Learning the Arabic alphabet
January 19, 2013 16 Comments
For my first Arabic lesson, I sat with my Rosetta Stone computer software and repeated the “core lesson” three or four times. As a true beginner, I needed to practice the lesson again and again just to get a sense of what the language sounds like and begin to pick out individual words. But the language-learning software does have other components, and after finishing the core lesson multiple times (and raising my score by… two percent) I finally moved on to pronunciation, reading, and writing. I like the reading and writing lessons because, at the beginning level, they focus on individual characters in the Arabic alphabet and the sounds they make. The sentences above the pictures in Rosetta Stone started to look like more than meaningless squiggles as I was able to pick out individual sounds.
This is still my favorite letter:
ت
And now I know what sound it makes. Depending on the little mark above it, this character can make a tu or a tah sound. That’s what I have learned so far.
This is one of the letters that Rosetta Stone focuses on in the first lesson for pronunciation, reading, and writing.
Besides Rosetta Stone, my other Arabic teacher is Maha, of the YouTube chanel LearnArabicWithMaha. I am watching a series of videos she created with (her Italian husband?) Luca in which she attempts to teach him Arabic. Luca seems bemused by the whole thing but he’s an obedient student.
In this second video, Maha teaches Luca how to write five alphabet letters. I decided to emulate Luca and practice the letters in my own Arabic practice notebook. I like doing this because it takes me back to kindergarten (or was it preschool?) when life was simpler and I did a lot of practicing letters. Even though I am an adult now, and in theory past my language-learning prime, I can already read English (and Spanish… and music!). So I think that learning the Arabic letters may not take much longer than it took me to learn the Latin alphabet when I was three feet tall. Famous last words, right?
If you already speak Arabic, how long did it take you to learn to read and write? Do you think it takes longer for a child or an adult?
Find out how I decided to learn Arabic and how it all got started:
- How to learn to speak Arabic in just one year (In which I think I am *not* getting working knowledge of Arabic for Christmas.)
- My first Arabic lesson EVER (I stop procrastinating, crack out the Rosetta Stone and get started.)
- A true beginner’s first language lesson (Video proof of my [atrocious?] accent)
About fjkingsbury
Thanks for the message on Twitter and bringing me to this fascinating site! I recommend this website which supports the beginners’ reading/writing book Alif Baa http://arabicwithoutwalls.ucdavis.edu/aww/coursecontent.html and also Fun with Arabic http://www.funwitharabic.com/. This one is good for speaking but also has lots of exercises focusing on reading and writing http://www.arabiconline.eu/index.php/learn-arabic/
There are loads more links on my Arabic teaching blog http://welovearabic.wordpress.com/
Good question about how long it takes to learn to read and write a new alphabet. I’m sure it takes less time to master new alphabets as an adult as you get more skilled at learning languages. Even if previously you’ve only studied languages with the same script as your native language, you’re still used to spotting patterns and making logical guesses and using analytical skills you’ve picked up along the way.
When I learnt Arabic it only took a couple of weeks to learn to read and write because I was studying pretty intensively and I had already learn to speak it at a basic level, which made it easier to recognise sounds and word shapes. For most of my beginner students who study about one hour a week and only a little of bit of homework in between, it can take a few weeks to get the hang of reading and writing even though the alphabet is very phonetic and logical. I think the Rosetta Stone course and others where you are doing loads of listening and reading at the same time are the best ways to start a language like Arabic. Good luck with your mission!
Thanks! I’ve been looking at different versions of the alphabet song in Arabic online. It’s interesting: some of them say the names of the letters, and some say the sounds that they make. Is there a version you like better? Is it useful to learn the names of the letters, or only their sounds?
http://bilinguish.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/arabic-alphabet-song/
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Great post
) Try http://www.arabic-studio.com/arabic_letters.html to learn the script & basic grammar. Also, a lot of my students have found telephone apps and computer games very helpful for mastering the alphabet. There are more useful links on http://www.facebook.com/arabicclub . Good luck with your Arabic learning !!
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Good question, fjkingsbury. I don’t think it is very important for beginners to know the names of the letters but most of alphabet songs seem to use the names of the letters by convention. However, the first sound in the name is always the sound of the letter (unlike English letter names like “H”), so you can sing along even if you only know the sound but not the name. I.e. “qaaf” is the name of the letter, but you can sing “qaa”, and “laam” is the name of the letter but you could just sing “laa”. On the other hand, it can be helpful to learn the names of the letters for “seen” and “Saad” because saying the word helps you remember to put your mouth in a different shape which helps you pronounce the different versions of “s”. Hope that makes sense!
Good work! I suspect you’ll learn quickly because your motivation is clearly apparent. And to echo what ahmedzal said, it’s true that each new script you learn will make you faster when you tackle the next one. I’ve studied several languages (Thai & Mandarin) after I learned Arabic and it was clear that my brain could more easily associate sounds with glyphs/letters. Yours will, too! Now, I have to throw this out there: check out my site, http://lingovillage.com where we teach Egyptian Arabic. You’re aware of dialects -vs- MSA, right? Well, when you’re ready for a dialect (and I think it’s wise to learn a dialect and MSA concurrently), we’ll be waiting for you!
حظ سعيد (good luck!)
Thanks! How old were you when you learned Arabic?
As for dialects, Rosetta Stone teaches MSA (I believe… not that I would know if it didn’t), and the other learning tools I have sampled on the web have been for Moroccan, Egyptian, Palestinian, Lebanese Arabic… right now I am just listening and looking at everything and trying to ignore the fact that they may be all conflicting. Why do you think it’s wise to learn a dialect and MSA concurrently?
Hi again, I was 20 when I started learning Arabic. I began with MSA and moved to dialects two years later. You’re right that Rosetta Stone only teaches MSA. I think it’s a good idea to learn MSA and a dialect concurrently for a few reasons. First and foremost, you’ll be prepared to read in MSA and to communicate in a dialect. If you communicate with people in MSA then they may or may not understand you. Either way, they’re very, very likely to reply in their own dialect, and certainly not in MSA, which sounds forced and unnatural to their ear. Second, it will give you great insight into the culture of the Middle East, which is at once both connected (via MSA) and separated by (via dialects) language.
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