Arabic Language

Words of Arabic Origin

* www.livemint.com/2007/12/31003543/Ask-Mint--Tracing-English-wor.html

V.R. Narayanaswami, "Tracing English Words Back to Arabic Origins" (from LiveMint.com; just a quick note: trade words are words such as 'coffee,' 'sugar,' 'salt,' 'gold;' trade words are similar in many languages; thus the word for sugar is similar in English, Romance, Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Summerian, and other languages! There's also an Arabic word "bi" which is used to mean something like the English word 'by' in some instances (bi-haadha-a[l]sh-shab, 'by [or 'for'] this thing,' 'because of this').

* forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=571449&highlight=waquero

African Languages: Arabic Influences (at WordReference.com; another note: the Spanish word "vaquero," 'cowboy,' the Arabic word "baqara," 'cow,' and a word in an African language meaning cow are similar-looking too; again I assume that cattle were important in trade and that these are trade words.)
Alphabet and Sounds

* www.funwitharabic.com/alphabet.html

Alphabet Basics

* www.abjad.com/pyramid.htm

Learn about the shapes of the different characters -- and how characters are shaped depending on their position in a word.

* www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic-alphabet.html

Arabic Alphabet, with unicode equivalent characters and vowel sounds (note: these are the vowels in Standard Written Arabic; the vowels vary slightly according to dialect; for example, in Palestinian Arabic, the 'a' vowel (indicated by the 'fatah' diacritic mark) is often fronted and may sound instead like the 'e' in 'bell' or 'bet')
Language Basics

* www.funwitharabic.com/

Simple written vowels and other simple grammar, quiz.

* www.arabic4fun.com/lessons.html

Numbers 1-20, colors, shapes, fruit. For kids. Requires adobe shockwave.

* www.islamic-knowledge.com/Learning_Arabic/Lessons_Arabic_Language.htm

Islamic Knowlege's index of Arabic lessons: (nice illustrations; you can look up the romanized forms of the vocabulary at http://www.islamic-knowledge.com/Learning_Arabic/Madeenah_Book/Vocabulary.htm; there's also a transliteration table -- provided at the end of the vocabulary page -- explaining how Arabic letters are transcribed in a Romanized alphabet, which may enable you to figure out what words are what; however these lessons are best reviewed by persons who are already somewhat literate in Arabic and have a minimal vocabulary; more lessons will supposedly be added; this may be ideal also for persons -- especially children -- who grew up outside of the Arabic world and want to learn to read Arabic)

* www.madinaharabic.com/

Language -- very basic/beginning grammar, numbers & Reading -- again basic

* st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_00-index_El-Fehres.html

Standard Arabic -- simple conversational expressions:
Go to marh.aba, 'hello,' and learn the words there:
st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_02-Greetings_Mar7aban.html
put the mouse over the words to hear them!
s.abah.ilxeyr-i means 'morning of goodness'
s.abah.innuwr-i means 'morning of light'
The inflectional -i ending is left off in the pronunciations above; however if you are dealing with written text, it's there
Other phrase:
'ilaalliqa'-i qarib-an doesn't just mean 'see you soon' but literally, 'to the meeting [that is] soon' or 'until the soon-to-be meeting'
* arabic.speak7.com/

Standard Written Arabic -- basic grammar, plus more advanced reading and writing activities! -- with English translations making these lessons really, really accessible! ( more languages course links, for Arabic, Chinese, other languages, are available at: www.word2word.com/course.html )

* www.laits.utexas.edu/alkitaabtextbook/

'al-kitaab fiy ta'limmi al-'arabiyya or "The Book for Learning Arabic." Written Standard Arabic online. Georgetown University Press. Available online through the University of Texas at Austin.
Grammar/Dictionary

* http://www.wordreference.com/enar/

Word Reference Arabic-English Dictionary (you may also wish to visit the discussion forums for Arabic at forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=41
* translate.google.com/#ar|en|

Google's online translation tool -- you can have individual words or sentences translated (though some words may not be in the database this is reasonably good; however sometimes it pays to put in the longer sentence that a word occurs in as google may not give the best translation based on context if provided with just a single word; I would shy away from longer text however and use the sentence translation to verify meanings of individual words -- that's the safest way to use online translation tools and to get a fluid translation!)

* qutrub.arabeyes.org/

Arabic: verb class detector and then conjugator ?

* www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/mjiyad/Arabic%20Grammar%20Book.doc

Mohammed Jiyad (2006), A Hundred and One Rules! A Short Reference for Arabic Syntactic, Morphological & Phonological Rules for Novice & Intermediate Levels of Proficiency (Mount Holyoke College; this is an online Word document; you can also search for it online to get a google document or an html version.)

* openlibrary.org/books/OL5685156M/Syntax_of_modern_Arabic_prose

Vicente Cantarino (1974) Syntax of Modern Arabic Prose, 3 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). You won't find this online -- but just might find a copy at a nearby university library. This is a good authoritative reference on all aspects of standard Arabic grammar, with excerpts from authentic Arabic texts illustrating each grammatical feature.
Spoken Arabic: Dialects

* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

Wikipedia's classification scheme for the various dialects is the scheme most like the one I was taught. Also includes a list of dialects by country, with links to articles describing the features of the various individual dialects.

* ezinearticles.com/?Should-I-Study-MSA-Or-An-Arabic-Dialect-Or-Both?&id=5771225

Nicalas Lee, "Should I Study MSA Or An Arabic Dialect Or Both?"
(Ezine Article. Concise information about the differences between the various dialects. Br /> One note: in spite of what the author says, haivng learned some Levantine Arabic first, I found Egyptian Arabic to be a bit different; a lot of sounds are moved back in the mouth and the palatal "z" or "j" sound is often pronounced like a gutteral "g;" also some colloquial expressions may be different.)

* friendsofmorocco.org/learnarabic.htm

Friends of Morocco: "Learn Moroccan Arabic" Downloadable Resources

* www.speakmoroccan.com/
Spoken Arabic: Listening Activities

www.laits.utexas.edu/aswaat/index.php

Aswaat 'Arabiyya or "Arabic Voices." University of Texas at Austin's collection of short (and relatively easy-to-understand) videos -- standard Arabic.
News and Blogs -- in Arabic and English

* www.transparent.com/arabic

Blog with resources for learning Arabic including vocabulary plus links to news videos -- with a focus on Egypt
(Note: the videos may be a bit violent; I've not reviewed them;
you can also link to online grammar information for this site at: www.transparent.com/arabic/tag/arabic-grammar/

* www.meedan.net

Meedan.net's news about the Middle East -- news on culture, world affairs, in English and Arabic; volunteer to translate
(I'm just getting acquainted with this site, which seems to provide a forum.)
Character Pickers and Character Set/Scripts

* rishida.net/scripts/pickers/arabic-block/

Richard Ishida's Arabic character picker -- Arabic script characters; not all variations are used in Arabic itself

* www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0600.pdf

Unicode Character Charts
Arabic Linguistics -- with a focus on Grammar/Syntax

* comp.ling.utexas.edu/~fmhoyt/Hoyt(06)_Specificity_Finished.pdf

Fred Hoyt, Specificity in Arabic (Austin: University of Texas). With examples from Palestinian/Levantine dialect. (This is a good description of an important feature in the Arabic sentence.)

* hpsg.fu-berlin.de/Events/GGS-2010/hahn.pdf

Michael Hahn (2010), "Agreement and Complex Predicates in Modern Standard Arabic" (Berlin/Potsdam: German Grammar Group). A look at verb agreement with examples from Standard Arabic.

Arabic Resources