ARABIC LANGUAGE FOR BEGINNERS

ARABIC LANGUAGE FOR BEGINNERS

Arabic is a very old language and alive today nobody today knows exactly how old it is. However the most conservative estimate in its written form it already exceeds 1,500 years. The proof thereof is that the Quran text was recorded onto animal skins and tree bark, during the time of revelation. That said, Arabic as a spoken language has been is common use since the Iron Age and is currently spoken as their mother tongue by more than 400 million people across at least 22 countries. 

Arabic is also the liturgical language for prayer, used by some 2 billion Muslims globally. Most of them are able to read the Arabic script with fluency eventhough many do not understand the Arabic language,

As such learning Arabic is in great demand and it's probably in greater demand today than it was between the 7th and the 20th century; during which time Arabic was the dominant language of scholarship throughout the Islamic empire. Islamic knowledge recorded in book form in Arabic by Arabic scholars was the impetus that dragged Europe out of the dark ages, hence many of the most advanced people in their fields of study today, learn Arabic for scientific and anthropological reasons, though most of them are not necessarily Muslim. 

Having said that, Arabic as a language is not exclusive to Muslims, there are millions of Jordanian Maronites, Lebanese Melkites, Syriac Christians, Egyptian Coptic Christian, Melkites , Israeli Arameans and Palestinian Christians, etc, all of whom speak Arabic. Beside Arabic bibles have been in print for hundreds of years.  The oldest Arabic bible known is the Mt. Sinai Arabic Codex 151, dated to 867 CE. It's kinda peculiar that most people never even heard of Christian Arabs but the reality of the situation is that pagan Arabs have lived in the Middle East prior to the birth of Christianity and have embraced it since. 

Bishr Ibn Al-Sirri's translation of the Arabic codex

Be that as it may, whatever your reason is for learning Arabic, it is very commendable because Arabic is your gateway to he greatest books of Medicine, Science, Geology, Law, Logic, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Poetry and basically any subject imaginable, all of which were written by the likes of 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi, Ibn Sina, Al-Khwarazmi,  Al-Razi, Al-Biruni, Sibawayh, Al-Ghazali, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn Khaldun to mention but a few. 

Many of these Arabic masterpieces have never been translated into English nor any other language, hence it can only be appreciated once Arabic is fully mastered. Likewise the nuances and the miraculous nature of the Qur'an leaps out at you once you understand Arabic, regardless of your religious beliefs because the Qur’an is undeniably, undoubtedly and unequivocally, the greatest form of Arabic literature ever. If truth be told, it is unquestionably the greatest form of literature, period. It is not wonder that hundreds of millions of people from all walks of life learn the Arabic language in order to bear firsthand witness to this very fact.

But like all things great, you have have to start at the beginning. The image below is the a copy of the  Arabic Alphabet (abjad) aka  لأَبْجَدِيَّة العَرَبِيَّة‎ al-abjadiyah al-ʻarabiyah or الحُرُوف العَرَبِيَّة al-huruf al-ʻarabīyah.  As you can see there are 29 letters,  Normally, hamza isn't considered as a letters but I've include it. The main feature in each block is a large red  Arabic consonant along with its Arabic name above in the right hand corner (You are not expected to be able to read them yet unless you are already Arabic literate) and its transliterated name beneath is in green.  The  yellow box containing their numerical order emphasize  that Arabic characters are read from right to left. 

The Roman uppercase character in the sky blue in the lower left hand corner represents the sound or at least the approximate sound of the Arabic character in English. The faint dotted lines shows the base line position of each character when written and it can be seen that several of them straddle this line.  For now just notice their basic shapes and look at the differences between those characters that look alike. Make special observance of the dots below and above each character. To hear the pronunciation  of each of these characters, download the videos lessons No. 1 to 9 here.

Arabic consonants in their initially / stand-alone form

In the bottom right hand corner of the above image, notice that there is either a symbol of a sun or a symbol of a moon. For now, recognize them as Sun letters   حُرُوفٌ شَمْسِيَّةٌ hurufun shamsiyyatun (assimilating) and Moon letters, حُرُوفٌ قَمَرِيَّةٌ hurufun qamariyyatun (non-assimilating). (Don't worry, it will all be explained in due course).  The above graphic is 150 mm x 150 mm in size and be downloaded as the first in a series of downloadable flashcards for quick and easy study of the Arabic language.

ARABIC MADE SIMPLE 2

ARABIC MADE SIMPLE

As explained in the previous blog. Regardless of language, there are roughly only six pronouns, used to refer to people. Three of them are used for singular, viz he/she, you and I ( singular) -  and three plural, viz they/them, you (all of you)  and us (plural). Once you grasp this concept, referring to anyone becomes quite simple. For example , in our  discussion on "nominative" we see the following. Accusative, dative and genitive will be dealt with later when appropriate. But for now, have a look at the masculine and feminine pronouns in the six languages  

Masculine Personal Pronouns

Feminine Personal pronouns

As can be seen, there is  a huge amount of overlap between masculine and feminine of all the above languages. Here both masculine and feminine singular 1st and 2nd person pronouns are identical and likewise both masculine and feminine plural 1st and 2nd person pronouns are also identical. This implies there are no specifics. Meaning "You" remains "You" for both singular and plural whether male or female. So whn speaking about a group of men there is no way of determining this from the context and the same applies to a group of women. However in Arabic there is specifics. 

When speaking to a male one uses  انتَ (anta) and when speaking to a female one uses انتِ  anti. When speaking to a group of men one uses أنتم (antum) and when speaking to a group of females one uses أنتن (antunna). But when one speaks about a group of men one uses هم (homa) and when speaking about a group of women one uses هن (hunna).  The beauty of the Arabic language is that it also has specific pronouns for dual which other languages don't have.

It is therefore in your interest to learn Arabic nominative pronouns in the table below. These are based on a pattern. Once mastered, it will make understanding Arabic so much easier. However this is but an iota of what is still in store. All languages tend to list their pronouns as 1st person, 2nd person then 3rd person. Arabic however starts with 3rd person then 2nd person then 3rd person. Remember Arabic is an ancient language and was in use way before English Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc were even formulated. Besides these languages drew vocabulary from Arabic,  use the Arabic numbering system and certainly loan some of its grammar rules. So Arabic should be considered the mother language. However, for the sake of comparison the table below list them like the tables above.  

Arabic Nominative table for Masculine 

But when learning them, leaving out dual for now, remember them as huwa, hum, 'anta 'antum, 'anna, 'nahnu  for masculine.

Arabic Nominative table for Feminine 

And likewise for feminine, leaving out dual for now, remember them as hiya, hunna, 'anti, 'antunna, 'anna nahnu.

The logic behind this will become clearer at a later stage when we deal with it.


Arabic, Arabic made easy, Classical Arabic, lughatul arabiyyah, Modern Standard Arabic, MSA, Islam, Quran, Hadith, Nahu, Sarf, 

ARABIC MADE SIMPLE

AHLAN WA SAHLAN - WELCOME

Arabic is an ancient semitic language that has stood the test of time, which hardly changed  in more than 1500 years. Today, it is still a living language spoken by more than 400 million Arabs living in 22 countries bordering North Africa and situated the Middle East, essentially spanning two continents. Arabic is also spoken in the Comores Islands.  However, 400 million is not a true reflection of all the Arabic speakers of the world, since there are several millions of non-Arab, Arabic speakers, living outside of Arab countries. To further impact on this figure, Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the Qur'an, and attested to by more than 2 billion Muslims throughout the modern world. Because Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, which has been orally preserved, handed down from huffaath  to huffaath since its revelation to this very day, Classical Arabic (lughatul arabiyyah) remained in its pristine unchanged state all this time. It is said that Arabic is the "fourth" most spoken language in the world but its best that you be the judge of that.

Colours represent countries where Arabic is widely spoken

Undoubtedly Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world yet it is not widely spoken throughout the world but rather confined to China. However China has a large  Muslim population many of whom read, speak and prayer in Arabic especially among the  Hui, Dongxiang, and the Salar . They even use a Perso-Arabic Script to write  Xiao'erjing  script which is also written from right to left. 

A Chinese-Arabic-Xiaoerjing dictionary from the
early days of the People's Republic of China.

 An Arabic book on Islamic ritual, with a parallel Chinese translation
in the  Xiao'erjing script, published in Tashkent in 1899

English is said to be the second most spoken language in the world yet there a very few countries where English is predominantly spoken other than the  British Isles, Australia and the United States of America.  Having said that, the United Kingdom is supposed to be the home of English but we find large groups of people speak Shelta and Irish -the language spoken  in Ireland. Scottish -the language spoken in Scotland. Cornish -the language spoken in Cornwall England. Manx Gaelic -the language spoken in the Isle of Man. Welsh -the language spoken in Wales. In Australia only 77% of its population speaks English. The balance of its inhabitants speak either indigenous languages, Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and of course Arabic. In the USA most people speak English as a second language because America is made up of global emigrants from every conceivable country. Grandparents and parents tend to raise their offspring speaking their mother tongue which in most cases is not English.

However, English is also spoken in Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Israel, Lesotho, Liberia, Malaysia, Micronesia, Namibia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Tonga, Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, many Caribbean states, Zambia, etc. But each of these countries have 2 or more indigenous languages with some have as many as 11 languages, South Africa in particular and there are other countries that have even more.  

Spanish is rated as the third most spoken language in the world. Be that as it may, the mere fact that Arabs ruled Spain for more than 800 years implies that the Spanish language even though said to be of Roman origin contains more Arabic vocabulary than any other languages that's been influence by Arabic. With the colonization of the Americas Spanish is widely spoken in South America and Mexico but also as a second language. Many of the older South American country's people speak one or more of the native Indian tongues indigenous to that specific country. Quechuan, Aimaran, Aymara and Mapudungun are  co-official languages spoken alongside Spanish.

ARABIC MADE SIMPLE

Arabic can roughly be divided into three categories, viz Colloquial Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic can be described as spoken Arabic influenced or somewhat corrupted by other languages spoken in a region. For example, Arabic spoken in the Levant, is marginally   influenced by Aramaic, Armenian, Circassian, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ladino and Turkish and is  quite different from Hijazi Arabic spoken in Arabia and not completely mutually  understood, yet the amount of classical Arabic words in both dialects still renders it comprehensible by the Levantine and Hijazi speakers.  Amongst the various Arabic dialects, the "North African Arabic" dialect is spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Tanzania and Sudan,; then there is  the "Egyptian Arabic" dialect spoken in Egypt, parts of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan; and lastly there is "Gulf Arabic" that is spoken in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Whereas Modern Standard Arabic is the Arabic used by newspapers, Television, Movies makers, book publishers and news broadcast throughout the Arab World and is fully understood by all throughout the Arab World. MSA is the language that all students of the Arabic language needs to acquire to be able to universally communicate with all Arabic speaking communities. But Classical Arabic is the Arabic of Qur'an and used for prayer by the 2 billion Muslims throughout the world. 

Al-Qur'an nil-Kareem

Classical Arabic is unique in its style, pronunciation, verse and rhyme and can be said to be as different from MSA as old Shakespearean English sounds different from modern day English.

And We have certainly made the Qur'an easy for remembrance, so is there any
who will remember? Chapter 54 / Sūratul-Qamar (The Moon)

Arabic made simple,  will concentrate on  MSA and Classical Arabic which will very quickly give students a good grounding in the construction,  morphology ( sarf) and grammar (naghu) of the the Arabic language. Having said that, any language is fairly easy to learn once the verbs are mastered, the rest is just vocabulary. But first, I need to introduce the concept of conjunction and pronouns. Regardless of language, there are roughly only six pronouns, three singular and three plural. viz. he/she, you and I ( singular). They/them, you all, and us (Plural). Once this is well understood, referring to anyone becomes simple, as will be demonstrated in the next blog.