Conversational Arabic: Maha's Beginner Arabic Lessons

One of the best resources I found early on was "Arabic with Maha," on YouTube.  She teaches MSA, the audio in her videos is good quality, and the vocabulary she introduces is very useful.  She is a gifted teacher who explains things clearly, and she uses repetition techniques to promote recognition and memorization.  Furthermore, she includes on the video the Arabic text and the transliterated text for what she is saying, which lets you read along with her.  In particular, she has a series of 15 excellent beginner lessons, roughly 5 minutes each, which teach basic conversational Arabic--"Hi," "what's your name," "where are you from?" etc.--The first time I watched each of these videos, I wrote out the words as she taught them, pausing the video to read and copy the text on the screen.  I watched and listened to each of these videos several times thereafter, sometimes repeating out loud, sometimes paying particular attention to how the phrase is written in Arabic, sometimes just listening carefully to pronunciation.

I have compiled Maha's beginner lessons into a playlist here.  Sometimes I would just put the playlist on in the background while I did other things, and it kinda brainwashed its way into my head.  Watching Maha's Beginner Lesson Series for a bit every day taught me very quickly basic conversational expressions and simple questions and answers in Arabic.  I highly recommend using this resource early on to build your ability to read and speak Arabic.

Learning the Arabic Alphabet 2: Videos

It is important, not just for the purpose of pronunciation and recognition, but for memory, to hear and repeat letters and words as you learn.  Once I had my charts on the Arabic Alphabet, I immediately went to Youtube to see if there was some kind of Arabic Alphabet song, or other presentations on how to pronounce the letters properly.  I found many videos, however a good portion have sub-standard sound, or they don't move along at a very good pace, making learning tedious.  What can also throw someone off is that several videos pronounce the letters in dialect, not Modern Standard Arabic, without announcing that is what they're doing.  Below are 2 of the the better videos, which were effective at helping me learn the Arabic alphabet. 

The following video I found very useful, and it has gathered about 1 million views, so I'm not the only one!  This video is actually excellent because each letter is sung 3 times, each with the three essential Arabic vowels.  This really reinforces pronunciation and interpretation, and repetition is good for memory.  My Lebanese friend's Father told me this is the way kids sing the alphabet song where he came from:

Here is another video which moves along quickly, and very clearly pronounces each letter once.  This is a good accompanying video to the guide I've put below:

I used both of these videos initially to help me learn and remember the sounds of each letter, but I have also come back to them from time to time to listen more carefully and to iron out my own pronunciation of the letters which are harder to pronounce.

Now that I had my charts and these videos to reference the sounds of the Arabic letters, I thought the best thing to do next was to put my knowledge into practice by transliterating some English words, such as my name, into Arabic text, and even trying to read some Arabic words.  In my next post I will discuss how I wrote and read my first words in Arabic, which was the next logical thing to try after getting a handle on the sounds and look of the Arabic alphabet--and quite simple and beneficial for that matter.  Actually using the alphabet, for just a short time, did a lot to reinforce and ingraine the Alphabet in my memory.  By writing and reading the letters I was recognising their different sounds and forms quickly.

Learning the Arabic Alphabet 1: Resources and Reference Material

My first goal in learning Arabic was to be able to read and say all the letters.  I began by searching google and YouTube for reference material, looking for a good chart of the alphabet, as well as an alphabet song or video on reciting the alphabet.  Then I would learn to say and write a few words, to help the alphabet sink in and start to build a vocabulary.

What stuck with me is printout of the following chart:

This chart only shows the Isolated form of each letter, comparable to the "capital" form of each letter in English.  I quickly learned that it would be useful to have on hand a chart showing the Initial, Medial, and Final forms of letters as well.  I printed the following chart out on the back of the one above, which allowed me to recognise and read each letter of each Arabic word I ran across, even if I still couldn't understand them!:

These are the two reference papers that have stuck with me.  Several videos and self-tailored exercises also helped me to quickly memorize and be able to clearly hear, recognise and pronounce these letters.  I will look at the best of these videos in my next post:  Learning the Arabic Alphabet 2: Reference Videos