this is great - i would love to use this if it had MSA, levantine and egyptian dialects. It's a little annoying that a moving highlight is not present which is also tied to the audio playback. Would you consider implementing this?
Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
31–40 of 55 posts
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#32This is Egyptian Arabic
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#33This is great! As someone outgrowing Duolingo this is perfect. I do agree it would be nice to be able to switch between dialects.
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#34I never touched a line of source code until after college. In college I studied history, focusing on the "Middle East" [1]. I took 3 years of Arabic in a (failed) attempt to use Arabic texts as primary sources in my thesis. Short story long, something about the highly structured and patterned nature of Arabic primed my mind for programming and made me more likely to enjoy programming. If you're looking for a pure int…
Speaking of languages with an affinity to a specific characteristic, Urdu - a mix of Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Sanskrit - is another language that somehow seems "naturally" suited for romance and poetry (it's called the the language of poets in the indian subcontinent). The Mughal rulers of India who popularised it were huge patrons of arts, and thus there is large trove of literature and poems in Urdu.
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#35I’m of Lebanese heritage and grew up speaking, reading and writing Arabic but then moved to Australia and never looked back for over 20 years. I’m slowly losing my ability to speak Arabic so I make a point of doing so when speaking to my parents nowadays. I also really love that tools like this exist so I can refresh myself. It’s a very sad thing to lose one’s mother tongue. I know it’s not the same dialect since it’…
As a Palestinian living in North America for over 20 years, I totally hear you about it being a sad thing. Feels heartbreaking and scary to me, given that it was part of my identity.
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#36I was about to ask whether supporting Egyptian is in the roadmap, then read the comments and I'm happy to discover that's already Egyptian :-)
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#37Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#38https://github.com/selmetwa/parallel-arabic/blob/e1b38771333...
Spelling mistake here - should be "sentences", not "Sentances".
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#39I speak Arabic (Syrian) natively and I think this is great! Good work!
I agree with other comments that it might be helpful to mention somewhere that this is colloquial Egyptian Arabic. I can tell the difference easily but might be difficult for those who don't speak Arabic at all. But I like Egyption Arabic and I think it's weirdly more suitable for short stories like yours!
One more thing regarding the Arabic keyboard layout, I think it's a bit strange. I'm not sure if it's something specific to a locale or a layout I'm not familiar with, but I think most common layout is "Arabic 101", something like this[1][2]. You can find more details regarding the layout on Wikipedia[3].
Another small thing, on Firefox the "Listen" button doesn't seem to work. I see "Playing" in the tab name but I hear nothing.
1] https://imgur.com/a/Hmt8GZh
Re: Show HN: Parallel Arabic – Arabic reading and writing practice
#40Both س and ص are transcribed as "s" — is this really a common convention?
Online or when texting on old phones that didn't have Arabic keyboards, people use numbers that look slightly similar to the letters in Arabic instead, like:
- 7 is ح
- 7' is خ (or 5)
- 2 is ء
- 4 is ذ
- 3 is ع
- 3' is غ
- 9 is ص
- 9' is ض
- 6 is ط
- 6' is ظ
- 8 is ق