do you speak arabic?

[kerewin21 2]

I have tried, but the fact is that I am not good at learning new languages. My husband and I plan to move back to Morocco after a few years, and I was concerned that I won't be able to do anything. He assures me that we will hire someone to take care of my every needs. I don't think he understands, I want to do it MYSELF! lol

Have you tried french? It's a lot easier.

MIL speaks only arabic I have taken years of Spanish and I still can't carry on a ligible coversation. Give me a spreadsheet any day, but a new language? Oh well...I guess when we move there I will be forced to do it...lol

Even if you can't speak with your in-laws, you'll be able to get in Morocco (getting places, buying things, talking to many of the people there, etc) if you learn French. The only negative is what happened with me; I could get by in French, so I had less necessity to learn Arabic. Sometimes you just have to force it.

PM me if you want to know more, I have lots of resources on learning languages!

Sharon

[Tunisianlover 0]

I remember one of you girls were part of the peace corp...... I was thinking of buying the peace corp version to learning the tunisian arabic, my So thinks learning standard is enough, but I think he just wants to keep my learning process limited so I won't know what he is talking about when we are around his tunsian friends, that sneaky man grrr, hee hee

I'm receiving rosetta stone for x-mas from him. So maybe my theory might be wrong but I'm still sticking with it.

[sereia 0]

yeah that was liz...where's she been lately anyway?!?!

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Try this, Jen. A friend who recently moved to Casa says it's been useful to her.

Almost forgot. It comes with a phrase book, so don't buy two.

Another source: http://friendsofmorocco.org/learnarabic.htm

Edited December 15, 2007 by Green-eyed girl

[♥Sora_9_Dam3a♥ 0]

I speak Egyptian pretty fluently...but my parents are Egyptian...so..I don't count..

but anyway, here's this website...from wiki...this link is for modern standard arabic..but there are links for egyptian and jordanian and lebanese arabic... http://wikitravel.org/en/Arabic

also...if you know the arabic alphabet, here's the common transliteration that Arabs use on the internet and stuff...

alif--aa

baa--b

taa--t

thaa--th [or s for Egyptians]

jeem--j [or g for Egyptians]

Haa--7

khaa--kh or 7' or 5

daal--d

dhaal--dh [or z for Egyptians]

raa--r

zaa--z

seen--s

sheen--sh

Sud--s

Dud--d

Taa--6 or t

Dhaa--dh

ain--3

ghain--gh or 3'

faa--f

qaaf--q or 9

kaaf--k

meem--m

noon--n

haa--h

waw--w

yaa--y

as for the vowels....

fat-7a--a

kasra--i or e

damma--o or u

shadda--double consonant

hamza--2

...so, if you want to say I love you to your husband...it would be ba7ibak....to your wife...it would be ba7ibik...

in arabic, ba7ibak would be بَحِبَك

and ba7ibik would be بَحِبِك

anyway...so that's my little arabic lesson..haha...

hope it was useful..

all the best guys!!

[sereia 0]

thanks for the links, geg! i have the travel talk audio and book. it definitely came in use while i first went to morocco on my own with my friends (although we both speak some french) but i think the second link would help me more in learning to speak to my in laws. i want to ask her questions and get to know her on a more deep level other than "habibti diali!!!! labes?!" hehe.

and thanks for the lesson, sora!

[Alhamdulillah 0]

If you have an IPOD/MP3 player or you just want to download some MP3s and listen on your PC or burn them onto a CD, you can try this podcast Arabic Pod

They just go through one short conversation each episode but they really break it down and explain how to piece the sentances together and I find that listening and repeating is the best way for me to learn to speak and understand. The Arabic speaking host is Jordanian so I'm assuming some of the words/phrases he uses are from his own dialect since my husband will sometimes hear something and say "oh no, that's wrong. It should be..." but he gets the meaning so he must understand what he's saying.

Not every Arab can understand Classical or Formal Arabic. My husband warned me long ago that his mother would not understand me if I only learned to speak in fusha and I have heard a woman call into a fatwa show to ask a Saudi scholar a question and she spoke to him in her dialect and neither one of them understood what the other was saying so they had to ask another party to translate from Saudi Arabic to either Morrocan or Algerian Arabic (I can't remember which country she was from but it was one of those two) but I think most of the younger people understand Formal Arabic as well as some other dialects. My husband is Libyan and they speak a cross between Arabic and Italian there but he understands others from Tunisia (who speak Arabic/French) and Egyptians (I don't know what that dialect is a cross of) and pretty much any other dialect. He can usually tell me where someone is from just from hearing them speak in Arabic for a minute because he picks up on which dialect they are using.

If you're trying to learn to read and write then you can download and print the Madinah Books from Fatwa Online in their download section, which can be used with this website Madinah Arabic for free as well.

Good luck!