Okay, learning Arabic isn't an easy thing to do, but I truly think it's easier than other supposedly easier languages, like French, or Spanish, or German.
There's a lot I really like about learning Arabic, but one thing I dislike is the stigma that Arabic is a ridiculously hard language to learn. Even some organizations propagate this idea, like the Defense Language Institute which ranks Arabic with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in difficulty for English speakers (even harder than Amharic?) which I frankly find hard to believe. I don't believe Arabic is the easiest language to learn, or the easiest for English speakers. But I think this commonly-held idea of "Arabic is so hard I'm never gonna learn Arabic oh god this is insane how does anyone speak this language" is unhelpful and demotivating. So here's a rant, to be taken with a grain of salt.
(This isn't one of my homework blog posts for INTL4494.)
Writing System
Arabic looks like a bunch and dots and squiggles at first, and takes a while to get used to. Once you do, however, the writing system turns out to be extremely well suited to the language. After all, it was literally designed to record the spoken language with great fidelity. For one, there's almost a one-to-one correspondence of sound and letter. For example, the sound "z" = ز, every time, and ز only sounds like "z".
There are a few exceptions, but they all have grammatical significance. For example, the sun letters. Many Arabic words start with "ال/al", which means "the" and makes the word definite ex. "البيت/al-beit", the house, or "الكرسي/al-kursi", the chair. Sometimes ال is pronounced differently.
الشمس/ash-shams "the sun", instead of al-shams
السيارة/as-siyaarah "the car", instead of al-siyaarah
Even though the ل is pronounced differently, it's still useful to write ل every time, because then every word with that prefix looks the same. الشمس، السيارة، الزيارة، الرئيس، الصف. The ل is pronounced differently in each of those words, but at a glance you can see they are all definite nouns with "the" at the front.
Gender is present in Arabic, and one letter consistently marks the female gender, ة. Being at the end of a word makes the word feminine. It gives a final "a" sound to words.
مهندس = male engineer "mohandis". مهندسة = female engineer "mohandisa"
طالب = male student "Taalib" طالبة = female student "Taaliba"
كلب = dog (masculine) "kelb" قطة = cat (feminine) "qiTTa"
The final "a" can be ambiguous. After all words like سوريا/suuria end with an "a". But the ة at the end almost always guarantees a female gendered word (except for rare exceptions), and adjectives can be made female to suit nouns.
مهندسة صغيرة/mohandisA saghiirA = young female engineer
قطة كبيرة/qittA kabiirA = large cat
Grammatical Points
You might of heard that French has 15 different tenses for nuances in time. How many does Arabic have? Two. Past/perfect, and present/imperfect. That's it. Nuances in time are determined by context. For example, if I say أكتب صفحةً على مدونتي غداً it literally means "I am writing a post on my blog tomorrow". But obviously it's clear that it means that in the future, tomorrow, I'll do it, not literally this second. When French creates a "near future" vs. "far future" tense, for example, Arabic just uses context. There is a future prefix to verbs, -س which marks any present tense verb in the future, but not an entire set of conjugations. It's just the same prefix, for every verb in the language. Every verb.
In addition, Arabic conjugations are extremely regular. Take any verb, slap نا at the end of it, and it means "we did (whatever the verb is)".
درسنا - we studied
خرجنا - we left
تعلمنا - we learned
انقطعنا - we were cut off
استمتعنا - we enjoyed
استخدمنا - we employed/used
This suffix works for every single verb in the language. Every single verb. Place a ي at the beginning and a ون at the end and you get "they are doing (verb)".
يدرسون - they are studying
يصحون - they are waking up
يتبادلون - they are exchanging something
ينقطعون - they are being cut off
يستمعون - they are listening
يستخدمون - they are using/employing
Every. Single. Verb.
Sometimes you have to tweak the base of the verb, the letters that make up the verb itself. But there are only six patterns for these bases: sound verbs, hamzated verbs, doubled verbs, assimilated verbs, hollow verbs, and defective verbs. Once you learn how to use these six patterns, you're golden. Every verb in the language falls into one of these categories, and they're like 90% the same anyway.
Also, pronouns are pretty easy. In Arabic, there's pronouns as a subject of a sentence, pronouns as an object of a sentence, and pronouns to mark possession. For example, we is naHnu or sometimes iHna. نحن جوعان جدا/naHnu ju3aan jeddan = we are very hungry. To say "our ____" just stick نا/na at the end of a noun.
كتابنا/kitaabna = our book. To say that something is being done to us, just stick نا/na at the end of a verb.
ساعدتنا/saa3adtana = you helped us. To say "to us" or "on us" or "(any preposition) us), place نا/na at the end of it.
إلينا/ileina = to us. Easy, right? Almost all the object pronouns are the same as the possessive/preposition pronouns, which sound a lot like the subject pronouns.
هو/huwwa = he, هُ/hu = him/his
هي/hiyya = she, ها/ha = hers/her
هم/hom = they, هم/hom = them, their
Plus some conjugations sound like their pronouns.
نا/na = our/us, درسنا/darasNA = we studied
انتم/anTUM = you (plural), درستم/daraTUM = you (plural) studied
أنا/Ana = I, أدرس/Adrus = I study
Also, it's easy to tell which part of speech many words fall into. If a word ends in ة, it's an adjective or noun, or what Arabic grammars call an اسم/ism, "name". If it ends in a اً, it's an adverb, or the object of a verb (which some grammars call an adverb in a sense). If it starts with ال, it's a definite ism (note, different from أل). The rules I listed here have no exceptions (that I'm aware of).
Lastly, irregularities exist in Arabic like any language that isn't Esperanto. Even the semi-created Fusha is still a natural, widely-used language for a very long period of time. However, many irregularities exist, not because of simply natural evolution, but because they are purposefully created to make the language sound good. As it was explained to me by Saudi student at my university, the Arabs who codified Arabic wanted to make the Arabic language as beautiful as possible, and when the rules of the language led to a result that didn't sound good, they made an exception.
Also, many of the irregularities deal with a subject called i3rab, or الإعراب, a subject I am neither qualified nor interested in explaining. Even most Fusha ignores i3rab, which is reserved for the highest, most formal register of Arabic (if I understand correctly). If you ignore i3rab, you also ignore much of the irregularities that seemingly don't have much explanation besides "it sounds better this way".
Also frankly, a lot of weird irregularities are in words people no longer use from Qur'anic and classical Arabic. It's a tree falling in a forest kind of deal. If a word is highly irregular but no one uses it, does anyone care?
Roots and Wazn
This is the real reason why Arabic grammar, in my opinion, is not that bad. Get ready for a long and esoteric explanation (if you're bothering to read this anyway).
The root of any almost native Arabic word (so not loanwords from English, Spanish, Turkish, etc.) is a three letter combination. There are rare words with four letter combinations, but they're rare. This combination has a meaning, and every derived word will have a related meaning.
Ex. ك - ت - ب : writing (k - t - b)
كَتَبَ/kataba = he wrote, يكتبون/yaktubuun = they are writing, كاتب/kaatib = writer, كتّب/kattaba = he caused to write, كتاب/kitaab = book مكتب/maktab = office, مكتبة/maktaba = library, أكتَبَ/aktaba = he dictated, and the examples are endless.
See anything in common? k-t-b in that order. These letter combinations are called roots. Any Arabic word with that root will have some meaning that has to do with writing.
So this means that words with related meaning look and sound like each other. Look at the english equivalents of those words. "Writer" "wrote" and "writing" sound similar. But what about "library" or "office" or "dictate"? Or "bookstore", "correspond", "document", "registered (written/recorded somewhere)", or "book", other words derived from k-t-b in Arabic? In English, all these words sound and spell completely differently, with no clear phonological, morphological, or lexical connection. You can't know these words are related in meaning until you actually know all of these words.
Now roots are one part that make an Arabic word, what's the other part? Well every Arabic word with roots also has a certain pattern with a certain grammatical meaning. These patterns are called wazn, and they're presented using three letters, ف-ع-ل/f-3-l as a filler, in which a root can be replaced to form a meaningful word. Here's some examples.
فَعَلَ = fa3ala, he/it did (root)
- قرأ = qara'a, he read
- ذكر = dhakara, he mentioned
- خرج = xaraja, he left/exited
يفعلون = yaf3aluun, they do (root)
- يقرؤون = yaqra'uun, they read
- يذكرون = yadhkaruun, they mention
- يخرجون = yaxrujuun, they exit/leave
Now this seems pretty normal. But wait, there's more! There's the active participle, the doer of an action, and the passive participle, the thing/person the action is being done on.
فاعل = faa3il, the doer of (root), the one who does ___
- كاتب = kaatib, writer (the one who writes)
- لائب = laa'ib, player (the one who plays)
- عالم d= 3aalim, scholar (one who knows/learns)
مفعول = maf3uul, the receiver of an action
- مكتوب = maktuub, written/document (thing that writing is done on)
- محبوب = maHbuub, loved/loved one (person that loving is done on)
But wait, there's more! There's wazn for certain lexical meanings to.
فَعْلان = fa3laan, a human feeling. تعبان/ta3baan = tired, حرّان/Harraan = hot, جوعان/jaw3aan = hungry, عطشان/d,3aTshaan = thirsty
مَفْعَل = maf3al, a location to do something. مطبخ/maTbax = kitchen, مكتب/maktab = office, مكان/makaan = place (location to exist), مدخل/madxal = entrance
فَعيل = fa3iil, a tangible description and a very common wazn. كبير/kabiir = big/old, طويل/Tawiil = tall/long, كثنر/kathiir = many/numerous, لذيذ/ladhiidh = delicious, قديم/qadiim = old
And there are plenty of these patterns any Arabic student will pick up.
But wait, there's more! There's wazn to create verbs with specialized meanings based on a root.
فَعَلَ/fa3ala is the basic meaning of the verb
فَعَّلَ/fa33ala is a verb that causes the fa3ala meaning. darrasa = teach (cause to study), xarraja = graduate someone (cause to leave), kattaba = cause to write
فاعَلَ/faa3ala is a verb that is like the fa3ala verb but involving someone or something else. shaahada = watch (something/someone), kaataba = correspond (write with someone else), 3aamala = deal with/treat (act upon someone/something)
تَفَعَّلَ/tafa33ala is a verb where the fa33ala verb is caused upon the subject.
- تعلّم/ta3allama = learn (teaching/3allama is done upon subject)
- تغيّر/taghayyara = be changed/altered (changing/ghayyara is being done upon the subject)
- تذكّر/tadhakkara = remember (reminding/dhakkara is being done upon the subject)
And there's many more of these verb wazn. Ten of them to be exact. And there's more in very obscure and classical Arabic, but hardly anyone uses them anymore. And some of them have specialized and specific meanings. If you want to see a nice explanation of each verb wazn, click here.
Now there's ten forms, or wazn of a root, that can create ten verbs of related but similar meanings, numbered 1-10 (simplest/most common to longest/most abstract/least common). And each of those forms can be conjugated for grammatical context like who did it, and each form has faa3il, maf3uul, verbal noun, present, and past wazn. That's a lot of conjugations and a lot of possible verbs derived from one root. BUT, this is still a lot easier than European languages like French or English, because in those languages all these words would be completely unrelated. Whereas say 250 possible verbs and conjugations are formed form the same root in Arabic, French would have 10 or 15, maybe 20 different roots and origins for the corresponding words. Also in Arabic, these patterns are VERY regular with very few exceptions (except for wazn 1, which still only has 5 patterns of verb "irregularities").
Now hearing that there's ten forms to know sounds daunting at first, but there's really small differences between many wazn. For example, the faa3il for the forms. Take a look.
Wazn II: فعّل/fa33ala = مفعّل/mufa33il
Wazn III: فاعل/faa3ala = مفاعل/mufaa3il
Wazn V: تفعّل/tafa33ala = متفعّل/mutafa33il
Wazn VI: تفاعل/tafaa3ala = متفاعل/mutafaa3il
Wazn VIII: إفتعل/ifta3ala = مفتعل/mufta3il
Wazn X: إستفعل/istaf3ala = مستفعل/mustaf3il
Basically it's just sticking مُ/mu- to the beginning of the verb and changing the last vowels. See the patterns? This isn't all ten, and I is honestly different and less predictable, but II-X are related in logical and regular ways. I don't know about you, but it's honestly beautiful in my opinion. And what about the maf3uul?
Wazn II: فعّل/fa33ala = مفعّل/mufa33al
Wazn III: فاعل/faa3ala = مفاعل/mufaa3al
Wazn V: تفعّل/tafa33ala = متفعّل/mutafa33al
Wazn VI: تفاعل/tafaa3ala = متفاعل/mutafaa3al
Wazn VIII: إفتعل/ifta3ala = مفتعل/mufta3al
Wazn X: إستفعل/istaf3ala = مستفعل/mustaf3al
Exactly the same, except for the last vowel. Which makes sense, as they're very related in meaning.
One big advantage of this system is that you can pinpoint which sounds in Arabic have what kind of meaning. Some sounds/letters are only used in roots, like ق، ر، or ذ. If you hear or see these sounds, you know they must be root letters, and are meaningful. Think about it. Many Arabic letters are meaningful just by their inclusion in a word, and the literal sound itself is attached to a set number of possible roots and possible meanings. Does the "th" sound tell you anything about a word in English? Or the "zh/j/ge" sound in French? The closest thing I can think of is the "ph" glyph/sound, which tells you that a word is of Greek origin. Other sounds/letters like ت، س، or م are commonly used in wazn, and could have lexical or grammatical or wazn meaning.
Another big advantage of this system is that you can have precision with your meanings. غيّر/ghayyara is to change or alter something else, to instigate cause or change. تغيّر/taghayyara is to have change or alteration done upon you/the subject. However, both would be translated as just "change" in normal English.
Here's one reason why that's so useful. If you see a pattern you recognize, you KNOW it's grammatical context. Any word that fits فعلان is an adjective. Any word that fits تفعّل is a verb in past tense, conjugated for the third-person, singular, masculine. Any word that fits الإستفعال is a noun with a verbal meaning, based on the 10th form/verb wazn.
So what does this mean? Since roots = meaning, similarly-looking words will have similar meanings. And since patterns = grammatical context, words with the same pattern will have the same context.
So let's say you see a word you don't know, يتعلّمون. If I'm familiar with my wazn, I know it fits the pattern يتفعّلون, which means roughly "they are having (root meaning) caused upon them". I see the root letters are ع - ل - م which have a meaning of "knowing, knowledge, learned". So this word means something like "they are having knowing/knowledge caused upon them", or "they are learning".
Oftentimes the meaning is more symbolic or metaphorical. But armed with a knowledge of roots and wazn, you can figure out the meaning of any word "about 70% of the time" according to my Arabic instructor here.
Place this test to say English. Let's say you don't know the word "bruise". How do you figure out how to guess the meaning of this word? The only way to guess the meanings of words is to know words that look/sound similar. Know any words related to "bruise", besides maybe "bruised"?
Although lexical roots obviously exist in English, they're not as widely applied. So there's no way, until you actually know the words, to know that "correspond" is related to "write", the way َكاتَب is obviously related to كَتَبَ.
So in summary of roots and wazn,
Knowing a set of very consistent and regular patterns, along with knowing three-consonant roots that make up nearly every word in the language, will allow you to understand, if not the exact meaning of a word, then at least the grammatical context and function of nearly any word in the language.
Arabic is a language of regular patterns and derivable meanings. Learning wazn and roots is a shortcut to learning hundreds of words and understanding how they fit grammatically.
Lastly it means you can make sentences like "يعلّم المعلّم كان عالم أعلام العالم متعلّموناً/yu3allim al-mu3allim kana 3aalim a3laam al-3aalam muta3allimuunan." The teacher who was a scholar of the flags of the world teaches students. This is a contrived example, but it's entirely possible.
Why Arabic is Hard
There's some reasons I think Arabic is harder than other languages, although probably different from many others.
Pronunciation: There's some hard consonants for English speakers in Arabic.
1) "Emphatic" or "dark" consonants: there are four of these, ص، ض، ط، ظ, and they're a specialty of Semitic languages. It's where you take a sound, like ss, and say it differently so it has a "darker" or "heavier" quality, which also affects the vowels around it. It's a very weird thing at first, although in my opinion the easiest of the "hard" sounds.
2) Not-that-bad-but-still-foreign consonants: sounds like خ (kh/x, like in Hebrew or German or Scottish English), ق (q, like a k or g at the back of your throat).
3) the 3ein, ع: the unique sound of Arabic. It's a difficult sound to learn how to make, and even harder to explain. The best I can do is that it's like constricting your throat without actually closing it. It takes lots of practice and feedback from Arabic speakers. If you don't get it, you will always have an accent. You know what the best part is? It's a very common sound, one of the most common, so if you're learning Arabic, get used to it. In casual romanization of Arabic, it's usually represented with the number 3 because they kind of look similar.
4) Ones-I-still-have-trouble-with consonants: These are ر (it's sometimes a rolled/trilled "r" which I suck at) غ (like a "French 'R'" except not really at all) and ح (a "heavier" H, produced similarly to ع but without voicing, also a very common letter).
As mentioned before, consonants are what carry lexical meaning in Arabic, and pronouncing a س s instead of a ض s means a different root and possibly a completely different meaning, or a nonword. Also, doubled consonants and long/short vowels are new concepts to me as a native English speaker. Many verb wazn are quite similar in very logical and beautiful patterns, but it also means laziness with pronunciation can mean using the wrong wazn. Since roots carry lexical meaning, oftentimes it's the vowel qualities and the doubling of consonants that distinguishes words. Ex. saying faa3ala is quite similar to fa33ala, with one having an "aa" and the other having an "33". It's something to get used to.
Vocabulary: Arabic has been described as an "ocean of words". It's picked up words from dozens of languages from the Atlantic coast of North Africa and Spain to the mountains of Iraq to the islands of Yemen. It's an absolutely vast language with dozens of influences, millions of spread out speakers, hundreds of dialects, a millennia and a half of development and propagation, and the richness of the many Bedouin tribes who prize their language and poetry so highly. There's a lot of vocabulary, and as an English speaker, you come in knowing very little of it. French, you're way ahead of the game. English is literally about 30% French words. Spanish is comparable. But Arabic? You'll have loanwords, but anything you'll see on a regular basis has entirely different and foreign etymology, and you'll have to build your vocabulary from scratch.
Materials: There's tons of materials on Written/Literary/Standard Arabic or Fusha. But Fusha isn't spoken day to day. There's dozens of dialects (although five main groups, including Levantine which I'm learning now in Jordan). These dialects differ significantly from Fusha and from each other, and there's lots and lots of debate about their statuses as dialects or languages, and whether or not they should be standardized or taught. All the popular media, songs, radio, TV, is in dialect.
So here's the issue: want to write or read Fusha? There's TONS of material. Want to listen/speak Fusha? Good luck finding a conversation partner. And listening, you'll be stuck with the news or Disney's "Frozen" dubbed in Fusha (instead of Egyptian Arabic like the rest of their dubs). Want to speak/understand dialect? Great, there's tons of media! But there's no written material for dialect. Also most teaching material is entirely or predominantly focused on Fusha, and either don't acknowledge dialect or insist it's not important to focus on.
Culture: This mostly applies to Amman and Jordan, as I've never been anywhere else in the Arab World and can't make generalizations about it, but Jordanians typically have much better English than I speak Arabic. And I obviously look like a foreigner here. So, even when I try to start interactions with cab drivers/shop owners/whoever in Arabic, they respond in English. That's not great for practicing Arabic if they speak English.
Anyway, if you actually read this whole thing, I'd actually be really curious to hear your thoughts. Email me or leave a comment on this blog. Or since you probably came here from my Facebook page, message me your thoughts. Shukran!
/rant
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