41–50 of 55 posts
What I find fascinating myself is that no on actually speaks MSA, modern standard arabic. It is mostly used for written text that is meant to last? We dont text in standard arabic at all. Its used in government forms/legal documents etc..
This makes it such a challenge to teach ppl arabic since many books use MSA which can often sound alien to native speakers.
Im arab myself, hence the username :) What I find fascinating myself is that no on actually speaks MSA, modern standard arabic. It is mostly used for written text that is meant to last? We dont text in standard arabic at all. Its used in government forms/legal documents etc.. This makes it such a challenge to teach ppl arabic since many books use MSA which can often sound alien to native speakers.
Do you mean alien in terms of being an unusual accent or that it's hard to understand?
I’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.
I took two years of a language, merely for enjoyment, and it saddens me now that I've neglected to maintain my studies that I've lost most of what I learned. I get frustrated looking at sentences where in my prime I would have been able to sight translate with ease. I can imagine it's offers of magnitude worse to feel something similar with ones own native language, starting to struggle to use the language with which you had your first thoughts.
Im arab myself, hence the username :) What I find fascinating myself is that no on actually speaks MSA, modern standard arabic. It is mostly used for written text that is meant to last? We dont text in standard arabic at all. Its used in government forms/legal documents etc.. This makes it such a challenge to teach ppl arabic since many books use MSA which can often sound alien to native speakers.
> which can often sound alien to native speakers. Do you mean alien in terms of being an unusual accent or that it's hard to understand?
There are also definitely some words that I’ve never of that arent common in local dialects.
I’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’…
It’s actually a major thing I think about especially when it comes to any kids I might have.
I 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 keybo…
For example s = س
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All big enough languages have plenty of dialects.
The tool should teach arabic "classic" as it is intended for non arabic speakers.
https://github.com/selmetwa/parallel-arabic/blob/e1b38771333... Spelling mistake here - should be "sentences", not "Sentances".
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?