The following is the overall syllabus for UvA Talen Arabic 2, August-September 2019. The syllabus is based on a previous course and will be updated each week with current information as the course progresses. A couple of useful links: Audio vocabulary flashcards on Memrise. Mastering Arabic official resources. And also a couple of important points: …
Category: beginning
The beginning category is for learners who have only a very basic vocabulary. Beginners may not have learned to read Arabic script yet, but they may be able to read simple sentences.
Duolingo: Descriptions 1
Welcome to the Descriptions 1 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Descriptions 1 skill introduces the letters س siin and ع 3ayn. The ـّـ shadda is also introduced, which is a diacritic used to indicate a doubled consonant. The official Tips and Notes for this skill (which are quite sparse) can be …
Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic
The Duolingo Arabic course was released out of beta in early July 2019. I am currently writing a guide to the course and am posting this material to this site as I write it. The course consists of 31 skills. As of July 18, 2019, I have written guide pages for the following skills: Alphabet …
Duolingo: Alphabet 4
Welcome to the Alphabet 4 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Alphabet 4 skill introduces the letters م miim and ت taa’, plus two more diacritical marks: the ُ ḍamma (used to write the short vowel u) and the ِ kasra (used to write the short vowel i). The official …
Duolingo: Alphabet 3
Welcome to the Alphabet 3 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Alphabet 3 skill does not introduce any new letters. What it does present are new shapes of some letters you have already learned. However, I have already discussed these shapes in my page on Alphabet 2. For this reason, only a …
Duolingo: Alphabet 2
Welcome to the Alphabet 2 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Alphabet 2 skill introduces three new letters (ذ dhaal, ج jiim and ب baa’), and you also learn how a given letter can have as many as four different shapes. One new Arabic word is introduced, as well as a few …
Duolingo: Alphabet 1
Welcome to the Alphabet 1 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Alphabet 1 skill introduces six letters (و waaw, ا ’alif, ي yaa’, د daal, ر raa’, and ز zaay), as well as the diacritical mark َ fatḥa (used to write the short vowel a). No actual words are introduced, the …
Duolingo Arabic: Alphabet 1, 2, 3, and 4
I have just (July 2, 2019) worked through level 1 of the first four skills of the Duolingo Arabic course: Alphabet 1, 2, 3, and 4. These four skills teach you eleven letters of the Arabic alphabet (about a third of them), a few diacritical marks, and about twelve words, most of them proper names …
Counting things 1-10
If you have learned the numbers in Arabic and also a few plural nouns, you might be at the point that you would like to start using numbers in combination with nouns, as in “one car”, “two apples”, and “three houses”. This can be a bit tricky in Arabic. Here I will explain how to …
I want to learn Arabic. How should I start?
As a teacher of Arabic, I am sometimes asked what the best way is to start learning the language. In this article I’ll give some tips and things to consider. What kind of Arabic? The language normally used in newspapers, books, and scripted material is usually known as Modern Standard Arabic, abbreviated as MSA. MSA …