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voron wrote:[flag=]ar[/flag] I've started Pimsleur Arabic and done 10 lessons from it. I hope it can help me improve my spoken fus7a. I keep meeting many Arabs here in Belarus and it bugs me that I cannot talk to them. I've chosen Pimsleur because I recently started a new job which consumes most of my time so I hardly have time for anything but audio only.
Goal: Do Pimsleur Level 1,2,3 within ... a reasonably short time frame (3 months or so, so I roughly have time until the New Year).
[flag=]tr[/flag], [flag=]ku[/flag] Putting Turkish and Kurdish on hold. Arabic will be my top priority.
Meera wrote:مرحبا فرن! كيف حالك؟ أين تدرس العربية؟ في الجامعة؟
voron wrote:Meera wrote:مرحبا فرن! كيف حالك؟ أين تدرس العربية؟ في الجامعة؟مرحباً يا ميرا. انا بخير شكراً. كيف حالك انت؟
لا ,لا أدرس العربية في الجامعة. أدرس بنفسي.
و انت, تدرسين في الجامعة؟ كيف دروسك؟ تحبينها؟
voron wrote:Now I wonder, since I get a lot of micro-pauses at work (1-2 minutes when I launch a long task and wait for its completion), can I fit language learning into these pauses as well? Can you guys recommend me any options? Will it even be useful?
There are not so many songs in MSA but at least there is Kadhim Al-Saher.
eskandar wrote:There really are a ton of songs in MSA, you just need to know how to find them.
Majida al-Roumi also has a lot of songs in MSA, to name just one more singer.
eskandar wrote:I like to review Anki flashcards at times like those, but IIRC you're not into flashcards.
voron wrote:That's right, I'm not much into flashcards because I get bored of them quickly, but they surely are a useful tool.
voron wrote:Except 1-2 random foreigners like me,
all the students who attend this course are Kurds who want to learn or strengthen their heritage language, and many of them already speak it to some extent,
"because of the grammar"
Saim wrote:voron wrote:Except 1-2 random foreigners like me,
No Turks?
Saim wrote:Was there any difficulty in terms of heritage speakers being used to different dialect forms?
Saim wrote:And did you ever get comments from your Turkish friends about how you shouldn't be learning Kurdish?
voron wrote:I got to meet only 3 non-Kurds from the students of all levels:
- A guy from the USA who was going to work in volunteering organizations in the Middle East. His university paid for the classes. He had also spent some time in Jordan learning Arabic.
- A girl from Morocco doing her Phd on comparison of Middle Eastern cultures.
- A Turkish girl with pacifist motivations (she is also a vegan and nature-friendly)
Also, the course didn't make any emphasis on teaching dialects. It only propagated the standard (and with quite a radical prescriptive approach at that -- the dialectal influences in students' speech were mercilessly declared mistakes).
Of course, multiple times. I got reactions as extreme as "why do you need the language of this scum", with a grimace of aversion on the person's face.
Saim wrote:Of course, multiple times. I got reactions as extreme as "why do you need the language of this scum", with a grimace of aversion on the person's face.
Jesus.
That sounds like quite a damaging attitude. I wasn't aware Kurmanji even had much of an established standard.
voron wrote:Thanks eskandar for the tip! Before writing that I had googled for "songs in MSA" and what came first was a reference to Kadhim Al-Saher and Sami Yusuf, and I already knew both of them so I assumed there isn't much else. It's good to know that I was mistaken, and I'll definitely search for other names.
Saim wrote:I recently got a lesson of what happens when you don't insist, as well. I signed up for some Urdu classes when I got here but the bureaucratic process took so long (4 or 5 hours running between different offices) that I didn't have any energy to ask about the level of the classes. They literally put me in a class where no-one knew any Urdu, and when the teacher (obviously) switched me out to a lower-intermediate class (I was the best even there ), the Head of Department got on my case for going to classes I hadn't signed up for! The worst part is that I had previously chatted in Urdu with the HoD, even telling her her that I can read and write. Needless to say I haven't been back.
eskandar wrote:I've found that classes are a great way for me to get started with a language, but once I'm advanced enough to have a full conversation in the language and read with a dictionary, they mostly hold me back and I'd rather learn on my own or study with a tutor.
Saim wrote:I used to think like this but lately I've been using Memrise a whole lot. I have, like, 8 different decks and am using all of them every day. Dunno what happened.
eskandar wrote:Off the top of my head, I know Marcel Khalife has lots of songs that are Arabic poetry (so, standard Arabic) set to music - here's one of my favorites. There's also a great song by Julia Boutros from after the 2006 Israeli assault on Lebanon, where a letter from Hasan Nasrallah was turned into a poem.
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