m3aqad

Audio with Theyab's pronunciation

Learning Arabic from scratch is tough, mwaafqiin? An alphabet full of dots and flicks, reading and writing min al-yamiin lay al-yisaar, words that change depending on whether they are mudhakar or mu2anath or jam3 and a pronunciation that is, for me at least, m3aqad ... the temptation to give up learning is huge.

And the biggest trap of all is having an international language as a mother tongue.

bayn fatrah wa fatrah, I feels this way. But atdarrab a little bit every day and because of this, I discover that agdr agul akthar min maa a'6in. So when doubts pile up, I remember that a7san min maa asawii shay.

Being British, I come from a culture where making ghala6 when speaking a language is a no-no. I believe that in Kuwait, it's nafs ash-shay. So al-fikrah of speaking in front of others is still somewhat of an obstacle.

But, after thirteen years of learning French, I remember each and every ghala6, the laughs they provoked, and the fact that being mortally embarrassed at times was part of the bittersweet learning curve of doing something important.

موافقين	mwaafqiin?	Don’t you (pl) agree?
من اليمين لي اليسار	min al-yamiin lay al-yisaar	From the right to the left
مذكر	mudhakar	Masculine
مؤنث	mu2anath	Feminine
جمع	jam3	Plural
معقد	m3aqad	Complicated
كبير	kbiir	Huge
بين فترة و فيترة	bayn fatrah wa fatrah	From time to time
اتدرب	atdarrab	I learn
قدر اقل اكثر من ما اظن	agdr aguul akthar min maa a'6in	I can speak more than I think
احسن من ما اسوي شي	a7san min maa asawii shay	Better than doing nothing
غلط	ghala6	A mistake
نفس الشي	nafs ash-shay	The same thing
الفكرة	al-fikrah	The idea