Taru Luojola @Stoori@polyglot.city

Now that everyone is excited to learn #arabic in #duolingo, please remember that there's this excellent free audio course of Egyptian Arabic by @languagetransfer

https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#arabic

Although it doesn't teach you writing, I so much prefer the approach of Language Transfer over Duolingo. Give it a try!

Today, instead of actually studying #arabic, I made myself these beautiful Egyptian Arabic Thinker Vocabulary Cards by @languagetransfer. They're laminated and all, real beauties!

You can download your own cards from LT's web page, https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#arabic. They are actually in pretty colours, but I only have a BW printer, thus I converted all the colours to black.

The one side of these cards has roots, and the other has patterns. Really clever indeed!

Progress in #arabic script. There are a few mistakes, but generally I have a grip of this now. Reading and writing is still extremely slow, but now there's nothing but lack of exposure keeping me back. And that's easy to fix — just more exposure to all kinds of Arabic texts to get better at mechanical reading.

I've now started to listen to @languagetransfer's introduction to arabic. And I must say that I already like arabic so much.

This course is thoroughly spoken, so no need to read or know the alphabet. And all of a sudden arabic feels much easier, when the barrier to read doesn't even exist!

I love the way how words are formed with roots and patterns. I love this course.

Of course I'll learn to read later, but starting with speaking feels like an excellent choice.

#arabic #LanguageLearning

Quite a busy language day today. Not only did I begin with #Arabic script, I also dived a bit deeper into searching tutorial videos of Nederlandse Gebarentaal (or Dutch Sign Language).

Only downside of these sudden inspirations is that now I'm too tired to read that Spanish novel tonight.

Ok, I thought to start studying #Arabic only next year, but then I got a sudden inspiration to start practicing the alphabet already today.

I found this guide https://islamicstudiesprogram.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/arabic.pdf and started practicing, by hand of course, to get the feeling of the alphabet.

It's so ugly I'm crying. If I were in school, my teacher would probably cry, too. But hey, everyone must start from zero, right?