Foreign Language Learning Software for Arabic?

Doc Squidly asks: "In the near future I will be spending a year in the Middle East and feel it would be in my best interest to learn Arabic. Unfortunately I do not have the time to enroll in a college class and have decided that a computer base earning method would suit my situation best. I've looked at products such as ArabicNow! V9 Deluxe and Rosetta Stone Arabic but have not been able to find reviews on these or any other products. English is my first language and was fluent in German and Latin but, haven't used them in many years. I believe that having the right tools can make a difference in learning Arabic. Any advise from multi-lingual Slashdot readers would be helpful. Has anyone ever used software to learn a foreign language?"

Pimsleur

[max born]

If you're going to be living in the Middle East and are more interested in conversation than writing, try Pimsleur.

I've used the "Living Language", "Berlitz", and a few others but always found the Pimsluer method to be more effective. Evan for a guy like me who considers himself hopeless at learning languages. I used Pimsleur for German, French, Russian, Spanish, Herbrew, and "Eypptian Arabic" and was quite surprised at how much I'd learned when conversing with native speakers.

The Pimsleur method is based on immediate feedback. Within a about a minute of the first lesson you're asked questions to which you have a few seconds in which to respond. The other methods I found boring, almost like leaning by rote.

You can find plenty of Pimsleur MP3s on the gnutella network. Get the gnutella software here [gnutelliums.com].

find someone who speaks arabic

[theradixhunter]

I took two semesters of Arabic in college and I found I didn't actually get much out of the class itself. I learned the most when I sat down with my friend and just tried to have a conversation with her in Arabic. By practicing how to speak and listen to it the writing and reading bit came much more easily (since, after all, writing is supposed to be a graphical representation of a spoken language).

If you don't know anyone who speaks Arabic then I'm sure you could find a college student or something that needs a little money. Pay them to sit down with you for an hour each day and just speak with you. Don't use them as a tutor for the reading and writing except for the odd question or two! You should be able to figure most of it yourself from a textbook or something if you take it seriously.

Re:Pimsleur

[Spamsonite]

I'm entering the Navy in a few months as a linguist, and if I get the option of which language to learn, I plan on choosing Arabic. To get a start on things early, I've been using Pimsleur's Arabic, and have been impressed.

Pimsleur's conversational approach recognizes that language is fundamentally an excercise in speech, and that orthography is merely an extension of the communication and mental processes that already exist in the spoken word. There are huge numbers of languages that never developed a writing system - but (next to?) none that are only written. Pimsleur says to learn to speak first, and learning to write what you've learned later on will be much easier.

The interactive feedback/reminder system seems to work for me in a way that no other computer-based language-learning method has. Both my Dad and I are having lots of fun with this, and I'll recomment Pimsleur to anyone who asks.

Re:Pimsleur

[Gaijin42]

Um. Shakespeare and Mozart in fact did do it for the money, but in general they created works for hire.

The Beatles definately did it for money, as I didnt notice them giving away all of their profits and living in poverty. (Not that they didn't enjoy it, but if you go ask paul, I bet he would say Piracy is wrong...)

Michael Moore lives in a huge Manhattan apartment, worth several million dollars. He did it for the money (and because he hates his targets)

Einstein did it because he was a geek, and patriotic, and thought it was the right thing, but he wasn't making music was he.

Newton did it because he was a geek. To the point where people had to force feed him because he would pull all nighters for several days straight without eating. But again, he wasn't really a musician...

...and beware of different dialects.

[DrCode]

Some time ago, I tried to learn a bit of Arabic from some "Saudi Arabic" tapes. One thing I learned is that the written language is the same all over the Middle East, but the pronunciation varies tremendously through the region.

Use an iPod

[bw5353]

A handy way to carry around a language course is an iPod. What you need is:

1) The dialog CDs as mp3-files.

2) The dialog texts as text files.

Upload the mp3-files to the iPod and upload the texts as Notes. Then you can sit and read the texts at the same time as you listen to the voices. In an airplane, in a waiting room, at the dentist's, in the underground. In the car, you should not read the screen obviously, but you can still listen to the mp3-files, and then read the texts once you arrive at your hotel, the boring party you have to be at or wherever.

This may actually not work with Arabic. I'm not sure how good the iPod is at displaying Arabic characters. But I know you can make it work with most European languages, Japanese and Chinese.

Have fun!