How much Arabic can you learn in a month?

I now have four weeks of Arabic under my belt. This is what I can say and do so far:

Learning New Language (Photo credit: AbdillahAbi)

• Listening: Recognize and understand basic phrases for hello, goodbye, excuse me, yes, no, repeat please, a little.
• Listening: Recognize and understand basic questions such as, Do you understand Arabic? Do you understand English? Where is the bathroom?
• Listening: Recognize titles roughly equivalent to sir and miss.
• Listening: Recognize basic nouns including words that I assume to mean boy, girl, woman, man, sandwich, bread, egg, rice, apple, water, coffee, cat, dog, horse.
• Listening: Recognize basic verbs including words that I assume to mean eat, drink, run, swim.
• Speaking: Say all of the above, but not necessarily in context or in a complete sentence.
• Writing: Write many letters of the Arabic alphabet.
• Reading: Recognize all the letters of the Arabic alphabet when they are not connected to any other letter, plus some Arabic punctuation.
• Reading/speaking: Say what sounds go with which letters of the Arabic alphabet.
• Speaking: Sing several versions of the Arabic alphabet song.

arabic alphabet (أبجدية عربية‎, abjadiyyah ‘arabiyyah, arabic abjad) (Photo credit: oceandesetoiles)

These are the resources I have used so far:

• Rosetta Stone Arabic
• Learn Arabic With Maha
• Arabic alphabet videos on YouTube
• Arabic alphabet coloring sheets
• Various Arabic learning resources recommended by other bloggers and tweeps.
• Flashcards I made myself
• Pimsleur Arabic One
• Arabic SurvivalPhrases podcasts

 

My biggest frustration this month: Not being able to write with Arabic characters yet. I wish I could make a list of the words I know in Arabic, but I’m not comfortable writing them yet.  I need to practice a lot with a pen and paper and then learn the Arabic keyboard to be able to type them as well.

My proudest accomplishment this month:  I can sing the Arabic alphabet song all the way through. The formerly mysterious Arabic characters are starting to come to life.

Biggest confusion this month: Differentiating between all the different verbs and their endings. I tried to learn a lot more verbs than the four listed above. Those four were the only ones that stuck.

Goal for the next four weeks: Find a language partner to practice basic conversation.

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.)
• Learning the Arabic alphabet (Because you have to start with the basics.)
• Looking for an Arabic alphabet song (Not as simple as you would think.)
• Week three: Arabic breakthroughs (How I learned to stop worrying and trust the teacher.)
• Arabic salad (Language learning through food.)