Learning Arabic; Entry 1.

I'm going to be cataloging my progress on here for the sake of archival and just to give myself a sense of progression.

After a long break, I'm getting into learning Arabic again. Previously, I was attempting to learn Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) with Duolingo, but I jumped ship due to both stress as well as having problems with Duolingo as a company. All I was perticularly taught by Duolingo was a few Arabic letters and the concept of letters having different contextual forms, which was helpful I will admit. For around 6 or 7 months, all I could write in Arabic was "beep" (or, I guess "beeb"), but now I'm back on trying to learn it for real.

Firstly, I did some research on the dialect of Arabic I wanted to learn. Modern Standard Arabic, while being the offical language of most Arab countries, is not very widely spoken at all. Most areas have their own dialects and subdialects, with Egyptian Arabic being the most widely spoken if I'm not mistaken.

I myself am Palestinian, and am learning Arabic to connect more to my cultural identity. Palestinian Arabic is it's own dialect, but is very hard to find resources to learn online. On top of that, Palestinian Arabic is not a monolith, and has many dialects of it's own. 

The Palestinian part of my family is from Al-Quds (Jerusalem), which is it's own dialect. Unfortunately, trying to learn find resources to learn THIS dialect only gives me pages directing me to take classes to learn Arabic (not even Jerusalem dialect- Just ambiguous Arabic) in Al-Quds, which isn't exactly achievable or even safe for me.

So, I had to go broader. I've decided that the closest I can find easily accessable resources for is Levantine Arabic, which is commonly spoken throughout the entire Levant region.

I found a YouTube course, and although it isn't exactly a college level education I'm going to start here. Today, I took my first lesson on essential words; this one focusing specifically on food.

My studying strategy is as follows:

 Every time a word is said, I will write it down in Arabic, then write the pronunciation in the Latin alphabet, then write the English translation. Then, I will go into my voice memo app on my phone and record myself saying the word.

The words I learned (or at least began learning) this time were

Akel (Food)

Wa3-beh (a meal)

F'toor (breakfast)

El gha-da (lunch)

El 'asha (dinner)

wa3-beh kha-fee-feh (snack)

salata (salad)

Ahweh/Gahweh/Qahweh (coffee) 

Shai (tea)

7aleeb (milk)

'aseer (juice)

Khobez (bread)

Khobzeh (a piece of bread)

3eb-neh (cheese)

Sand-wee-sheh (sandwich)

Rozz (rice)

Show-raba (soup)

Bharatt (spices)

Hhar (spicy)

Fa-wa-keh (fruit)

Tof-fa-hha (an apple)

Tof-fa-hh (apples)

Mozeh (a banana)

Moz (bananas)

Lei-moo-neh (a lemon)

Lei-moon (lemons)

Burd-aaneh/Burd-gaaneh/Burd-kaaneh (an orange)

Burd-aan/Burd-kaan/Burd-gaan (oranges)

Out of all of these, I easily had the most trouble with El gha-da. "Gh" is actually a stand in for the letter ghayn.

Ghayn is a voiced trill from the back of the throat. I had to look up separate materials in order to be able to pronounce it, but I eventually landed on an approximate pronunciation.

All in all, I really hope I'm able to internalize this info and actually learn something. I've always had trouble learning new languages but hopefully, as this is self managed, I'll do better this time.

If anyone has any tips on how I can improve my study habits or anything of the sort I'd appricate it!