Arabic is the main language spoken in over twenty countries. Most of those countries are located in Northern Africa and in the Arabian Gulf. It is one of the most widely used languages in the world. Many people are put off by Arabic at first because it seems like a very complex language. Arabic is no harder to learn than any other language the hardest part is getting familiar with another alphabet which has sounds not used in English. I will try to make learning Arabic as easy and fun for you as I can.
There are three basic types of Arabic that you may hear me refer to in these lessons.
1. Clasical Arabic - Classical arabic is the Arabic used in the Qur'an and in classical literature. The vocabulary is rather Archaic and hard to understand. A similar comparison would be that Classical Arabic is like Old English (like Shakespear). Even most native speakers do not have a complete understanding of this type of arabic.
2. Modern Standard Arabic - This is the type of Arabic which is most widely understood in all Arabic speaking countries. It is most commonly used for Media such as television, radio, newspapers, and modern literature.
3. Colloquial Arabic - This type of Arabic is the Arabic of different regions. In these lessons when I refer to a Colloquial Word or Colloquial Arabic I will be refering to Arabic spoken in the Egyptian Accent.
Throughout the lessons you may find that there are two sets of words for a single idea or Arabic word. This is because I will always list both the Modern Standard and Egyptian Colloquial word. I will always list the Modern Standard Arabic word first, followed by the Colloquial word. If there is only one word then both the Modern Standar and the Colloquial Arabic use the same word. If you wish to learn only the Egyptian accent disregard the first word and use only the second.
Also, in Egypt all "j" sounds are pronounced like a "g". For example the name Jamal is always pronounced Gamal in Egypt (like the famous dancer/actress Samia Gamal).
Arabic is always written from right to left except numbers which are written left to right (good news for all you left handed people, you know how whenever you write you always smudge the words when your hand goes over them... it's the right handed persons problem now).
Another important thing to know about Arabic is that when written the short vowels are often left out. It is similar to shorthand in this way. Here is an example of a word with and without the short vowels
With Short Vowels
شُكْرًWithout Short Vowelsشكر
Most of the time people will write the words without the short vowels as a native speaker will be able to recognize thw word by the way it is used in a sentance. I recomend writing the short vowel sounds in when you are learning and when you have a better understanding you can leave them out if you want. I will always try to put the short vowels on unless the lesson requires me to leave them off for one reason or another.
Last, but not least I recomend you write things down in a notebook so that you can easily refer back to them. I also reccomend that you make flashcards of all the words you learn and use them frequently. If you really want to challenge yourself make two flashcards for each word, one with the short vowels and one without.
