|
Teach Yourself Arabic
I
love the Teach Yourself books, they are a hopped-up,
more intelligent version of the Dummy's books. Before
I picked up In-flight Arabic, I bought a cassette/book
set of Teach Yourself Arabic and started working through
the first few chapters.
The approach to language learning in the TY books
is to present short bits of grammar and background
and a little new vocabulary with each section. The
first few chapters focus on names, greetings, and
basic counting using realistic conversation examples.
This was bit more complex than other language books that I have, since
it also tries to teach the writing system at the same
time. I've determined that learning a new language
is hard enough without having to learn to recognize
and write a totally new system, as well. Arabic is
a beautiful written language, but it is very hard
to learn -- I gave up on anything other than recognizing
numbers after the first few tries. Each letter has
3-4 different versions, depending on where it comes
in the word, and the whole write-from-the-right-to-left
thing threw me off completely. It's not impossible,
but certainly hard for someone who just wants a basic
understanding of the spoken language. As a result, after
a few tries with the TY book and tapes, I moved on
to an audio-only language CD, which was a simpler
and quicker way to get to my goal, which was just
a few words to be polite.
Still, the book is a great introduction to the basic
spoken and written Arabic language, and the vocabulary
introduced is enough to get a good start on learning
Arabic. Vocabulary is introduced via common conversations,
and then the expressions that you have learned are
dissected for grammar and other rules.
If you have the time and motivation to learn on your
own, then these books are a good start; if you want
a comprehensive language course, then you should look
for one of the major learn-on-cassette or learn-on-cd
courses prepared by Berlitz or Living Language or
Pimsleur. The other courses are designed to walk
through learning the language in an orderly, well-designed
fashion with guided exercises.
|