We met with Adam yesterday afternoon at Barnes & Noble here in town. Adam is the son of our CPA that I mentioned in the previous post. The meeting went very, very well! He brought a TON of books and materials he owns to show. We talked about why I was wanting to learn Arabic, and he agreed that learning Egyptian Arabic (a dialect) would be better than learning “Modern Standard”. After he learned that he could then sift through the stuff he brought and show me just the books and materials that would be the best fit for the specific goal.
He first recommended “Kullu Taman! An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic”. He said it is an amazing book for learning Egyptian Arabic. It comes with a CD recording of all the dialog included in the book, and all of the Arabic transliteration is excellent as well. He said that if I spent the time and got through the book (which would probably take a couple of months) that I would most likely be a solid intermediate Arabic speaker, and would be able to hold conversations with other Arabic speakers fairly well. So, of course, I’m planning on investing in this book.
He also recommended “Egyptian Arabic Vocab Clinic”. It is a download-able program that allows you to learn vocabulary words by playing them back at your own pace, creating lists of your “learned” words, and even print out those vocabulary lists if you want.
After looking at their site I see that the “Vocab Clinic” is only available for Windows computers. If you’re learning MSA they have a “Verb Clinic” available for Macintosh, but I am not… and I am on a Mac. One resource that I have found is the Before You Know It system. It has a free download of their “basic” version, works on both Windows and Mac, and is, from what I’ve seen, an excellent way to learn vocabulary. I need to find out, or make sure, that it is the Egyptian Arabic dialect that is being used in it however before I buy it.
He also suggested getting a subscription to an “Arabic TV Package” that Direct TV offers. He said that you have to have a separate satellite installed, and then it’s $20 or $30 a month, but that it’s worth it to be able to watch Arabic TV and listen to it all be spoken. Since we don’t have satellite or cable (and don’t want it) I told him about JumpTV.com which allows you to subscribe to television stations from the Middle-East and watch them on your computer. He hadn’t heard of this and was really excited about it!
Finally he allowed me to borrow his “text books” (they are photocopied and bound packets) from his courses at the American University in Cairo. These will be good when I’m a bit further along as they’re mostly written in Arabic.
So that’s where I am now. The Egyptian Arabic Pimsleur CDs aren’t here yet… though I’ve gone through the first lesson 4 times since last week and can already basically repeat the conversation verbatim. I’m excited to feel progress… and to have a better idea of resources.
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