A bit.
Sigh...
Me too lol.
Need to learn it.
Well I'm taking Arabic next semester. How difficult is it to learn?
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
Well you gotta learn a whole new alphabet and its right to left and it has totally different vocabulary to the Romance, Latin languages etc. but other than that the grammar is similar to French with the masculine and feminine.
Ok, once you know formal Arabic, how easy is it to learn a dialect? I know that Arabic has many mutually unintelligible spoken dialects and to use it most effectively you have to know the local one..
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
Well the difference between the dialect i know teh North African and the Saudi one is quite significant as Algerian is a mix between turkish, french, Arabic, berber and Spanish so i would say if you knew how to get by in arabic the only way you;d learn a dialect is by living in the place and practising constantly.
What are you thinking of going into the NSA or Diplomatic services?
Military then probably State Department or Defense Intelligence Agency.
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
مادا تعمل
Insolent Recruiting?
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
Well one Spanish word meaning sugar; azúcar or arroz meaning rice.
and French is pretty widespread; taomobile from automobile. la piscine, la plonge. Plus every Algerian can speak at least conversational french and will pick and mix along with Turkish.
Alright lets practise. I can;t do question marks, but the bottom two are questions. You reply in English.
ان طالب
كيف الحال
من اين انت
my arabic class starts tmr as well ! lol
Damn, can't wait till I actually take the classes. According to google translation it means:
The student
How are you
Where are you from
Good, and Pennsylvania...
So in Arabic do you first address the target of your question? As in differently in English in which you mnany times the target is assumed.
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
إرهابي أنا
My favourite phrase. It took a while to learn the alphabet, but I got it now, I really could do with someone to speak it to face to face, kinda hard to get pronunciation without hearing it. My Arabic is pretty limited though, mainly basic stuff, and religious phrases.
One thing people slip up on is the "Al..." if the word after starts with Sheen, Seen, Daal, Noon, Zaa (and some others, which I forget) you double it, e.g. az-zawahiri, an-nasr, ash-shayk, as-saiqa, ad-deen.
Last edited by Serious Spamurai; May 11, 2008 at 09:55 AM.
Well I know someone who speaks Syrian and Iraqi Arabic, I can talk to him if I go find books and start using them to learn. And then I can be prepared when I start formal classes on it. I should retain this especially if nothing happens in the world and I get a free vacation in about 3 years to a certain nation that was once the capital of the largest nation in the world.
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler