ArabicPod101.com is a site with hundreds of short instructional videos for learners of Arabic. There is material available for all different levels. I have read very positive reviews about this service, and the paid subscription, which gives you access to all the videos and also to accompanying printed material, seems to be a good deal. There is also a free subscription giving you access to only a portion of their features. Here’s their pricing page.
As an incentive, ArabicPod101 has placed a small selection of their videos on YouTube. Here is a list of their “Arabic in Three Minutes” series available. I have posted articles with commentary and explanation on the first five of them:
- ‘How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic’
- ‘Thank You & You’re Welcome in Arabic’
- ‘How to Greet People in Arabic’
- ‘Do you speak English?’
- ‘Making Apologies’
- ‘Digits 0 to 9’ (Link goes to YouTube. For other materials on this topic, see my blog post ‘Learn the numbers 1 through 10 with children’s videos’.)
- ‘Numbers 10-100’ (Link goes to YouTube.)
- ‘How Much?’ (Link goes to YouTube.)
These are all appropriate for the beginner. The variety of Arabic used here is a somewhat more formal Standard Arabic than the one used in the Bite-Size Arabic book. The verbs usually have the mood ending on them, and sometimes the nouns and adjectives have a case ending. (They’re not entirely consistent.) The Arabic is also not always error-free. In the clip on saying thank you, for example, they quite surprisingly misspell the word shukran (‘thank you’) as شُكْر rather than the correct شُكْرًا. But in spite of its defects, I recommend this series as useful material for the beginning learner of Arabic.
If you’re considering signing up for a paid subscription to ArabicPod101, here are two reviews:
As for the Arabic name of this series of videos, here it is:
الْعَرَبِيَّة في ثَلاث دَقائِق |
’al-ʕarabiyya fii thalaath daqaa’iq more formal:’al-ʕarabiyyatu fii thalaathi daqaa’iq |
‘Arabic in three minutes’ |
The singular and plural of ‘minute’ are as follows
دَقائِق |
دَقِيقة |
daqaa’iq | daqiiqa |
‘minutes’ | ‘minute’ |
At some later point, I hope to wrtie individual pages about each of these videos with more information about the words and phrases introduced, so watch this space!