I am an Arabic language teacher at a major university in Detroit, the idea that the Arabic language is so hard is wrong, try to learn it if you are looking for a culture journey I am willing to tutoring. Learning a language is a gate to understand another people culture and the Arabic culture is so rich in poetry, literature, and arts.
I suppose a new language must be harder to learn if the writing, the alphabet is different.
I'll be starting Arabic classes taught at the local mosque soon. I think the emphasis at first is going to be learning to read/write the alphabet. It's been on my bucket list for a few years, so if you have any resources to suggest, I'd love to know.
I have no desire to visit any of the Muslim countries because too many are dangerous and standard of living so deplorable.
My father comes from a Greek family that lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He spoke several languages and I was wondering if that's the norm for Egyptians or was it the era in which he grew up there.
I found Arabic hard, but a lot of that is because the writing system doesn't show all the vowels. I bought a language course that teaches "Gulf Arabic" using Roman letters throughout, and it was much easier work with, but I had nothing else to read after I reached the end of it and so I made no further progress, but I intend to get back to it some day when artificial intelligence makes the language more accessible.
As soon as you try to learn more vocabulary by reading texts, you hit the problem that you don't know how to pronounce the sounds that aren't included by the writing system, and that's why not having access to lots of texts with the vowels all shown is a major barrier to learning Arabic. Calling it a crutch is an error - it's much faster to learn a language if you have proper access to it. Native speakers of Arabic are exposed to the full words and don't have to guess what the vowels are. Whn thy lrn t rd ltr, t's mch easier for them to do that because they already know all the words as they're approaching reading from the starting point of fluency. Trying to learn the language without that advantage is simply stupid, and the difficulty of learning Arabic relates more to this stupidity than any other factor. The same issue applies to all other languages with deficient writing systems, and in every case the cure is the same - make the language more accessible to learners and the success rate will shoot up.
Learned to speak Arabic fluently with my Palestinian ex-husband and his family. 10 years without practice, since it's not much use in Phoenix. Focused more on my Spanish.
Still working on my German. I'd like to learn Russian and Mandarin as well. May I please live until I'm 120 so I can learn Arabic as well?
Posted by David_CooperBrazil's native language groups
Posted by David_CooperI like language maps - if you find any, please share them here.
Posted by JettyWhen a word has more than one meaning. 🤣
Posted by David_CooperTest your French
Posted by JettyIneptocracy
Posted by JettyI wonder if this works in any other language, though, in Chinese, for example.
Posted by JettyWait! You don't pronounce the L?! 😂
Posted by David_CooperI've often seen these in English, but doubtless the rest of the world does them too.
Posted by David_CooperShrödinger's cat
Posted by misternatureboyAnybody else using Duolingo to study another language? Estoy estudiando español.
Posted by EquusDanceJust read a fascinating article on the origins of language.