learn arabic

After having spent the last few months pretending I was too busy to keep working at my Arabic, I took the opportunity of receiving their programme to register with International House for a short 5 week course to get me back in the mood, starting in 2 weeks time.

I now have two different pieces of software installed on my laptop to help me learn Arabic. I also have a few books. So before I think about buying yet more “essential” material to learn Arabic, I need to use what I already have.

I need to stop procrastinating and thinking that I really want to learn Arabic, if only someone could put all the knowledge magically in my head. I need to actually do it.

No more excuses.

Thanks to Google targetted adds in my gmail inbox, I found out about BYKI yesterday. It is a piece of software by Transparent Language based on flash cards. The good news is that the lite version is free and available for PC and Mac. So I downloaded it and am trying it out. It won’t teach you grammar but it is unexpectedly effective at teaching you words. Of course, they would like you to buy the full version but it’s nice to be able to try it out and actually learn something with the free version.

The only problem I have is Transparent Language themselves. I bought products from them in the past and their interpretation of sending you email about products you might be interested in verges on spam: I got quite annoyed at regularly deleting email from them telling me they had a special offer on something or other. At the end of the day, if I am serious about learning a new language, I’d rather stick to that language for some time so I’m unlikely to be a repeat customer very soon.

While using BYKI, I came back to the good old problem about learning Arabic: if you want to learn how to write it as well as speak it, you will need to be able to do the writing exercises. When you have a UK English keyboard, the only option is to use the software character map and this is very time consuming and takes all the fun out of learning anything. The obvious solution would be to get an English/Arabic keyboard and switch keyboard mapping. And the day I want to learn, say Russian, I’d need an English/Russian keyboard. But I’d hope that by then, I’d be able and would want to keep writing Arabic: I’d have to plug the Arabic keyboard back in! I’m not even getting in the complications due to the fact that I already need to be able to write French, Spanish and Italian that all require extra characters in addition to the English ones. So I set to look for something I had seen last year and found it again: the Optimus keyboard. Now, how cool is that? A keyboard where each key is an OLED that changes when you change the keyboard mapping in the OS. You want to write in English? Switch to an English layout. Arabic? Switch to an Arabic one. Russian? Ditto. It looks like it will be available in February but at what price, nobody knows. It’s a cool piece of kit though. I want one of those!

I’ve been trying the Rosetta Stone software to learn Arabic. It is quite good and you pick up words quickly but before you’re able to make a whole sentence, you need to go quite far. Also, it’s only really worth it if you have a microphone so that you can practice your pronunciation.

I also took some classes at the International House in London. It is not cheap but half a dozen lessons got me some very good basics. I can now ask for tea :-) In practice, basic Arabic grammar is not that difficult. You can say easy things in Arabic as easily as you’d do in French or Spanish (or even more easily as it looks more consistent). Then when it comes to more complex stuff, I’m sure it can get hard, as every language can. What is difficult though is pronunciation of some letters that have no equivalent in any European language (e.g. dark letters).

One of my main problems is that my best memory is visual so it started getting easier once I had more or less mastered the script. Arabic script is not too difficult: there are only 28 letters. The trick is that short vowels are not written, or only as small accents. A beginner course should always have vowels indicated so that you learn the words properly.

I really don’t understand Wheattina’s teacher when he told her that each letter could have three different sounds. The syllable formed by a consonant and (sometimes unwritten) vowel can produce 3 different sounds but not each letter on its own. I found this a very confusing way of explaining things! A good tutor should simplify things, not make them more difficult.

All in all, if you managed to master English, a language with extremely complex pronunciation and very subtle grammar, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to master Arabic. It just takes time and practice, but then every language does. That’s what I tell myself when I find it difficult.