How I (ALMOST) Learned the Arabic Alphabet in Less Than 14 Days

Yes, this is one of those hopeful and endearing stories that turns tragic at the end.

Ok, not so tragic, but not what I was going for anyway.

So, this is the story of how I almost learned the Arabic alphabet in less than 14 days.

Well, it started out pretty good. Here was my plan of attack.

First, let me start out by telling you that the Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters and a few different voweling signs which I haven't quite gotten the hang of yet. The letters are written in cursive so they connect to each other in different ways depending on the location of the letter (beginning/middle/end of the word, or in isolation). Some of the letters have matching sounds to the English language, and some are sounds that are new to me, and I must try to figure them out (here's where being an SLP comes in handy!).

Ok, so I started out learning 2-3 letters a day. (At this rate, I should be able to get all letters and hopefully the voweling signs done by the end of 14 days.) I was learning the letters through the Innovative Language youtube videos, seen here. After or during each video, I practiced writing the letters in my notebook, then I would review them the next day before learning the next set of letters. I also watched a couple of podcast videos about the alphabet, so I could get the same information twice (more encoding!).

So this was going great, up until about day 10. This is when I got really sick. I ended up having a fever for 8 days, with a whole list of other symptoms related to a chronic condition that I have. Needless to say, I gave up on the alphabet during this time. My mental capacity was not where I wanted it to be and nothing was encoding into my brain. I knew that even if I tried, I would just have to re-learn it over again. And when I finally started on medication (that happens to suppress my immune system), my boyfriend came home with the flu. 😷😷😷 More delays...

So at this point, I've gotten about 20 letters down and 3 voweling signs. This is not too bad and I think I'll have a good grasp of it by the end of the month. It just goes to show that sometimes life has different plans/timeframes for you.

To start my speaking practice, I've been doing some short lessons using the Mango Languages app. I've already learned a few social greetings/terms, and will start on family members next :) I need to do A LOT of review with this language, because it is not sticking as well as some of the others have. Hopefully this will get better once I get more familiar with it. Yup, us frequent language-learners have struggles too. It's not always a smooth path of learning, but you end up learning at least something by the end.

Hope to have some more accomplished by next week!

Go Patriots!