Arabic Resources

Just wanted to post some general Arabic resources to help anyone who is looking for new materials to work with:

Download Arabic Cartoons and Arabic Films using torrent software (I recommend uTorrent)... Great way to get authentic materials, particularly the cartoons which are in Modern Standard Arabic, or some of the many movies from Egyptian cinema if you are working on understanding spoken Arabic. As for the cartoons/children's programs, I particularly recommend the shows Iftah Ya Simsim (Arabic Sesame Street in MSA) and Hekayat Alameya, which has short animated stories from almost every culture, and are particularly helpful becuase they primarily consist of narration along with small sections of dialoge (in MSA).

In my classes at the University of Washington we use the Al-Kitaab fii Tallum Al-Arabiyya series of books like many other universities, and one of the favorite ways to get in extra study time is to burn all the audio from the DVDs (primarily the example sentences and stories, and listening excercises) included with the books (or if any other books include DVDs) using a program such as DVD Audio Extractor (which was free at one point) and then loading all the files into iTunes and onto my iPod, which allows me to listen while I walk to class, while I work, or wherever I am. Furthermore, my listening abilities aren't excellent at this point, so sometimes I slow down the playback speed to increase my comprehension, and then re-listen at a normal rate, or even faster. You can do this quickly and easily with a program like Audacity (free). Or with iPods you can turn the files into Audiobooks which allow variable speed playback at the touch of a button, although it is a little more work.

I also use a great flashcard program on the computer called VTrain, which is probably the best flashcard program out there. It schedules how often you review each card, for example you get Card X right, then you won't be quizzed on it until 1 day later, if you get it right again then in 2 more days, then after 4, 8, 16, 32, so forth... So it continually refreshes your memory and if you can't get it correct it starts all the way at the beginning again. You can advance the cards far enough so you only review them once in two months, or once a year, etc. Check it out, it has many more great features and they are continually improving it. The only pain is inputting all your vocabulary lists. It costs $19, but I think it is very well worth it in order to keep from losing your vocabulary over time...

A few book resources which I think are pretty good which I just kind of stumbled across and which aren't as widely known as the big name Arabic textbooks. One is Business Arabic Intermediate by Raji M Rammuny, and also Business Arabic Advanced (no beginners book). I've looked through this book and it seems well put together and complete with a story following a man who obtained a job in Saudi Arabia. Another one is Let's Read Arabic Newspapers by Howard D. Rowland, which has about 100 actual Arabic newspaper articles, with comprehension questions in Arabic, key vocabulary words/phrases not found in the Hans Wehr Dictionary and at the end of the book a translation of each article and answer key.

More specifically if you are planning on traveling to study in Yemen, there are a few good resources (which are important regardless if you want to speak Yemeni Arabic, because you still want to be able to understand what they are saying). Firstly there is Sbahtu! A Course in Sana'ani Arabic by Janet C.E. Watson which serves as a nice intro to the Sana'ani dialect with realistic situations based on theme. Another book by the same author is Wasf Sanaa: Texts in Sana'ani Arabic, which has extended texts (and the English translation) taken from actual dialogues about many different cultural aspects. And finally another book by Janet C.E. Watson is Social Issues in Popular Yemeni Culture, which features excerpts from a popular Yemeni radio show (and the English translation of course) which obviously deals with social issues but also with references to popular sayings, poetry and and religious sayings, with dialogue, debate and arguments between the two main characters. She also has another book on Syntax of Sana'ani Arabic although I haven't actually looked at. But, all of these books seem relatively hard to get ahold of, so I recommend using a local library and their Interlibrary Loan service (which is how I get ALL of my books). However the best part about these books is that you can easily acquire the accompanying audio in MP3 format (transcribed in the book) online in order to really develop your ear for Sana'ani Arabic, which is what I am attempting to do.

More to come.