Search This Blog

Popular Posts

Labels

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Arabic Alphabet, Duolingo, the polyglot WILL Toastmasters International club, and

 I am struggling to learn the Arabic alphabet. It is nothing like Greek, Hebrew or Russian. It is all curves. I have started on Duolingo. You get the sounds and match them up with pictures. It took me a while with other languages on Duolingo to learn that in matching pairs you don't start on the left but play the sound on the right hand coloumn and then match it with the picture without sound on the right. 

The secodn thing to remember in Duolingo when learning the alphabet, is that you will be asked to guess the picture of the written letter on the next page. So look at it carefully and create your own memory aid, connected with an English letter of the alphabet, or the picture of an object or a scene.

For example, in the picture of a sign which sounds like dow ood, I see a raised L in the air , third stroke, and think it looks like a door. However, a couple of signs later, the same sign appears again at the left sign of the word. I now have to remember that the D sound is in both words, but not where you might hope, with D at the the start of the word, but at the end. So the sound ending in D has the little L shaped like a door at the start. 

I was surprised at my progress, faster than on Korean. I got through the first two lessons quite quickly. 

I learned another sound. It loked like two uprights and a dividing letter in the middle. I thought it looked like two people arguing over soemthing.

Now back to the alphabet. However I shall look on Memrise and Youtube to see if I can get any more suggestions. 

I need to learn the Arabic Alphabet because I have three meetings on Arabic in the World International Language Lovers , WILL, a soon to be established Toastmasters Club. We need twenty paying members to register a new club. I thought of asking on Facebook for Arabic speakers to give a 5-7 minute speech, or a twenty minute easy introduction to the alphabet. But I have to be the backup. Even if I only teach three Arabic letters, that would be a start.

The WILL club meets onlin every Sunday night at 9 pm Singapore time. Login on Zoom fifteen minutes earlier to say hello, rename yourself online, check you are visible, get to know everyone.  If Sunday doesn't suit you, or you want more, we meet earlier in the day, 7.30 Singapore time, on the second and fourth Thursday each month. If there is a demand, we will run  satellite in person meetings in Singapore or other countries. Arabic is the language we are learning about for the first three meetings in October, Sunday 1st, Sunday 8th, and Thursday 12th, 2023. Do come along and tell your friends.

Useful Website 

Duolingo

https://thehuntswoman.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-finish-a-language-on-duolingo/

https://thehuntswoman.com/learn-arabic-on-duolingo/

Song highlighting each letter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnLSy4nZI80

This version repeats half a dozen letters in succession

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joaa_H3ejoM

Please share links to your favourite posts


No comments: