Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 October 2005 11:27:36
Three lessons thus far. And I love it.
It's darn difficult though. Very, very difficult. But I love it. Because it is so different for one: it is fascinating to learn the script and learn words which bear no resemblance to English words. I love it because of the class: a fantastic group of people, and a great mix: from people like me wanting to learn for fun, to those wanting to learn for study, to those who want to speak to relatives in a family they've married into; to those wanting to learn as they have converted to Islam and want to read the Qur'an; to those who are Arabic and can speak Arabic, but can't read or write. And I love it because of the teacher: she makes learning this difficult language enjoyable. She is a hoot!
The first level of the course is taken up with learning the alphabet and the sounds. Here is the Arabic alphabet. We have learnt the first eleven letters and the final two letters thus far. We've also learnt the vowels and the various markings for short vowels. As you can see, the letters can take different forms depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the word. In addition, some letters connect to following letters (letters on the left -- for Arabic is written right-to-left); and some letters do not. As I said: very different from English.
Tonight I reviewed ﺩ (daal - like our d) and ﺫ (thaal - like our 'th' in that), two of the letters we learnt last lesson. I'm dreading reviewing ﺭ (raa - like our r) as it has the rolling sound found in Spanish or Italian which I can't do. But with a bit of practice, God willing, I may get there!