Learning Arabic in Jeddah

Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

Learning the host language of a land you have come to helps your integration into that community. Learning Arabic can be quite a challenge to people coming to the Middle East, especially the Gulf. There are various challenges and this article describes my Jeddah experience with this:

Living and studying in Egypt

Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

This is a rather long post, it is an archive version of some old Egypt posts that some may still find useful. They are dated 2004/5 so some changes are to be expected. I never got a chance to write about health, visas and attitudes.

A brief word on health: most pharmacists are doctors and the first point of call for people in Egypt. Sadly polypharmacy comes easily to doctors in Egypt. Avoid the government hospitals for any major problems (operations etc.) my experience was very poor. Two hospitals that I had a good and very good experience with respectively were with the American Hospital and Cleopatra. Note you need to have place a hefty deposit up-front usually around 10-20 thousand Egyptian pounds on admission.  They do accept credit/debit cards.

An even briefer word on visas, renewal of visas is possible at the Home Ministry or known as the Mugammah, it is somewhere in the city centre, near the American University of Cairo and a stones throw from the British Airways office. There is a nice bookstore in the American University of Cairo and is worthwhile visiting at least once for dictionaries and modern Arabic literature.

A final addendum on attitude. Everyone seems to have a different experience in Egypt, but foreigners, once recognised as so, are usually targeted as fountains of money  and exploitation is the general rule of thumb. The attitude problem is unfortunately accentuated when the foreigners are black, sadly reflecting quite a racist under current amongst the general public. Personally I came away with a very positive impression of Egypt and its people but on talking to many other fellow travellers found this was not the majority experience.

The following sections had been covered and have been included in this post further down

Taxi!
Soaring temperatures in the middle of July
Expenses in Egypt (Part 1) Money
Expenses in Egypt (Part 2) Study
Expenses in Egypt (Part 3) Types of Accommodation
Expenses in Egypt (Part 4) Infrastructure
Expenses in Egypt (Part 5) Rental and Equipment Prices
Expenses in Egypt (Part 6) Bawwabs and Fix-it men
Expenses in Egypt (Part 7) Safety Culture
Expenses in Egypt (Part 8) Transport & Communication
Expenses in Egypt (Part 9) Daily Living Expenses

المشاكل في تعليم اللغة

كما يعلم الطالب تعلم اللغة أمر مستمر وبوصول الطالب إلى الجامعة لقد حصّل بدون تعب وشعور على وفير من الكلمات. ومن المشاكل الرئيسية التي يواجهها الطالب في تعلم اللغة الجديدة هو معرفة الكلمات الجديدة فهما ونطقا. لقد طلعت في الشبكة العالمية على ملخص للرسالة يركز على هذه المشكلة ويقدم بعد الاقتراحات المفيدة لتعليم الكلمات الجديدة.

من الجميل في هذه الرسالة أن من تعلم ألفي كلمة فقط سيمكّن من معرفة حاولي ثمانين بالمائة من الكلمات في ما يقرأ. والكلمة في الرسالة تشبه ما تكون من المصدر ومشتقاته.  لكن للأسف المتبقي من الكلمات العشرون بالمائة مفتاح لفهم الجملة. وللتمكن من تخمين معنى الكلمات المتبقية يحتاج الطالب أكثر. يحتاج معرفة خمسا وتسعين بالمائة من الكلمات في الجملة.

وللحصول على تلك القدرة يحتاج الى حفظ أكثر من ثلاثة آلاف كلمة – بمعنى الكلمة سبق. أتمنى أن يكون ما سبق مناسبا للغة العربية. نعم هذه الرسالة طويلة المحتوي لكنها مهمة لمن يهتم بهذا المجال خاصة لمن يحاول أن يصل إلى درجة الطلاقة في اللسان تساوي درجة الخريج بنسبة معرفة الكلمات وهو 20000 كلمة

English

Arabic – How many words do I need?

Bismillah alhamdulillah.

Language learning is a continuous process and without realising it by the time a student reaches university they have a very wide ranging vocabulary. One of the major problems that learners of a new language face is vocabulary acquisition, getting new words into their receptive and expressive memories. There is an interesting PhD Research proposal which looks at this problem and offers some interesting ideas and vocabulary acquisition strategies.

The good news is that by just knowing 2000 word families a person will understand 80% of the words he reads. The bad news is that the 20% of words that remain are the key to understanding the meaning. Also guessing the meaning of the new words from context is not possible when you only know 80% of the words. The silver lining to the cloud is that if you understand 95% of the words then you can have a much better chance of successfully guessing the meaning of the remaining words. You can achieve this by having a vocabulary of 3000 word families. Though a guess it is probably not a bad estimate that this applies equally to knowledge of Arabic roots.

Though quite long it is a valuable read for anyone interested in the topic or struggling to learn those elusive 20,000 word families that will give university level proficiency in a target language!