beth بيثاني

native english speaker learning iraqi arabic

[bethlearnsarabic]

Navigating my blog

If you just scroll through my blog, it will be very messy and all over the place. I suggest you filter my blog by the hashtags you are interested in seeing:

#arabic resources #learning arabic (educational arabic posts) #my practise #arabic inspiration #not educational (text posts, politics, etc.)

[bethlearnsarabic]

How to pronounce the Arabic alphabet

This is the single most useful resource I've found for learning to speak Arabic!

[polyglot-sock]

My respect goes go all the people who have started a new language recently and can't understand literally anything.

My respect goes go all the people who have been learning a language for years now but struggle with understanding and/or saying anything more complicated than the most banal phrases.

My respect goes go all the people who are rediscovering a language they've studied once and feel like they'll never be able to go back to where they have been.

My respect goes go all the people who feel like they're going backwards. To those who think they've spent years doing things wrong. To those who think they're not progressing and don't know how to start to. To those who think they're alone. To those who think they are the worst in their class. To those who had to stop learning for whatever reason. To those who wish they did because they're not good enough.

You're all doing great.

[studyweeks]

that moment when you’re speaking a foreign language and you suddenly realize that at one point all those sounds and words used to be meaningless but now you see them/hear them and you understand what’s going on and are able to react to them and hold a conversation idk that’s just wow

[archaic-stranger]

the arabic students

elegant calligraphy spilling across a page

learning to write in the naskh style

examining the language of the Quran, admiring the harmony of each phrase

brightly colored tiles, mosaics that fascinate the eye

pages of new vocabulary scattered around your room

reading myths of jinn and ghuls

conjugating verbs, carefully assembling root consonants with the proper vowel pattern 

recognizing arabic loan words in other languages

heavy textbooks with highlighter marks on every page

the taste of dates and spiced coffee 

knafeh with pistachios that melts on your tongue

copying a phrase dozens of times until each curve is perfect

centuries-old scientific treatises, discussions of principles that are still applicable today

the delicate notes of a lute

repeating noun declensions under your breath

taking a stack of flashcards everywhere you go

a love for the sounds of a new language

ghazal love poems with words you can feel deep in your chest

searching for arabic translations of your favorite books

studying the influence of ancient Arab scholars on modern science and philosophy

[gwendolynlerman]

Languages of the world

Arabic (اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 310 million

Official language: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, (Palestine), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, (Western Sahara); Zanzibar (Tanzania),

Recognized minority language: Brunei, Cyprus, Eritrea, Indonesia, Israel, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan; Ceuta, Melilla (Spain)

Language of diaspora: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Honduras, Iran, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela

Script: Arabic, 28 letters

Grammatical cases: 3

Linguistic typology: fusional, SVO/VSO

Language family: Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, North Arabian

Number of dialects: 9 main groups

History

1st millennium BCE-7th century CE - Old Arabic

512 - earliest document in Arabic

7th-9th centuries - Classical Arabic

11th century - creation of the present form (Naskh) of the script

19th-20th centuries - Nahda (Arab Renaissance)

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the script: ي و ه ن م ل ك ق ف غ ع ظ ط ض ص ش س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت ب ا.

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, as most letters within a word are connected to the adjacent ones. Therefore, each letter can have four different forms depending on its position in a word.

Diacritics are used only in the Qur’an, religious texts, classical poetry, children’s books, and textbooks for learners.

Words cannot begin with a vowel, so initial vowels are always preceded by a glottal stop.

Grammar

Nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine), three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), and three cases (nominative, genitive, and accusative). They are also marked for definiteness and indefiniteness.

Arabic has a root-and-pattern morphology: a root consists of a set of consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and jussive), person, number, and gender. There are two major paradigms (past and non-past), which represent a combination of tense and aspect.

Dialects

Standard Arabic can be divided into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The first one is the language found in the Qur’an, while MSA is used in academia, print and mass media, and legislation. The grammar described in this post is that of MSA.

Spoken Arabic can be divided into nine main dialect groups: North African Arabic, spoken in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia; Hassaniya Arabic in Mauritania; Egyptian Arabic; Levantine Arabic, spoken in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; Iraqi Arabic; Gulf Arabic, spoken in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE; Hejazi Arabic in western Saudi Arabia; Najdi Arabic in central Saudi Arabia, and Yemeni Arabic in Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia.

Differences between the dialects of the Middle East are small enough to enable speakers to understand each other. However, North African Arabic varies considerably from the rest of the dialects. Dialects mainly differ in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary.