Talk:Arabic/Archive 2

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Archive 5

Pakistan

its amazing to see Pakistan not in the list of arabic speaking comm.
other then quranic arabic(classic arabic)

• people who have worked in middle east know arabic
• in "madrassah's" there are always few teacher in each madrassah who knows arabic.
• here in Pakistan we can do masters in arabic (many universities offer courses in arabic)

these things make me belive that pakistan also has arabic speaking community.الثاقب (WiseSabre| talk) 11:14, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

The first point, about people who have worked in the Middle East, is the strongest although even there many foreign workers in the Gulf will not learn Arabic but instead use their native language or English. The points about the madrassahs and MA degress, while interesting with respect to the culture of Pakistan, really aren't evidence that Pakistan is an Arabic-speaking country. Just think, for each of these "few teacher [sic] in each madrassah who knows [sic] arabic [sic]" how many people are there in the surrouinding communities who do not know Arabic? The ratio is probably on the order of 1:100 or 1:1,000. The final point about being able to get a Master's degree in Arabic or another langugage tells us something about universities in Pakistan, but almost nothing about the importance of these languages. One can get an MA in Estonian in the US, Swahili in Italy, Romanian in Korea, and Coptic in Germany but in none of these cases is this evidence that the language in question is widely spoken in the respective country.

(WiseSabre|, what you should do if you want to show that Pakistan is an Arabic-speaking country is provide some independent source that shows a significant percentage of Pakistanis speak Arabic. Wikipedia tends to use the 1% mark as a cut off. You shoud find a source that makes it clear whether the numbers apply to native speakers (and almost certainly less than 1% of the Pakistani count as native speakers or Arabic) or to non-native speakers (and here you might have more than 1% for Pakistan). If you find such a source, then I'm sure this page will be changed.Interlingua 15:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Think Mother-tounge y'all Angrynight 06:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Arabic official status

Egyptian Arabic is not legally co-official in Egypt; rather, there, as in most countries, the law makes no distinction between classical and colloquial Arabic, while only the former is valid for written government documents. Mauritania's official language is Arabic; Hassaniya is officially a national language. Nor does Arabic (or any other native language) enjoy official status in Mali or Senegal; rather, it is relegated to the rather less meaningful national language category. see http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/afracc.htm for a detailed overview for each country, usually quoting relevant laws. - Mustafaa 20:20, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Which Transcription System to Use?

I'm planning on writing some articles for the Arabic Language section. However, I'm in the process of deciding which transcription convention to use. I am well aware of my options for Arabic, but I wanted to get some discussion on the subject before I arbitrarily choose one. While the IPA is wonderful for linguistic publications, I'm not sure of its usefulness for an encyclopedia; to me, it seems a bit too technical. One has to know the linguistic terminology to figure out how to pronounce the word. I don't mean we shouldn't use it at all, I just wondering if a simpler alternative would be better (and would display on the screen without the boxes). Also, I realize that someone (or people) did a lot of work in transcribing in IPA for this section. I certainly do not want to re-do someone else's work, but I want to make the encyclopedia useful for everyone.

Any comments/suggestions are welcome!! (preceding unsigned comment by Carmen1973 (talk · contribs) 11:30, 15 October 2005)

Welcome! We tend to use IPA for pronunciations, and only occassionally for transliterations. We've had some discussion of this at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic) (actually the talk page is more useful). We haven't seettled on a definitive scheme of transliteration, but you could take the discussion there as an indication of where things are at. --Gareth Hughes 11:42, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Terminology Clarification

I've been reading the Arabic Language#Literary and Modern Standard Arabic article and noticed that the editor seems to have used conflicting terminology, although I'm sure that s/he understands the concepts very clearly. However, to a general, English-speaking audience, this may sound very confusing. For example, they use the term "Literary Arabic" alongside with "Modern Standard Arabic." Their description certainly leads one to believe that LA and MSA are one and the same. Shouldn't we adopt one or the other? Taking into account that MSA can be both written and spoken (depending on the occasion), which is more appropriate?

Also, most linguists have termed the language of the Qur'an as Classical Arabic, as opposed to Literary Arabic (or Modern Standard Arabic). I would think that the differences between the two would be stylistic and lexical, due to word coining for modern concepts. So, should we consider MSA "separate" from Classical Arabic, although both may be اللغة العربية الفصحى?

I think it's imperative that we reach a consensus on this so we can minimize confusion on the part of our readers.

I would like to thank whoever wrote this article; they obviously spent a lot of time doing it!!

--Carmen 03:34, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

You're totally right Carmen. The thing is that there's no single editor and checking edits is not an easy job unless you are really dedicating your time to a few articles.

Which is more appropriate is using MSA (see definition at Modern Standard Arabic) as Literary Arabic and Classical Arabic are considered much more formal. You can compare MSA with Fusha (language) and Literary Arabic. All of them are deserve to be mentioned here though we have to be careful as per your comments. Cheers -- Svest 04:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)  ^{Wiki me up™}

my edits

Why were my edits over-written. Its a fact that when listing the languages of the world by the number of nations that claim them as official or national, then Arabic comes in third after English and French. Also, when talking about Palestine, all the arab countries recognize a Palestinian state under occupation. In the spirit of unbiased, free thinking Palestine should be refered to as Palestine (one and complete), not as Gaza and the "Palestine region". So as not to be accused of dillusion I had left Israel as is when I corrected the mishandling of Palestine. Having said all this I think that this website is very through, I appreciated the last comment on how collequial Yemeni Arabic is very similar to Classical Arabic. Up until that point I was getting frustrated with all the allegations that MSA is markedly different from the Classical. The fact is that I have a fourth-grade education in Arabic, however, when I read the Holly Quran I have little difficulties because most of the words used are familiar to me and if not to me then to my "illiterate" parents.

Yes, but in reality Palestine is split into two -- The Western bank and the Gaza strip. That's a fact, although I really hope it were so that Palestine would be a recognized state, not two vague entities. --Thorri 18:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be misssing the point Thorri. My whole point was that Palestine (as a state, under occupation yes, but never the less a whole nation) IS recognized by all the arab state as well as many african and asian nations. The only countries that seem to think that palestine must ask for its statehood from the unwilling Israel are those of Europe and my own USA. Now if the peace process does, by some stroke of luck, reach its ultimate goal of "two states for two peoples" then yes the Palestinian nation's land will occupy two seperated pieces of land. But even when that occurs it will be known as PALESTINE and not "Gaza and the Palestine region". See my point :)

I agree with anon, Thorri. We are talking about an official language of a nation or state and not a territory. It doesn't matter if it is split. Cheers -- Svest 23:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)  ^{Wiki me up™}

Bloated infobox

Please reduce the amount of information in the infobox as soon as possible. It's supposed to be a quick summary, not a complete list. The huge list of language codes is especially pointless. We're supposed to have separate lists for these things, not make infoboxes that are several pages long. The same goes for the "Offiical language of".

Peter ^Isotalo 22:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your point regarding the langauge codes. These belong on Varieties of Arabic. dab (ᛏ) 23:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Since Arabic is no longer a dabpage that refers to everything related to Arab culture, could we move it from the disambiguated title?

Peter ^Isotalo 10:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Why not? We have Latin at Latin and Esperanto at Esperanto. —Gabbe 12:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

no; "Esperanto" is different, since that is actually the name of a language. "Latin" and "Arabic" are national or geographic adjectives. If we decide to redirect them to the language articles, that's fine, but it is still proper to have the titles "Arabic language" (al-lughatu-l-`arabiyyatu), "Latin language" (lingua latina). The dab page is at Latin (disambiguation) for purely practical reasons, the adjective 'Latin' still has a variety of meanings, referring to Latins just as much as to their language, and even to Latin America and Latinos. dab (ᛏ) 12:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

"Arabic" is a noun that can only refer to the language. Look it up in a dictionary. That it also happens to be an adjective that occasionally alternates with "Arab" (as in Arab world) is irrelevant. Adjectives are not supposed to have entries in an encyclopedia. Using "Arabic language" in the lead is a perfect example of hypercorrectness. Just look at how its used in the rest of prose. I don't know what would be most proper in Arabic, but the one that should be chosen is the term that is used in Arabic dictionaries, not direct translations of decidedly hoaky English usage.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

The case for moving this article to Arabic is a strong as that made for Latin (Esperanto always means the language unless modified otherwise). The noun/adjective argument doesn't work too well here: in English, Arabic is both an adjective and a noun. English often makes no differentiation between many noun/adjective pairs. In Arabic itself, al-`arabī is used informally as a noun, even though it is formally an adjective. However, it is English grammar that is important in the choice of title. The naming conventions are clear that the form 'X language' is only adopted in the case that 'X' by itself doesn't reasonably refer to the language in first instant. Even though we can talk of the Arabic world or Arabic music, when the word is used by itself in English it means the language, just as with Latin. If someone want to move this page, I suggest they go to WP:RM and start the process. Getting onto the other subject here, I am the culprit who put all those varieties in the infobox. This was initially in line with the style taken from SIL's sense of a macrolanguage. This works well for many of these so-called macrolanguages:the infobox gives direct access to the various coding possibilities and links to articles about them. However, in the case of Arabic and Nahuatl, the number of varieties gets a little out of hand. It might be better to find a third option, that of noting that there are other coding possibilities, and a link to them. --Gareth Hughes 18:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with everything you said. It is, then, a question of whether "Arabic language" is hypercorrectness that should be avoided, or merely correctness desirable for an encyclopedia. I tend to opt for the latter. I have no problem with Arabic being a redirect here. dab (ᛏ) 15:16, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I have no experience in editing on Wikipedia so would someone mind to stick "Chad" under "Spoken in" in the info box? I'm sorry that I don't know how to properly post now - I'll learn and do it properly when I finish this homework and create an account.67.149.89.84 20:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[1]

82.227.203.184 (talk · contribs), your "corrections" were not all good. You mixed up ǧ with ġ, and it's fuṣḥā, not fusḥā -- please fix it. Also, your treatment of ta marbouta is inconsistent, once you have aʰ(?), and once ā, please concentrate :) dab (ᛏ) 22:11, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Population Figures need updating

The Numbers in this article are out of date... "206 million (Ethnologue, native speakers of all dialects 1998 est.); 286 million (population of Arab countries, CIA World Factbook 2004 est.), excluding Arab minorities in other countries and bilingual speakers"

Firstly the "Ethnologue" number is way off (why is it still there?). Plus I just looked up the CIA World Factbook 2005 (latest available edition) and calculated Arabic speakers to be about 293 Million (although that's just a rough estimate). Also the 2006 edition of CIA World Factbook will be out soon so when it comes out someone should get the latest figures and add them here. (as it will likely have increased significantly again). Hibernian

why is the 206 number "way off"? You would expect the number of native speakers to be smaller than the number of total speakers. Update the CIA number, but you'll have to find another source before you change the number of native speakers. dab (ᛏ) 20:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

---

I heared somewhere that Arabic has as only language except prosa, lyric also Quran as a text form, does anybody has profound knowledge in this topic, i would be intested in this topic.

Bismillah ir Rhman ir Raheem

does "Bismillah ir Rhman ir Raheem" mean "In The Name Of God, The Most Merciful, The Most Compassionate"? and more importantly where does it come from? googling tells me that it is a prayer, but from where? can someone give me some background?--Jaysscholar 17:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

It's not the best transliteration I've seen, but the translation is good. It comes from the very beginning of the Qur'an (sura 1, verse 1), and begins every other sura except sura 9. It is often prayed by Muslims at the beginning of things (e.g. work). --Gareth Hughes 18:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

so how does it look in arabic?--Jaysscholar 19:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

This is how it is written - بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم. Cheers -- Szvest 19:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up™}

I have seen it translated as "In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Merciful," because the root of raHmaan and raHiim (rHm) are the same. The first indicates one who is full of the attribute while the second is an adjective of regular intensity. If one wants to be accurate. A better transliteration would be "bismi-llaahi-rrahmaani-rraheem" - it is pronounced as if one word, basically, thanks to waSlah, and such a transliteration preserves the grammatical vowel marks at the end of each word. bi + [ismun -> definite = ismu] = bismi ([i] of "bi" dropped to be replaced by opening vowel of "ismu", [u] (nominative) -> [i] (objective); bismi + allaahu (iZaafah) = bismi-llaahi ([u] (nominative) -> [i] (objective), [a] dropped because of waSlah, replaced by grammatical objective ending of previous word); bismi-llaahi + [al + raHmaanun = ar-raHmaanu ([l] dropped as tashdeed is added to [r] as [r] is a sun letter] (iZaafah) = bismi-llaahi-rraHmaani ([u] (nominative) -> [i] (objective), [a] dropped because of waSlah, replaced by grammatical objective ending of previous word); bismi-llaahi-rraHmaani + [al + raHmiimun = ar-raHiimu ([l] dropped as tashdeed is added to [r] as [r] is a sun letter] (iZaafah)] = bismi-llaahi-rraHmaani-rraHiimi ([u] (nominative) -> [i] (objective), [a] dropped because of waSlah, replaced by grammatical objective ending of previous word; the final [i] is not pronounced as it is at the end of a phrase). Kitabparast 03:36, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The translation and the transliteration are "over correction." Typical rendering is the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, which gets at the same sense without awkward reptition. The fully inflected transliteratioin is hyper correct, one rarely hears outside certain recitations.

we have an article on basmala. Can you check out Shahadah too, please? I am not sure if the i`rab got mixed up recently. dab (ᛏ) 19:52, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Algerian Arabic link

The link that I added is to an online, collaborative Algerian Arabic dictionary. Please do not remove as spam until you go and actually visit the web site. Thanks you. Ahmed

This is English wikipedia and I don't think english readers will be interested in this link. You can add your link in Algerian language wikipedia. --Soft coder^Talk 05:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I had to remove that link again. -Ayman 14:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Any reader who is interested enough in the Arabic language to look it up on Wikipedia, may very well be interested enough to find an Arabic online dictionary useful. I know I am. I put the link back, and I think it should stay. Note that it is not a commercial link or spam. Arre 17:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

There is already a link to Webster's Online Dictionary, I don't see a point in listing every online dictionary here, and the new link doesn't work for me now to check it thoroughly... --Ayman 18:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

but this is an algerian dialect dictionary, which is different. let's keep it. providing more information is never a bad thing. Arre 18:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Need help with a place name

Hey guys, this probably isn't the best place to ask, but I need help from someone who knows Arabic. I just finished a stub for Persian Iraq to help out with the missing articles project. Apparently the English transliteration for the region's name is 'Iraq 'ajami (or something similar). Ideally I would also like to include the name in its original Arabic script form, but I can't read Arabic or write with Arabic script, so I'm pretty lost. I somehow managed to figure out the Cyrillic version of Zaysan, but I think I'm beyond my element on this one. Anyone want to help me out on this little scavenger hunt? BTW, I'm not sure if 'Iraq 'ajami is actually Arabic or Persian/Farsi. Maybe you guys could tell me. Supposedly it means "foreign Iraq", so maybe that's a clue that it's actually Arabic (since they are calling Persia "foreign"). Really I have no clue. Sorry if I'm totally barking up the wrong tree :) If you have any hints for me, please send them to my talk page. Thanks! Kaldari 23:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

'Iraq 'Ajami is Arabic, better al-'Iraq al-'Ajami; 'Ajami was a phrase applied to Persia/Persians, and does mean "foreign" - actually more like 'barbarian' in the old Greek sense of "those guys who don't talk like us" - non-Arab in other words. I don't know the phrase is a correct, it doesn't ring a bell but I'm not a Persia/Iraq guy. (Collounsbury 01:49, 1 February 2006 (UTC)).

Iraq al-arab (عراق العرب) and Iraq al-ajam ( Iraq ajami )(عراق العجم) are a different places and The Iraq-Iran mountainy border separate them, Iraq al-arab contain the south and middle parts of present Iraq republic and the majority of it's population are arabs but Iraq al-ajam extend from nourth of Ahwas (south-west of Iran) to the middle and central parts of present Iran and the majority of it's population are Persians. The word (ajam or ajami, عجم او أعجمي )is an arabian word mean non-arab person or nations.

Please help with the Classical Arabic Page!!

Well, this article is beautiful, extensive, detailed, but the Classical Arabic page has been largely ignored. Can some of the contributers from this page help me clean it up?--ikiroid | (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Swahili?

Shouldn't it be mentioned? or at least referred to it bears a lot of words borrowed from arabic. In fact it's name come from the arabic word "Sawahli" which means coastal, which is where it is mainly spoken on the east coast of Africa where there was alot of Arab presence.Zakaria mohyeldin 08:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not mentioned because it's uncool to be associated with anything Arabic nowadays.--Karkaron 01:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There could be a new section on influence on other languages, mainly in vocabulary, which is the case for Spanish, Berber, Farsi, Urdu, and other lanaguages in the area, as well as Swahili, and other languages like Malay. --Drmaik 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent idea; however, it would probably need its own article with a section in this one giving a general overview accompanied by a "main article" message. --Vedek Dukat ^Talk 21:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Eritrea

I saw that Eritrea was added to the infobox as an Arabic-speaking country and then removed. I'm not sure what the threshold for inclusion is, but Arabic is an official language, the first language of the Rashaida and a widely spoken second language among others. — Gareth Hughes 22:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed it as the infobox goes on to say 'spoken by a majority', and the Rashidia account for around 0.5% of the population. If another category of 'official language' were introduced, then OK. --Drmaik 23:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

There's a separate box for official language. - Mustafaa 01:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Christian k's?

"traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as [k]": I always understood this was specifically typical of rural Palestinian Arabic, irrespective of creed; I believe I've met Muslim Palestinians who pronounce it as k, and surely such a pronounciation would be unheard of in Lebanon? - Mustafaa 01:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Pronounce what as K?--72.38.211.144 (talk) 17:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Arab World

It says in the Arab world article that it has "a combined population of 323 million people". This article says there are only 206 million speakers of Arabic. That doesn't make sense, wouldn't the majority of the people in Arabic nations speak it so isn't the 206 million figure too small by about 100 million?--Fox Mccloud 00:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the 206 million figure is too small by at least 100 million, partly because it's 10 years out of date, partly because it was too small to begin with. Unfortunately, no one seems to have found a better source to cite than the Ethnologue so far. - Mustafaa 00:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks that was a fast reply. I also noticed that the article says that Arabic is "slightly before Portuguese and Bengali". The Language ranking puts Arabic above both Bengali and Portuguese, but it is below Indonesian. (It's a single language??) Maybe the articles should say "approximately 300 million" or something, putting it above all 3 of those languages? If I find a reliable source, I'll post it.--Fox Mccloud 00:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool. But be careful with the rankings - for those to be meaningful, the populations all have to be from the same year... - Mustafaa 00:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I changed it to say "approximately 300 million" and kept what it said about ethnologue's 1996 estimates. The articles on Portuguese, Bengali, and Indonesian don't give the year, though but I still think Arabic is above all 3 of those languages.--Fox Mccloud 22:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I just tallied up figures from the CIA factbook, which does indeed give 323 million (July 2006 estimate, how prescient!) as the population of the Arab world. I then used generous estimates (partially based on ethnologue) for numbers of mother-tongue Arab speakers, included below, and find a total of just over 270 mil. This includes Arabic in Chad and Iran. You could add another mill for France, but remember that not all North Africans are Arabic speakers: many (50%?) in France are Kabyle or Sous. So how about changing to 270 mil? --Drmaik 06:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Country	Pop	Arab	Arab pop
Mauri	3.2	0.8	2.56
Morocco	33.2	0.7	23.24
Algeria	32.9	0.77	25.333
Tunisia	10.1	0.99	9.999
Libya	5.9	0.92	5.428
Egypt	78.9	0.98	77.322
Israel	6.3	0.2	1.26
Palestine 3.8	0.99	3.762
Lebanon	3.9	0.98	3.822
Syria	18.9	0.95	17.955
Iraq	26.8	0.8	21.44
Kuwait	2.4	1	2.4
sau	27	0.95	25.65
Yemen	21.5	0.99	21.285
Bahrain	0.7	1	0.7
Qatar	0.8	1	0.8
UAE	2.9	0.55	1.595
Oman	3.1	0.8	2.48
Sudan	41.2	0.5	20.6
cha	9.9	0.15	1.485
Iran			1.8

323.5 270.916

You can change it. I'm going to edit the rankings page, since 270 million puts Arabic above Indonesian.--Fox Mccloud 00:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Fixing a clearly faulty population figure is all very well, but this rather smacks of original research. - Mustafaa 13:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think it does. It is at least aiming to be within the guidelines listed on original research.

" * Secondary sources present a generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of information or data from other sources.

"Original research that creates primary sources is not allowed. However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." --Drmaik 07:15, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it that hard to estimate the numbers of speakers? Doesn't every government provide statistics on what their people speak? I mean it shouldnt be that hard to collect the numbers from countries where Arabic is an official language. It will be a craze, to count in all those few millions living in each of the European countries. 亮HH (talk) 05:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Learning Arabic

I would like to learn arabic however I'm not sure which way to go with it. I would buy some CD sets but I don't know which ones to look at. I could talk to someone at the mosque in my area however, I am not Moslem, so I'm not sure how I would be received. I would love to learn. Any suggestions, tips, or advice? I am rather determined to learn.--Alped'huez 12:48, 19 July 2006 (UTC)Liv

I'm glad to see other westerners wish to learn Arabic, and as much as this discussion is off topic, I too would love to learn the beutiful Arabic language. I'm learning Chinese first though. Anyway, if you want to learn Arabic you should start with some online sites. This article already lists many of them. You can try ColloquialArabic.com [2], the Arabic Wikibook. You can also look at Omniglot which overviews the Arabic script and lists more sites for you to look at. As for CDs, you can go to Ebay. From Ebay, I chose the Pimsleur program, which is helping me learn Chinese now. I haven't tried anything else, though. Hope I helped.--Fox Mccloud 00:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

-- Tip use program called Auralog they are the experts -- --72.38.211.144 (talk) 17:17, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

A few days ago i got an arabic audio language course on cd. I've been listening to it for several hours each day for the last few days. One thing that needs to be considered here is that many, maybe all, arab countries have their own dialects of arabic. Another thing that needs to be considered is that arabic is written and read from right to left, instead of left to right like english is. Gringo300 04:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

There so few resources for non-religious Arabic learners. Even here, the section about learning comes to short. Should be expanded. 亮HH (talk) 05:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm using the rather expensive Linguaphone course... I'm still undecided as to how good it is. E.g. they say to form the plural had hu then give an example that uses something else so it's really confusing. For the price I would have expected it to be a bit more detailed, but maybe later on they clarify things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Budz888 (talk • contribs) 03:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)