Start Speaking Arabic - Really!
I've written before about Michel Thomas Mandarin, which I think is a very good program that serves its purpose, but which can be awfully slow-going - a fault of the language's differences from English as much as anything.
I've had Michel Thomas Getting Started Arabic laying around for some time, ever since I listened to a short segment online. This weekend, I popped it in.
Michel Thomas Arabic is by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaffar. Go to the language section of your bookstore and you'll see their names all over the place, including the Hippocrene Arabic Dictionary and Phrasebook, a text called Mastering Arabic and Your First 100 Words in Arabic (if memory serves). I've seen some of their previous efforts and they are pretty much standard fare, no worse than what one normally finds but not usually stunningly better. Michel Thomas Arabic, though, seems to be a program they've been waiting to make.
In a lot of ways, Michel Thomas Arabic strikes me as a better version of Elisabeth Smith's Teach Yourself (in) One Day series. In the One Day courses, you've got a guy sitting on an airplane fretting that he doesn't know the language where he's going. His seat mate just happens to be a language teacher and promises him that if he'll give her an hour, she'll teach him enough to get by. There is the same informal air with Michel Thomas Arabic, but extended. It's like discovering that the couple next door consists of a man from Egypt and a lady from England who learned Arabic from them and now she's going to teach you. She talks about how to say things, stopping now and again to ask him a question or get some help with pronunciation.
Michel Thomas courses always feature two learners (plus you). In this course, the female learner is a little quicker to catch on, but they're both amiable sorts and they both get the hang quickly enough that you don't spend too much time waiting on points that you got but they didn't - nor seeing points that you missed get passed over.
I've found the Michel Thomas course especially nice because I spent a lot of time with the Pimsleur going back to make sure I was hearing correctly or trying to figure out whether I'd missed a sound (from the collection of varied "h"s, glottal stops, etc that Arabic employs) - and that's in spite of (or maybe because of) having studied Arabic before.
Like most Michel Thomas courses, the focus is on building a vocabulary and learning some basic structures. On the downside, this means you don't get the thorough training in polite formalities that Pimsleur courses offer. But if you're looking for an entry point into Arabic in general and Egyptian Arabic in particular, this is a good program to start with.
I've had Michel Thomas Getting Started Arabic laying around for some time, ever since I listened to a short segment online. This weekend, I popped it in.
Michel Thomas Arabic is by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaffar. Go to the language section of your bookstore and you'll see their names all over the place, including the Hippocrene Arabic Dictionary and Phrasebook, a text called Mastering Arabic and Your First 100 Words in Arabic (if memory serves). I've seen some of their previous efforts and they are pretty much standard fare, no worse than what one normally finds but not usually stunningly better. Michel Thomas Arabic, though, seems to be a program they've been waiting to make.
In a lot of ways, Michel Thomas Arabic strikes me as a better version of Elisabeth Smith's Teach Yourself (in) One Day series. In the One Day courses, you've got a guy sitting on an airplane fretting that he doesn't know the language where he's going. His seat mate just happens to be a language teacher and promises him that if he'll give her an hour, she'll teach him enough to get by. There is the same informal air with Michel Thomas Arabic, but extended. It's like discovering that the couple next door consists of a man from Egypt and a lady from England who learned Arabic from them and now she's going to teach you. She talks about how to say things, stopping now and again to ask him a question or get some help with pronunciation.
Michel Thomas courses always feature two learners (plus you). In this course, the female learner is a little quicker to catch on, but they're both amiable sorts and they both get the hang quickly enough that you don't spend too much time waiting on points that you got but they didn't - nor seeing points that you missed get passed over.
I've found the Michel Thomas course especially nice because I spent a lot of time with the Pimsleur going back to make sure I was hearing correctly or trying to figure out whether I'd missed a sound (from the collection of varied "h"s, glottal stops, etc that Arabic employs) - and that's in spite of (or maybe because of) having studied Arabic before.
Like most Michel Thomas courses, the focus is on building a vocabulary and learning some basic structures. On the downside, this means you don't get the thorough training in polite formalities that Pimsleur courses offer. But if you're looking for an entry point into Arabic in general and Egyptian Arabic in particular, this is a good program to start with.
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