Last week I got excited as I felt like I was making more progress with being able to ask for a specific dialect. To make sure I kept up that momentum, I took to the language learning programs that I've used to make sure I find people who are willing to work with me using the correct dialect. I took some time and prepared a few phrases to send to people. My hopes was that I would get a few who were willing to respond. That escalated quickly.
I spent a good 10-15 minutes writing that up.... and then I go and get these responses!
I forgot that when you message somebody in a specific language, they believe you can speak that language. Instantly, the level of responses I got back was much higher than I was ready for. This required me to quickly establish myself and try to converse with everything that I had. I'm happy to say that it went better than I originally thought.
Today, I was able to have two different conversations in Arabic with two different people. Both lasted for just short of 20 minutes including about half of it in Arabic. I was happy to learn new words that I will likely become more accustomed to using. My goals were to be able to be understood and to recognize at least one portion that I wasn't expecting. Looking back on both, I was successful!
More than anything, these conversations were a great way to see if what I'm doing is right. They were able to understand what I was saying, would recognize when I needed help, and were more than happy to clarify things that caused questions for me. I'm hoping that they continue into a more consistent language exchange.
Being as I didn't get to record either of the chats, I get to freestyle for a little today. We will see what I come up with. Seriously, I think I mention that I like playing with my dog, Ryan, EVERY week......
So in a previous post I mentioned how Mandarin is actually, in my opinion, not as hard as many people make it out to be. There are some differences than English, but some of those differences can actually be easier depending on how you approach the difference. I've mentioned before that Arabic has been more difficult for me and there are definitely some things that I've done to also increase that challenge.
One of those ideas is to try to spend a small amount of money on learning this language. This was intended to show that you don't need to spend a lot of money to learn a language, you just need the right resources. By limiting the costs, I've limited some of the resources I could use such as professional teaching. This required a lot of guessing and hoping without true direction from the start.
Another issue I had was trying to learn a specific dialect. The typical way people learn Arabic is through "Modern Standard" Arabic which nobody actually speaks. This is taught first because it is the foundation you can build off of for other dialects but to be able to speak, you need to learn a dialect. Trying to speak "Shakespeare-ian" is as close of an analogy to the experience you would have trying to speak Modern Standard to a native. Instead, dialects are more the path you need to take, but which one? At first I didn't know but after reflection I finally settled on the Levantine dialect which is most commonly used in the Middle East countries as opposed to Egyptian Arabic which is actually the most popular but used mainly in Egypt and mainstream media. By choosing Levantine, this required me to be sure I was learning the correct words, so I need to filter through all Modern Standard, Egyptian, Moroccan, Levantine, and all lesser used dialects to be sure I'm learning the material I want. This at times can be confusing.
"Kwayis" "Jayid" "Mniih" are three different ways of saying, "I'm good"......not very similar.
This past week, I was able to find a new resource called Forvo which has recordings of people from different regions saying different translations. This is perfect for me as it shows a map and I can quickly determine if they are using the same dialect and relevant vocabulary for me. I'm really happy with this new resource.
Reviewing what I learned in my lessons I took at the end of last year, I need to focus on incorporating more verb tenses into what I say.
