So as I am in the beginning stages of my self study of Japanese, my girlfriend is in the beginning stages of her study of Arabic. I have learned of so many good resources from this community that I practically have my entire study schedule up to and through fluency already planned. My girlfriend is not having similar luck and I was wondering if anyone might have advice on study plan/resources/sites. The obvious multilingual srs resources such as anki need not be mentioned. All help is obviously appreciated.

Has she learned the alphabet yet? If not, then I can recommend this site for writing practice. I also used the reading course on this site to clarify the pronunciations. I was only interested in learning the alphabet though, so I cannot tell how good the other sections of those websites are (they both look kinda incomplete). Hope this helps.

The writings yes, but pronunciation is still being worked on. Thanks for the resources; anything is appreciated. I have always found it easier to trust first hand accounts/recommendations on a forum than a website author that claims to know all the best resources, so it's worth hearing about successes through a certain book/method/etc no matter how elementary it is.

I am not sure but isn't there two arabic language ? I mean there are written arabic and spoken arabic am I right ? Which one does she plans to learn ?

Xiaohua Wrote:I am not sure but isn't there two arabic language ? I mean there are written arabic and spoken arabic am I right ? Which one does she plans to learn ?

Depending on how you define "language" there is either one Arabic language or lots of them, a lot more than two. There are very many dialects, not all of which are mutually intelligible, but they all share the same standard - Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is largely based on Classical Arabic. It is similar to the situation with Chinese, except unlike Standard Mandarin, MSA is not based on any of the modern dialects (so it is kinda like what Classical Chinese was before the 1920s). I am pretty sure that most people learning Arabic as a foreign language are learning MSA, but I would not be surprised if some of the dialects were taught to foreigners as well. Egyptian Arabic even has its own Wikipedia, so it is not a purely spoken language.

Well vonPeterhof I am glad I updated before posting because you ninja'd me big time there . Specifically she is interested in studying Maghrebi Arabic if she does study abroad because she favors Morocco. That being said, the most logical starting point for her is MSA because it is much more accessible outside that area. So she will be going with MSA just because of simplicity of resources until a final decision is made on study abroad.

Although I have no interest in taking on multiple languages at once, I have to say that languages such as Arabic that are very much outside the English language family are the most tantalizing to me.

aaroncp Wrote:Although I have no interest in taking on multiple languages at once, I have to say that languages such as Arabic that are very much outside the English language family are the most tantalizing to me.

Yeah, same here. Even though in my polyglot fantasies I can see myself learning lots of Romance and Germanic languages, that feels like it would get boring eventually. Someone who is fluent in three completely unrelated languages would impress me more than someone who speaks every single Romance language out there. And, since my first language is Russian, I have absolutely no desire to learn any other Slavic language - they all sound like horribly mangled Russian to me

I completely agree with you with one possible exception for me: Spanish as it would be so useful and while easy compared to Japanese, sounds nothing like English to my ears. Not to mention that my current girlfriend is native level in it ;P. After that I would like to do Arabic and possibly Hindi, but who knows if I'll ever have the motivation to get all the way through that many.

Hey.
So what are your girlfriend's longterm goals? MSA, or "arabe littéral" in francophone countries, is renowned to be much harder than everyday Maghrebi Arabic. My point is, if she is more interested in moving there rather than in reading texts, she shouldn't bother (since it's used only by educated people to my knowledge). Anyhow, a little Assimil course is always a winner (especially the cheap version available on quick sharing and such)(I found the sound too (189 MB)(but only for t1?)). There is also an Assimil vocabulary handbook for Moroccan Arabic, but looks like it's only available in French, and I guess your girlfriend doesn't speak French...
Good luck!

Well from what I have read, and I may be misinformed, MSA is the most commonly taught with the most resources available outside of Arabic speaking nations. This is why she is currently planning on continuing with that. Even if she does end up doing study abroad, would MSA not provide a solid basis for the Moroccan variant? And no unfortunately she isn't already trilingual haha. There are so many Japanese resources as compared to other major languages that aren't often spoken in the U.S.

http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Grammar-...318&sr=8-2

This is the best book afaik for Grammar, it's like 900 pages. I've only gone through some of it so far, but not entirely. It's a great reference book.

And as for your question on Moroccan variants, her speaking MSA wouldn't be all bad she'd be perfectly understood, it's just as matter of her understanding a Moroccan native. The Moroccan variant is certainly the hardest to understand for me (I speak Levantine Arabic at home), then Egyptian, then Iraqi, the rest is much more intelligible to my ears. Though my Arabic is not that great, I can only speak it, perhaps to the level of a 10 year old idiot.

The difference is only really subtle though, the main difference is superficial really, apart from sounds shifting slightly (things getting velarized, stops added here and there) it isn't all that bad. I just don't know many Egyptian people so that's why I find them difficult to understand, most of our family friends are Palestinian so, I've become accustomed to only that variant. There's a 99% Any native would know all variants, and 99.5% chance they'll know MSA, yes im pulling these figures out of my arse.

I'm slowly learning MSA though I find Chinese and Japanese much more interesting .

So allow me to rephrase my previous post. MSA is probably the best international choice, since it's used worldwide, but the fact there is the diglossia phenomenon (that implies the literal and the dialectal versions are like different languages, like Mandarin and Cantonese), if she is really interested in Morocco only, she should really go for dialectal Moroccan Arabic, but what bugs me is the literature is supposed to be in literal Arabic, and I'm not aware there is any simplified version of it (but there might for newspaper or something), because I can't find how the dialectal versions are written down (a pinyin equivalent?).

Conclusion, she'll probably end up learning both dialectal and literal languages, so prepare for hard work.

EDIT: liosama just quantified the gap between MSA and dialectal Moroccan Arabic, more superficial than I thought. Go for MSA. But be ready for huge pronounciation discrepancies.

Well I didn't mention different words. But you'll ultimately have to learn variant words either way (of which there aren't all that many, it's usually the most basic stuff, like bread, rice, a variety of verbs etc), but the majority of words are all the same.

The one thing that kills me most when learning MSA is finding a word that I don't know, going to my dad "but I thought this was this", and hes like "no no no that's only in our colloquial dialect, it's not proper Arabic", he dares to say "improper" Hmph! Then I battle out his extremely conservative and prescriptive views on Arabic, it goes for hours on end some nights.

He just can't see that I'm right...

liosama Wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Grammar-...318&sr=8-2

This is the best book afaik for Grammar, it's like 900 pages. I've only gone through some of it so far, but not entirely. It's a great reference book.

And as for your question on Moroccan variants, her speaking MSA wouldn't be all bad she'd be perfectly understood, it's just as matter of her understanding a Moroccan native. The Moroccan variant is certainly the hardest to understand for me

Thanks for the book advice. From the reviews it looks very hardcore and mostly for people that already consider themselves fluent, but ideally she will get there at some point. I know she has the interest in the culture; it is only the question of staying on a consistent study schedule in the face of a double major, grad school, etc. As for interest in Morocco; I haven't talked to her very extensively on this, but I believe it is mostly because there is a Spanish speaking region (her native language) and she wants some familiarity to cling onto when/if she does study abroad. If that is the case and MSA is generally intelligible by the entire Arabic community, then perhaps it isn't really worth considering Maghrebi Arabic. I'll have to talk to her more about her interest in Morocco.

EratiK Wrote:Wow. So I had no idea what diglossia was...

Honestly I am not sure you quite have what it is yet. Diglossia isn't between two languages, but within one. MSA in official situations with regional dialect used otherwise or some other such situation. In most instances of diglossia, including the one we are talking about, the variability doesn't generally transfer to the written language (from what little I have read of Arabic). Similar to Chinese, everyone writes the same but everyone doesn't speak those writings in the same way. The analogy isn't perfect though because there can be and are written differences among the dialects, they just are generally avoided or MSA is used.

EratiK Wrote:Conclusion, she'll probably end up learning both dialectal and literal languages, so prepare for hard work.

Oh I think anyone even considering Arabic realizes the challenges ahead. It, like Japanese, is a level 4 language for native English speakers.

You're right, I hadn't get it. My point was (in Maghreb), only a few educated people talk using MSA in a few specific situations, so one might want to exert his/hers communicative skills in a living language, and by the way, I reckon literal and dialectal Arabics are two different dialects (different words, different pronounciations, and sometimes even different syntaxes), which stricto sensu means they are two different languages.

Thankfully Wiki explained me what was the difference with bilinguism (societal coexistence of multiple varieties vs individual state where more than one language can be mobilised).

But the case of the Arabic diglossia is really problematic, since the dialectal variety has no writting (when it should, and I think it will, thanks to associations for the promotion of dialectal Arabic), and is therefore bound to evolve quicker than the literal variety, so for all pragmatic purposes, it's really better to consider them to be two different languages (as the Arab people I know do).

That being said, native Maghrebi people learned the dialectal variety as their mother tongue, and then the MSA. So, once again, in a communicative perspective, it might be better to develop automatisms in the dialectal variety rather than in the stuck up MSA, but a thorough student will learn both (especially if the student is interested in reading), and I hope the student finds a trick to avoid interference as much as possible.

vonPeterhof Wrote:And, since my first language is Russian, I have absolutely no desire to learn any other Slavic language - they all sound like horribly mangled Russian to me

same here XD I had an exchange visit to Bulgaria (Stara Zagora) and i understood not much, but though.. reading and understanding is easy, listening is absolutely impossible, when they start speaking (sounds like mangled russian to me as well lol a bit like russian+italian - speed of speech at least)

There is a good Anki deck called "Darija-Moroccan Arabic". It contains over 1600 colloquial Moroccan words.

Another nice resource is the FSI Moroccan Arabic. It's only 56 pages, but a lot is covered in it. Special features of Moroccan Arabic pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and social usage are listed.

FSI From Eastern to Western Arabic

An Introduction to Moroccan Arabic

"This textbook introduces beginning students to Moroccan Arabic. Consists of three sections: phonology, essential grammar, and conversations. Includes twenty pronunciation drills. Consists of ten units of grammar and ten units of conversations. Concludes with two appendices (one is a verb table, the other a glossary of technical and grammatical terminology), an Arabic-English and English-Arabic lexicon, and a subject index."

Hello,im from Egypt so my native language is arabic.Its a problem that arabic has so many dialects,even i can barely understand 40% of a conversation in moroccan dialect.Algerian/moroccan dialects are probably the hardest to understand,and i would advise your girlfriend to study classical arabic,if she is planning to live in morocco,she can pick up the dialect there( i don't know if there is a better way),and besides,everybody understands classical arabic.About written arabic,Newspapers and such are all written in classical arabic(i don't know if there are exceptions to that).Also,in morocco almost everybody speaks French,they sort of treat it like a 2nd native language,so if she knows french i think she could get by.GOOD LUCK

Time then for me to plug my fonts website, in particular the Arabic page

ahibba Wrote:There is a good Anki deck called "Darija-Moroccan Arabic". It contains over 1600 colloquial Moroccan words.

Another nice resource is the FSI Moroccan Arabic. It's only 56 pages, but a lot is covered in it. Special features of Moroccan Arabic pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and social usage are listed.

Thank you for the good resources! The anki deck will definitely be of help.

phantombk201 Wrote:Hello,im from Egypt so my native language is arabic.Its a problem that arabic has so many dialects,even i can barely understand 40% of a conversation in moroccan dialect.Algerian/moroccan dialects are probably the hardest to understand,and i would advise your girlfriend to study classical arabic,if she is planning to live in morocco,she can pick up the dialect there( i don't know if there is a better way),and besides,everybody understands classical arabic.About written arabic,Newspapers and such are all written in classical arabic(i don't know if there are exceptions to that).Also,in morocco almost everybody speaks French,they sort of treat it like a 2nd native language,so if she knows french i think she could get by.GOOD LUCK

This is similar to what I was thinking, but it is definitely good to hear it from someone that is very familiar with the culture and language of the region! Unfortunately she does not know French, but does know Spanish. According to wiki at least, there is a decent Spanish speaking population in the northern parts of the country and I imagine she will be studying there so hopefully she will get by pretty well