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Vacation

April 15, 2012

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I am on vacation for the next 10 days, so see you when I get back!

Best,

Matt

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Wrapping your Head around the Arabic Alphabet

This is the first of my 'educational' posts, where I try to explain and contextualize some of the challenges that face Arabic language learners. Trust me, I know them from experience. To begin, learning Arabic is hard. The Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department ranks it among the 5 most difficult languages for Native English Speakers to learn (along with four Asian languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean). There are a lot of reasons for this difficulty ranging from the nature of the language itself (its grammar, syntax, etc.) to the lack of opportunities to learn Arabic before the University level and shortcomings in the curriculum and approach to learning Arabic in the U.S. One of the first hurdles the Arabic language learner must overcome is the Alphabet .

Movie Review: Saladin the Victor

Ahmed Mazhar as Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi in Yusef Shaheen's: Saladin the Victor Egypt is the Hollywood of the Middle East. From the 1950s onward, Egypt established itself as the Arab film industry's home and earned the favor of Arab cinema goers for its multitude of quality productions. As the Arab Pop Culture landscape has changed in the past 15 years with the rise of satellite television networks and growing popularity of television soap operas, مسلسلات, Egypt remains a huge producer of films. Among the classic works of Egyptian cinema is the historical epic الناصر صلاح الدين Saladin the Victor released in 1963 by Producer-Director يوسف شاهين Yusef Shaheen and starring أحمد مظهر Ahmed Mazhar as Salah al-Din Al-Ayyubi.

Moroccan Arabic Review: Present Tense Verbs

Grammar Review: The Present Tense Verb conjugation in Moroccan Arabic is almost identical to Standard Arabic, with a notable exceptions. The first is that present tense verbs have two prefixes. One is either the letter ta - ت - or ka - ك . Both are interchangeable and their usage irregular. This prefix is always at the beginning of the verb, before the subject prefixes. These letters are like the ba used in Egyptian Arabic. The subject prefixes are the letters we all know that indicate the subject of the present tense verb. These are all identical to those in Standard Arabic, except for the First Person which uses n - ن - instead of alif. Regular Verbs Regular verbs are verbs that have three consonant letters as their root. Here is a chart showing the present tense conjugation using the verb safara - سافر - "to travel". I travel: ana kansafr - أنا كنسافر You (m.) travel: anta katsafr - أنت كتسافر You (f.) travel: anti katsafri -

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