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Introduce yourself in Modern Standard Arabic Posted by yasmine on Nov 4, 2020
How well can you introduce yourself in Arabic? If I were to ask you to tell me a bit about yourself in Arabic, what would you include in your introduction? How would you phrase your sentences? In this post, I thought we’d look at a couple of example introductions with audio of hypothetical people to…
Let’s Tell Time in MSA and Levantine Arabic Posted by yasmine on Oct 28, 2020
In this post, I thought we’d learn how to ask and tell the time in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Levantine Arabic. Of course, you will hear time being said in MSA with speaking clocks, the official radio and television announcements. Otherwise, you will hear time being told in colloquial Arabic. It’s good to be…
Let’s Talk about الحُمُّص Hummus! Posted by yasmine on Oct 21, 2020
Over the weekend, I decided to make my own حُمُّص hummus since it’s very easy to make and because no matter how hard I search here in American supermarkets, I can never find one that tastes close to home. Then I began thinking about the أصْل origin of hummus and why people love this simple…
The Arabic Folk Tale “الطِّيرْ الأخْضَر” Part Two Posted by yasmine on Oct 14, 2020
In this post, we will continue the folk tale of الطِّيرْ الأخْضَر The Green Bird. What do you تَتَذَكَّر remember from part one? If you’re interested in this story and haven’t read the first part, go ahead and jump to last week’s post. 😊 رأتْها الأُخت فصارَت تَبكي، ولمّت عِظام أخيها وهي حزينة عليه. ثُم…
The Arabic Folk Tale “الطِّيرْ الأخْضَر” Part One Posted by yasmine on Oct 7, 2020
In this post, I thought we’d read the first part of a short Arabic folk tale of Palestinian origin called “الطِّيرْ الأخْضَر” meaning “The Green Bird”. It is about an زَوجة أب شَرّيرة evil stepmother and a boy who becomes a green bird. It is a tale of وَحْشِيّة cruelty, حُبّ love, and سِحْر magic…
Arabic Poem “أَنَا مِنْ هُنَاكَ” by Mahmoud Darwish Posted by yasmine on Sep 30, 2020
I thought this week, we could look at some شِعْر عَرَبي Arabic poetry by the well- known Palestinian national poet محمود درويش Mahmoud Darwish. When learning a foreign language, it can seem overwhelming to dive into poetry or literature in that language. Yet, even if we do not understand each and every word of let’s…
MSA – Levantine Conversation Comparison Posted by yasmine on Sep 23, 2020
Many students who are interested in Levantine Arabic have most likely began learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) first. When learning a dialect, it sometimes helps to compare with what you already know in MSA. Yet, not very often do we come across texts about the same subject in both standard Arabic and dialect to allow…