Lesson 1

• published: 30 Apr 2015
• views: 27

This is lesson one of my Kallimny Masri video series. Q & A: Q: Why are you teaching Egyptian dialect, not Arabic? A: To understand the answer to this question, a few things are required. First of all, we need to know what Arabic is. Is it a language? Yes and no. Arabic is considered a language by most people but in general, there is no living non-dialect Arabic language. In this sense a dialect is used in the broadest sense, because Arabic "dialects" (which are numerous, complex, differ widely and most importantly are not mutually intelligible) are tied together by Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Q: What is MSA? A:MSA is the academic language of Arabic used in official written documents and usually but not always in new broadcasts (but never TV shows). Q: Why did you say there is no living Arabic language then? A: Technically MSA is alive, but there not in the normal sense as with English, Spanish, French or Basque, but more due to the fact that it's being kept alive. There is no community of MSA native speakers. University professors, politicians and newscaster speak MSA regularly. For anyone to speak MSA in daily life is considered excessive, and alien to Arabic speakers. Q: Why all the negativity about MSA? A: It's not a useful language to learn alone except for academic purposes, or if you want to learn to speak multiple Arabic dialects (difficult but not impossible!) Q: Enough about MSA, I want to learn Arabic, where should I start! A: I reccoment starting with a dialect you like as the grammer is more simple, and you can start speaking right away. Egyptian is the most common and most widely understood dialect. If you want to learn more dialects, learning MSA would be a good idea so you can understand how the language or grammar is formed. Q: But why are the Arabic words in latin letters? A: Arabic looks a lot cooler written but many words in Egyptian are spelled the same as MSA, but pronounced differently so I want to avoid confusion in that sense. Q: What are those symbols under/above the letters? A:There is no standard for romanizing Arabic, but I am basing my system off of ALA-LC. Some helpful links here: http://tinyurl.com/n8ls7j4. The A with the line over it is longer, like the A (cat, fat, hat). but pronounced as a longer letter, as in bar, car,small (but even longer). In arabic this is usual a medial alif. The U with the line over it is like the sound in Fool, pool, cool. but with a slightly less rounded mouth. The S, D, and T and Z with dots under them are arabic Sad, Dad and Ta. They are not unlike S, D and Z but are are voiced in the pharynx in the throat, giving them a deeper quality than their more shallow countrparts. ` is a `ain, which is very difficult to pronounce and unique to arabic. not to be confused with the following letter. It is a voiced pharyngeal fricative. ' is a hamza, otherwize known as a glottal stop. kh is a kha, like the j in spanish, it is voiceless velar fricative h with a dot under it is a hah, which is like an h but in deeper in the throat. It is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative Q: Will you be making more videos like this one? A: Yes, I will be making more videos like this one. Q: Will you be making different types of videos? A: Yes, I intend on making more videos, about music, movies, and other thinks related to Egypt and it's place in the Arab world. Q: Do you speak another other languages besides English and Arabic? A: I am studying Korean, Spanish, and French. Out of the three, I'm best at speaking Korean, reading French, and I'm learning Spanish to go to Latin America and teach English so it is the one I focus the most on at the moment.