Talk:Arabic

Untitled
I started my arabic project in German. [] We can share our stuff and translate it.

Purpose
What is the intended level of instruction of this book? It's not clear what the intent is in the book itself. I think the purpose and outcomes should be made more clear in an introduction. Also, is anyone actively working on it? 13 Dec 2011

GARG - Gnu Arabic Grammar
Here are the beginnings of a Modern Arabic Grammar Guide. Anybody who has an interest in helping should take part in the planning section.

Collection Point - Articles for the Grammar Guide can be entered here. More information is on the site.

Edited Work - Please do not make any more changes on in this section - instead start a discussion.

(Translation of Arabisch - Original document by Zorro 16:00 GMT 29/02/04)

Some lost pages
With the changes in History, I noticed there are some pages of an anonymous writer that were left out of your table of contents. They are: I deem the naming conventions should change (someone must take the responsibility of moving them), and useless stuff should be removed. --Wizard0 13:29, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds - Arabic sound identification system symbols, which seems to be orphaned, and
 * Some_history, which was a link on that page.

numbers
added a section for arabic numerals.

This is twoThirty
I have been adding a lot of material to this wikiBook. The last thing I added was the new section for learning Arabic reading and writing. Once it is done, we should be able to delete the original learn to read Arabic section called "Fundamentals", because it will be useless. For the new learning to read and write Arabic, excercises are needed, especially copying excercises (to practice writing, but this requires the use of pictures I assume).

After this wikibook is done, a graduated phrase book (going from basic phrases to more complex phrases, including translation and word-for-word translation) should be created for Arabic. Also, a transcription (subtitles written out) for some old Arabic cartoons would help (especially if they are downloadable off the internet (Grendizer comes to mind)). If there is already a wiki for cartoons and transcribing them, tell me (I highly doubt that there are any).

 إلى اللقاء

Section, dialectical clarity
This section on Arabic is an unclear mix of colloquials and of MSA. It should be revised with a goal of one dialect in mind.

(Sorry for the multiple revisions, I'm new.)

Monoglot 03:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Reply to: Dialectecal clarity
Thank you for the comment. I agree that it should have one dialect in mind. I deleted the non-MSA sections.

The changing transliteration system has been wasting time. I'll focus on making the Arabic alphabet part high quality, and then using the Arabic alphabet only for the other parts. This wikibook needs a great amount of planning. The task is really big. I think after the Arabic writing system, we should focus on Arabic grammar, providing examples, and vocabulary. --TwoThirty 07:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Dialectical Decision
I have decided to omit the colloquial languages in this book. We will focus on Standard Arabic.

Perhaps, they will be included in a final chapter, to help people who have mastered the language to be able to understand most colloquialized Arabic speech. For the following reasons: --TwoThirty 00:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) There is more demand for learning it than there are for the colloquials.
 * 2) The colloquials are not the general Arab language. All Arabs understand Standard Arabic.
 * 3) You need Standard Arabic to read and write.
 * 4) Most Arabs can speak Standard Arabic.
 * 5) Each colloquial is limited in dominance to a region.
 * 6) You need Standard Arabic to understand the Qur'aan.
 * 7) Understanding Standard Arabic makes it easier to understand more than one Arabic colloquial.
 * I second that. You can also understand the new with MSA and a lot of TV programs, so it's far from just a formal written or Quranic language. --Atitarev (talk) 00:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up pages
I don't have a problem with major contributors trying to remove content from the Wikibooks they are working on, and I try to leave that up to the participants on each seperate Wikibook.

Every once in awhile I find a page like Arabic/Basic Sentences/ain't which has been blanked, and I'm not sure if the person who blanked the page would like it deleted or not. Information is the key here, and simply removing all of the content does not automatically remove the page from our database.

If you really think the page is useless and will not contribute to your Wikibook, or that you have covered the content elsewhere and really don't need that page any more, please use the following "page markup tag" to let administrators and any other interested person know why you think the page needs to be removed:

 

I use this myself even to get a second opinion on semi-questionable pages, and it gives the opportunity to give a reason for its removal. Otherwise, I have to try and form my own opinion on the matter. It also takes me quite a bit more time to review a page that has been blanked and not marked up with the delete tag, keeping me from other items on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 15:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Arabic lessons
Arabic is becoming more and more important in today's world, so Wikibooks should definitely have lessons for it. I started learning Arabic, but only know the script and a few basic expressions so far. I'd love to see further lessons here.

Have you seen the article on creating a language course on Wikibooks? I think it's quite useful. Also, you may want to have a look at the course format I found works best for students: Bite-sized language lessons.

Regarding the lessons teaching how to read and write, I found it very useful to give the students words to practise that he should already be able to recognise: English words that Arabic borrowed (e. g. the one for sandwich), Arabic words that are found in English (e. g. algebra?), common personal names (e. g. Ahmed) and the names of cities and countries. Students will find it easier and more fun to read words when they can guess the meaning. Otherwise they're learning two things at once: a foreign script and foreign words, which can be discouraging.

Anyways, just my two cents. Good luck!

Junesun 15:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for making this "book". I like Arabic language. It's cool. Keep up the good work. :)

Alphabet module is *not* complete
While all of the letters may be properly described in the "Alphabet" page, it in no way teaches the reader the letters. Specifically, there should be step-by-step exercises to transliterate/read the script, starting with a couple letters, then building to the full alphabet (because the whole thing at once simply goes in one ear and out the other), including how to pronounce each one. --RealGrouchy 19:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Wikibook Format
I'm back, and ready to bring this wikibook to life. I have reorganized the links so that it isn't so difficult to find the more complete version that teaches about four letters at a time.

Be sure to add your suggestions, or reserve a section to write on the Wikibook proposed plan, at the bottom of the main page. I have some new suggestions about incorporating all forms of Arabic, in order to have a more realistic and more useful wikibook. But leaving it up to the user as to which dialects they need exposure to. --TwoThirty 09:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation
This book really needs some pronunciation .ogg files. So, any native speakers out there want to make lessons? As of now the easiest thing would be to read down lists: numbers, months, days, alphabet, etc. Anything simple will do. Hopefully if we get enough native speakers interested we can get into doing more then we can actually get real lessons. But some basic pronunciations are needed. Just make sure to provide as much information about accent as possible: fusha preferably but at least make it clear if you are speaking in dialect.

For those of us who can't really speak Arabic or have accents so bad it would not help anyone maybe we can make some drills that way anyone with a good accent can just read down the list and upload it instead of making the lessons themselves. gren グレン 04:23, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree with this but someone has to do the job, preferably a native speaker. By the way, do you know how to create .ogg files? --Atitarev (talk) 23:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Audacity is a free audio recorder that can do .ogg's Josterhage (talk) 17:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, now we need to find a native speaker willing to do the job :) --Atitarev (talk) 12:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

CanI...
Can I use this lesson in my Wikibooks(malay).Putera Luqman Tunku Andre (talk) 07:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Vowels / diacritics
My previous comments were a little hasty, I reviewed the pages more and clearly there is more vowel marking than I thought there was. One of my issues is that it seems inconsistent, and it certainly seems like there is a tendency to assume certain things (such as sukoon via no vowel where a vowel is expected). I will say that it is not easy to tell what standard the writer is keeping with these vowel markings. A page describing how the marking is being done, and a clear check for consistency in the policy, is in order. It is also extremely difficult where markings are visible to discern which marks belong to which lines in many places due to line-height being too small, but this is a simple matter of addressing formatting issues as time goes by. In any case, I also suggest cross-coördinating with the English and Arabic Wiktionaries (which could be abetted by Meta). this raven is icy (talk) 04:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Category IV
Arabic is a category IV language, not a category III.

Orphaned page
Arabic/Some history is not linked to from any other page, and thus is orphaned. The page itself looks like it needs major cleanup. I'd like the contributors here to make a decision on what to do with the page. It looks like all the content there is already covered better on other pages, so my initial response would be to speedy delete it (especially as the last edits were in 2006) but I'm instead putting up notice here in case there's material that could be merged into other articles.

I've also put up Arabic/Arabic vowels for speedy deletion as it is also orphaned and doesn't seem to have any content not better covered on other pages. Xerol Oplan (talk) 05:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * N.B. 'Arabic vowels' deleted 27th May; topic was better covered in the Arabic/LearnRW/a i u, and Arabic/LearnRW/fatHamodules of the book. Reece   (Talk)   (Contributions)  23:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)