Learning Arabic?

[SuperBunny]

Not sure where to put this...

I work with families from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and sometimes other Middle East countries. I would like to be able to communicate with them other than saying Hello.

So, is it realistic for me to try to learn Arabic?

And, if I did, would I need to be aware of different dialects? I have a Syrian friend who is married to a man from a nearby country (can't remember which) and they communicate in English rather than Arabic because they can't understand each other's dialects.

Dialects differ extremely, I asked for a bottle of water in my rather limited Egyptian Arabic in Tunisia and the man looked at me like I had three heads! My DS refered to his grandmother (Jeddah) in Egypt (Luxor) in front of a friend of ours from Cairo and she hadn't got a clue what he was saying, so dialects vary within countries too, like they do here I suppose.
I have heard that Cairo Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood as most Arab films are made there.

Hmm, ok. I will think. Thanks Pink Magic.

I don't want to go to the effort of learning Arabic if I still won't be understood. Does anyone know how much Kuwati Arabic and Saudi Arabian Arabic differ? The families tend to communicate with each other but not much.

What you need to learn is something called Modern Standard Arabic - this is the Arabic that they use in the news/newspapers and it will be more widely understood.

My husband is Syrian and I would agree that Egyptian Arabic is more widely understood. What you have to realise though, is slang is prevalent in each country - just like we have with varying counties here (eg barm cakes ooop North! I had no idea what they were when I was there years ago! lol) and as you build on your Arabic, you will get to learn the slang as well.

Algerian Arabic though - no-one seems to get their dialect!

If you want any reading materials - let me know and I can point you in the direction of some good books. They will be delighted at your efforts to learn - I love Arab people - so warm and friendly..well, I married one so

Oh, great JimmyChoos, thank you. That is really helpful. They are lovely people and it would be great to be able to say a couple of things to them. They are so thrilled when I try to talk with them but I think it would be much better if I could say a few words in their languge.

I am in a similar position with regard to wanting to learn Arabic. My husband is from Sudan and I did actually study it with a student of mine from Algeria about 4 years ago. Then moved to Oman for a teaching job and thought that it would be the best opportunity to learn it properly - but it never happened - and yes different Arabic in diff countries, the Omanis had lots of different language that my DH didn't use.
Went to Sudan last August and after being told that my Arabic was pretty bad by varying members of the family (in a nice way) i vowed to start it again properly - and haven't. You'd think that having a DH as an Arabic speaker would help but apart from understanding some of the language i am still terrible. I am a language teacher myself and am always telling my students to do this and that to learn English and i never take my own advice.

I teach an evening class and have no time to do another. Would just be interested in how others are going to go about it. Sorry have blabbed on for ages.................

I can't afford to take a class so I will have to try to do this at home to start with. I suppose borrowing a CD from the library? At least that way I should be able to recognise and hopefully say basic things like numbers, 'goodbye', 'how are you' etc.

If anyone knows any good CDs, I'd be grateful for suggestions. Once I have done that I might ask some Arabic speaking acquaintances if they'll talk at me. I'd love to take a class when I can afford it (both timewise and $)

SaraMoon, my OH is Sudanese too Sudani Arabic is really easy to learn but useless for other Arabic speaking countries sadly.

For anyone wanting to learn I would suggest ignoring the alphabet and concentrate on conversation as it's not that hard to pick up the basics. If you want to learn 'properly' then yup, modern standard is the thing. Egyptian dialect is widely understood but I don't find it very comfortable for some reason. I guess just chatting with OH or families you know would seem the best way to start, but I agree it's easy to just not do it!

And to all of you and your families,
!رأس سنة سعيدة

Didn't come out the first time

!رأس سنة سعيدة

I lived in Egypt for a while and I learnt Egyptian Arabic, however my teacher advised that to be understood in more Middle Eastern countries to learn to speak Classical Arabic (guess thats now the modern standard) as although any arabic speaker would understand me, I wouldnt necessarily understand them.

I learnt the basics and managed to get by fairly well. I did speak to one of my neighbours to ask whether the local mosque ran Arabic classes for kiddies as I would get my daughter and me booked into it (still looking to return to ME at some point) but they wont take her until she is 3.

I might go to the mosque then and see what they do. My DH speaks to the girls (2 and 4) in Arabic and they understand - as do I - but it is always more difficult to talk back and make a conversation.
It is also so much easier when you live in the country where they speak the language as you are surrounded by it. The best book i have is Macmillan 'Mastering Arabic' by Jane Wightwick but it has alot of Arabic script in it and if you want to just speak the language maybe 'Arabic in 3 months' published by DK Hugo although i found this a bit confusing. 'The lst thousand words in Arabic' is great for both me and the girls and has great pictures.

I've got the 1st a thousand words in Arabic too, very nice book and great for kids but find some of the words are pronounced different to how they are written down, so maybe difficult for a total beginer. I'm sure there must be some good Learn Arabic dvd's, and your local libary should have them or be able to get them in.

I lived in Saudi five years and remember how great Arabs were. I miss them now that I live in Germany and have the somewhat cold Bavarian mentality to deal with.

I used to sit and drink tea years back with them and I knew some stuff to be able to chat on a VERY basic level. My experience is that they are utterly thrilled when you learn a couple more words than "Salaam alaykwm" such as "Khef hallak?" (how are you?") as owing to the recent events anyone from the west trying to bridge the east west gap would be a star to them (the Arabs)

Isnt there anything online nowadays?

Hello,

My Name is Nada, i live in Haringey. I can teach Arabic to kids or adults if anyone is interesting. That can be online or at my home.

Contact me here or on my mail
[email protected]

Some universities do evening courses in Arabic.

I've been learning Modern Standard Arabic for about 18 months because DH is Egyptian and I want to be able to talk with his family.

Tbh, the difference between MSA and Egyptian is huge. Like Italian vs Spanish. The pronunciation and most important vocab is all different and lots of the grammar is different too. MSA is similar to Classical (Quranic) Arabic, so can get very hung up on complex grammatical rules and intonations that sound poetic but don't really get used in spoken language.

I've found it useful for getting the basics down, but for real communication it's just not very useful as no-one speaks MSA in everyday life. Even if someone understands MSA (al Jazeera is in MSA and it's taught in school), they are likely to reply using local dialect.

If you mainly want to speak with people from Saudi and Kuwait, I think they both have a similar dialect, so it might be worth starting with that?