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Day seven to the present

(The student finishes his introduction to the alphabet and starts a blog)

ف and ق (faa' and qaaf) were the last two letters.

Before I started those on Monday, I went back a few letters in my flash cards, working with just words representative of those letters. The problem of confusing new letters with letters already learned was hitting me hard. After feeling comfortable again, I reorganized my working set of notecards to their normal state and proceeded to learn the last two letters.

I then signed up with Blogspot to create a blog that would document my learning experience.

I have spent the past two days trying to solidify my knowledge of the alphabet. I currently have three stacks of about 50 flashcards each. The flashcards contain all of the example words given in the alphabet book, therefore they contain all of the letters (although not necessarily in every form).

The 'final exam' in The Arabic Alphabet is the Fatiha (opening) of the Koran. I would like to pass it on the first try :) . The book states "If you practice it enough , and find yourself able to read it, then you can be confident that you have truly mastered the Arabic alphabet".

I'm not there yet, alas.

An essential word for twelve year old males

ضرط

DaraTa

to fart

(This was part of the section that I covered on day six)

A strange phrase

While flipping casually through one of the books I had checked out from the library, this sentence caught my eye:

کدت الطار ة تنغجر


Of course it was not the Arabic that caught my eye, it was the English translation:


The airplane was about to explode


A pecuiliar phrase to put in any language text; it would make a student raise his eyes regardless of what language he was studying. It is even more eye-raising when placed in an Arabic book.

Day four

(The student meets the indefinite article, learns a few more letters, and checks out a couple more Arabic books)

The first letter I learned on the fourth day was ل (laam) . Pretty straight forward.

Next I encountered the indefinite article (i.e. the word for "the") - اڶ (al). The complication here is that there are two categories of letters called sun and moon. Sun letters are considered to no combine with the letter l. Moon letters are. When the indefinite article is used for word beginning with a sun letter, the l in 'al' is replaced with the first letter of that word. ادين (ad-diin - the morning, for example). For now I am not sweating those details, instead I am learning just enough of it to be able to read such words.

ك (kaaf) was the next letter. Only remotely tricky thing is that the medial and initial forms are completely different from the stand-alone and final forms.

Next was a trio of letters that differ only by a dot above or below it (or no dot). They were ج, ح, and خ ( Haa', jiim, and khaa').

As I had been doing I made flashcards for each set of letters along with the example words given in the book. I found that five sets of cards at once (50-60 cards) to be the optimum to handle at one time. Once I felt that I mastered the oldest set in the group, I proceeded to the next letter (or set of letters) in the book and created a new set. On this day I started to get the feeling that I was about to be overwhelmed, but never reached that point.

I picked up from the library a couple of books I had requested. I'll write about them later, for now I will just they are the sorts of books that are scary in that they treat the alphabet as lesson one. Thank goodness for The Arabic Alphabet.

Day Three

(The student has a most productive day but hits the limitations of learning a language from a book)

On the third day of studying the alphabet I went on a bit of a tear and learned nine more letters.
I was greatly aided by the fact that there is nothing particularly tricky about reading and distinguishing these letters.

د and ذ (daal and dhaal) were the first pair of letters. Non-connecting, so there are only two forms.

ر and ز (raa' and zaay) were next. Again, non-connecting. Easy stuff.

س and ش (siin and shiin) followed. Connecting letters, but the different forms are reasonably similar. Like the other pairs, the only difference between the two are dots above the letters.

ع and ع cayn and ghayn) are "interesting". There is a bit of difference in how the different forms are written. cayn (which the book writes with the c as a superscript), is completely foreign to the rest of the world's alphabets. The book describes it as one of the most difficult sounds of the language to make. It tries to give an explanation of what it sounds like but says"the only real way to learn it is to listen to Arabs and to practice incessantly." Ghayn is also described as a letter that gives English speaking people trouble. Again, the book tries to describe its sound, but isn't entirely helpful.

م (miim) was the last letter of the day. No pronunciation issues here; it sounds just like the letter m.

At this point it became clear that I would need to get ahold of some CDs or tapes of the language soon. The library unfortunately has little to offer and I haven't seen anything in the bookstore that appears particularly worthwhile. It's a worry that I've put aside for the moment but will obviously have to return to in the near future.

Day Two

(The student starts making flash cards and learns four more letters).

I started the second day of learning Arabic with the material that I had worked with the night before. After glancing over the alphabet book and the letters that I had written, I reverted to the habit that I took up while learning Spanish in high school. Back then I had learned that the only way to learn 40+ words a week the way we did in AP Spanish is to make flash cards and review them often. This is certainly true also for trying to learn 29 letters in different forms. So I made flashcards of the three letters I had learned in their respective forms along with cards for each of the example words given. After feeling sufficiently comfortable with them, I moved on to some new letters.

ن (nuun) is pretty straight-forward although it does take on a slightly different appearance depending on whether it is at the end of a word or in the beginning or middle of a word.

ي (yaa') also has appearance issues, but it also has some pronunciation issues. It can be used as a consonant, a long vowel, or a dipthong. This gives it the sounds of y, ee, and ei, respectively. The book gives a clear explanation of this and comments "All this may seem very complex at first, but in time, with practice, it becomes second nature." I have found that to be true.

ا ('alif) and ء (hamza) were next. Alif is the first non-connecting letter that the book discusses. That is, the letter only comes at the end of a word or it is by itself; it does not fall in the middle of or start a word. While 'alif resembles the letter a in pronunciation, hamza has no such equivalent. It is a "glottal stop" (like someone from London pronouncing bottle as bo''le).

و (waaw) is a non-connecting letter and has the same versatility pronunciation-wise as yaa'.

At that point the book provided a recap of what had been learned so far, so I found that to be a good stopping point.

My process for each letter (or pair of letters) has been to write a few lines of each letter in each of its forms, make flashcards of the letter in all of its forms as well as the example words given for that letter. I then go through that set of flashcards once or twice before mixing it in with the flashcards I've already made. Once I am no longer stumped by the new letters, I proceed to the next letter and repeat the process. It has worked quite nicely so far.

The first night

(Armed with his newly acquired book, The Student begins his quest)

Six nights ago I sat down with the aforementioned Arabic Alphabet book and got to work. I quickly but carefully read through the first two chapters. As I mentioned in my previous post, the third chapter contains a lot of information, and the details can be a bit overwhelming at first. I pressed on, however, to to the third chapter, which contains details on each letter.

I read through the first four pages of the chapter that covered three letters: baa' ب, taa' ت,and thaa' ث. Somewhat remarkably, it is possible to form words with these three letters alone and the book provides six examples of this.

After reading the pertinent pages, I pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a few lines of each of the letters in each of their forms (isolated (stand-alone), initial (beginning of a word), medial (middle of a word), and final (end of a word). For these letters, there is not much difference in appearance.

Pleased with my progress, I retired for the evening.

The Arabic Alphabet

(In which The Student finds a book that enables him to start his quest)

One of the intimidating things about learning a lanugage like Arabic is the alphabet. The intimidation is increased when one picks up a language book which covers the topic in in a mere two or three pages. Having seen nothing to alleviate this fear, I stayed away from the language.

Fortunately, I came across a book which gives the alphabet the treatment it deserves, to writ: The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write it by Nicholas Awde and Putros Samano. After seeing it in a bookstore last Saturday, I checked it out from the Jacksonville (FL) Public Library three days later.

The book's introduction has the following insightful comments:

One of the first obstacles facing anyone trying to learn Arabic is the seemingly complicated and convoluted alphabet, usually treated sketchily in the opening pages of daunting grammatical tomes.

Many students beginning to learn Arabic are plunged directly into grammar lessons without having first mastered the alphabet. They then try to pick the alphabet up as they go, finding out, only too late, that the attempt to assimilate both grammar and the alphabet simulataneously is simply too taxing . Genuine mastery of the alphabet ought to be a prerequisite to learning Arabic, yet there is scarcely any material devoted exclusively to it.

It describes itself thusly:

The style of the book is light and non-technical: no previous knowledge of grammar or linguistics is assumed. At the same time, we have tried to be meticulous in detail and comprehensive in scope. We have not concealed anything to simplify matters: everything you need to know is here. But neither have we added any unnecessary complications.

I have found that to be exceptionally true.

The first chapter is a brief and interesting introduction to the Arabic language. It is a nice setup for the Tour de force that is the next chapter.

The second chapter provides a complete look at the alphabet and writing system. It includes a table of the letters, tips on pronunciation of letters that do not have a direct equivalent in English, and notes on some of the pecuilarities that exist in the language (for example, the short vowels a, i, and u do not have letters, they are indicated by marks above or below consonants). There is a significant amount of information in a few pages. It is not necessary to try to grasp all of the information at this point, however, because all of the pertinent parts are repeated in the third chapter.

Chapter three is the meat of the book as it is a letter by letter treatment of the alphabet. Each letter is shown in each of its forms (because some letters are written differently depending on whether they start or end a word or fall in the middle of one). Pronunciation tips are given (if necessary) and a few examples of the letters in words are given. This organization makes it very easy to progress in baby steps a letter or two at a time (there are twenty-nine individual letters, plus special cases such as the afformentioned short vowels).

The book concludes with a few pages of miscellaneous reference material.

Having spent the past seven days with this book and now being able to read all of the letters, I can say that the book outstandingly fulfills it purpose. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Arabic.

A beginning

"
'... You going to Geneva?'

'Yes.'

'What hotel you going to stop at?'

'Hotel de l''Ecu de G'en`eve.'

'Don't you do it! No Americans there! You stop at one
of those big hotels over the bridge--they're packed
full of Americans.'

'But I want to practice my Arabic.'

'Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?'

'Yes--well enough to get along.'

'Why, hang it, you won't get along in Geneva--THEY don't
speak Arabic, they speak French...'
"

-Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad