would also like to learn another dialect. Apparently Lebanese Arabic is the sexiest, so it will probably be that one. Although Gulf and Sudanese are both very interesting to me.
I surprised by the number of people who don't know about the different types of Arabic. So I will explain it to you.
Arabic is essentially broken down into two pieces.
Written Arabic, and Spoken Arabic.
Written Arabic.
Pretty much everything you see that is written in Arabic, is called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA is what 80-90% of Arabic books are written in, pretty much all the newspapers, almost every street sign, most of the Arabic websites etc etc etc.
Basically, if you see something written in Arabic, then it's almost certainly MSA.
The Quran is mostly written in MSA now as well, because the old style (Classical Arabic) is quite complicated and they want people to understand it.
Spoken Arabic.
There is NO standard spoken Arabic. MSA is the same everywhere you go, but there is no standard way of speaking Arabic. No matter what Arabic you learn to speak, there will always be Arabic speakers who don't understand you.
So choosing the dialect to learn is obviously very important. And the choice is huge. Wikipedia lists 16 main dialects.
The most widely spoken dialect of Arabic is Egyptian. This is because Egypt has 54 million native speakers, and Egyptian films are very prolific. So you will be able to communicate much more widely than many other dialects.
The next most popular dialect is Levantine Arabic, which spans speakers in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Strangely, this is the dialect most favoured by Arabic teaching resources. If your book doesn't specify which Arabic it is teaching you, then it is probably Levantine. E.g. Teach Yourself books.
I am learning Egyptian Arabic right now, but I want to learn to read MSA eventually as well. I would also like to learn another dialect. Apparently Lebanese Arabic is the sexiest, so it will probably be that one. Although Gulf and Sudanese are both very interesting to me.
Saturday, 23 November 2013
Language difficulties. An update.
Hello.
I am in my final year of university and have a lot of coursework to do, so I am a little behind on my Arabic schedule right now. 7 hours behind, to be exact.
I have this weekend off, so I am going to try hard to catch up. I will be splitting the time between intense studying of my Colloquial book, vocabulary sessions, and relaxed audio lessons.
I am also going to start studying an online Arabic grammar guide for the first time. Grammar is only worth learning if you have the vocabulary to utilise it, and I feel that my vocabulary is growing at an okay rate.
My motivation is still as strong as it ever was, but the demands of university leave me very little time to put any decent hours into studying Arabic.
I am also going to start learning more verbs next week. According to one of my Arabic teachers one of the verbs I have been taught by my audio course is wrong, so I will have to check that out.
I am in my final year of university and have a lot of coursework to do, so I am a little behind on my Arabic schedule right now. 7 hours behind, to be exact.
I have this weekend off, so I am going to try hard to catch up. I will be splitting the time between intense studying of my Colloquial book, vocabulary sessions, and relaxed audio lessons.
I am also going to start studying an online Arabic grammar guide for the first time. Grammar is only worth learning if you have the vocabulary to utilise it, and I feel that my vocabulary is growing at an okay rate.
My motivation is still as strong as it ever was, but the demands of university leave me very little time to put any decent hours into studying Arabic.
I am also going to start learning more verbs next week. According to one of my Arabic teachers one of the verbs I have been taught by my audio course is wrong, so I will have to check that out.
Saturday, 16 November 2013
My 3 ways of remembering vocabulary.
Personally I don't find memorizing vocabulary very difficult. I have a pretty good memory for foreign words. But having said that, I have had to devote quite a lot of my schedule to memorizing vocabulary with Arabic.
The problem is that the words don't sound like anything in English, so they are almost impossible to remember. But maybe I will do another post on that. Today I am going to explain my 3 ways of remembering vocab.
1 - Repetition.
If you repeat something often enough with the correct spacing, then you will remember it. This is a good method if the word is very foreign and doesn't sound like anything in English.
You hear the word, and try to remember it. Then after 2 minutes you try to recall the word. If you can't, then you look at it again and do the same. If you can remember the word, then wait 5 minutes and try to recall it again. Then keep making the lengths of time between recall longer and longer until it is simply committed to memory.
I am having to use this with a lot of Arabic right now, and it works if you put the time in.
2 - Mnemonics.
This is when you remember a word because of a little story in your head. Then you have more links with the word and you find it much easier to remember.
Here's an example -
بيت (bayt) means 'house' in Arabic.
So to remember this word I am going to imagine myself laying bait for an animal outside my house. I am going to try to remember that image as strongly as I possibly can, with every detail possible. This will make it incredibly easier to remember a word that would other wise be hard to recall.
3 - Context.
Context is a little bit more advanced. This is when you remember a word because of its links with the words around it. An example of this would be song lyrics. You can remember the words much easier if they are strung together in lyrics.
If I taught you the first few lines of a French song then you would have no problem recalling those lines back to me in order. But then if I broke up the order, or asked you to just recall the middle section of the third line, then you would have a much harder time. Because the words are almost dormant in your mind until you sing the lyrics up to that point.
So I hope this post was helpful.
شكرا for reading, and I will try to post again tomorrow.
The problem is that the words don't sound like anything in English, so they are almost impossible to remember. But maybe I will do another post on that. Today I am going to explain my 3 ways of remembering vocab.
1 - Repetition.
If you repeat something often enough with the correct spacing, then you will remember it. This is a good method if the word is very foreign and doesn't sound like anything in English.
You hear the word, and try to remember it. Then after 2 minutes you try to recall the word. If you can't, then you look at it again and do the same. If you can remember the word, then wait 5 minutes and try to recall it again. Then keep making the lengths of time between recall longer and longer until it is simply committed to memory.
I am having to use this with a lot of Arabic right now, and it works if you put the time in.
2 - Mnemonics.
This is when you remember a word because of a little story in your head. Then you have more links with the word and you find it much easier to remember.
Here's an example -
بيت (bayt) means 'house' in Arabic.
So to remember this word I am going to imagine myself laying bait for an animal outside my house. I am going to try to remember that image as strongly as I possibly can, with every detail possible. This will make it incredibly easier to remember a word that would other wise be hard to recall.
3 - Context.
Context is a little bit more advanced. This is when you remember a word because of its links with the words around it. An example of this would be song lyrics. You can remember the words much easier if they are strung together in lyrics.
If I taught you the first few lines of a French song then you would have no problem recalling those lines back to me in order. But then if I broke up the order, or asked you to just recall the middle section of the third line, then you would have a much harder time. Because the words are almost dormant in your mind until you sing the lyrics up to that point.
So I hope this post was helpful.
شكرا for reading, and I will try to post again tomorrow.
Saturday, 9 November 2013
How I am learning.
I wanted to write a lot about Egyptian Arabic, and Arabic in general today. But, I am back at home, not at university, so I will only do a short post outlining my method of learning.
I need a language schedule. Without it I would get nothing done. I used to put a lot of hours in every day, but now I have relaxed down to an 11-hour a week schedule.
I do an hour every weekday, and 3 hours every Saturday and Sunday.
I have the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt book and CDs, which are very good. I also have the Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic phrasebook, which has more Arabic Script, more vocabulary and more topics. It is generally a lot more dense than the Colloquial book.
I also have several teachers who voluntarily help me with my Arabic. I have Skype sessions with them as often as I can, and also try to communicate with them in purely Arabic script on Facebook. It helped me get used to reading and recognising words quicker.
Another good resource is the Egyptian movies available on the internet. There are plenty of films in Egyptian Arabic here.
The main problem with learning a dialect of Arabic, as opposed to MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), is that there is remarkably little vocabulary available to memorise. Well, at least that's what I thought until I found this site. This website has vocab in both Egyptian Arabic and MSA, which is really useful. You can actually see the differences you will face when speaking and reading.
I will go into more detail about each resource and stuff like that next week. I will also start posting on both Saturdays and Sundays next week.
I need a language schedule. Without it I would get nothing done. I used to put a lot of hours in every day, but now I have relaxed down to an 11-hour a week schedule.
I do an hour every weekday, and 3 hours every Saturday and Sunday.
I have the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt book and CDs, which are very good. I also have the Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic phrasebook, which has more Arabic Script, more vocabulary and more topics. It is generally a lot more dense than the Colloquial book.
I also have several teachers who voluntarily help me with my Arabic. I have Skype sessions with them as often as I can, and also try to communicate with them in purely Arabic script on Facebook. It helped me get used to reading and recognising words quicker.
Another good resource is the Egyptian movies available on the internet. There are plenty of films in Egyptian Arabic here.
The main problem with learning a dialect of Arabic, as opposed to MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), is that there is remarkably little vocabulary available to memorise. Well, at least that's what I thought until I found this site. This website has vocab in both Egyptian Arabic and MSA, which is really useful. You can actually see the differences you will face when speaking and reading.
I will go into more detail about each resource and stuff like that next week. I will also start posting on both Saturdays and Sundays next week.
Sunday, 3 November 2013
Introductions
Hello,
My name is Tom Bailey and I am a 21-year-old British student in my final year of University.
This blog is going to document my journey from only being able to speak English, to hopefully being able to speak a whole bunch of other languages.
My current target language is Egyptian Arabic, and I have been seriously studying it for the last 4 weeks now.
There isn't much behind the scenes access to how people learn languages. People just see polyglots speaking these languages and think they are geniuses. But, as Michelangelo said "If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius."
So I will be posting every Sunday for as long as I can, and the next post will be on the 10th.
مع السلامة
(Goodbye)
My name is Tom Bailey and I am a 21-year-old British student in my final year of University.
This blog is going to document my journey from only being able to speak English, to hopefully being able to speak a whole bunch of other languages.
My current target language is Egyptian Arabic, and I have been seriously studying it for the last 4 weeks now.
There isn't much behind the scenes access to how people learn languages. People just see polyglots speaking these languages and think they are geniuses. But, as Michelangelo said "If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius."
So I will be posting every Sunday for as long as I can, and the next post will be on the 10th.
مع السلامة
(Goodbye)
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