Learning Arabic…

You may have been told that now you’re a Muslim, you should start learning Arabic to recite the Qur’an. I completely agree. Reason being, reciting the Quran with a beautified slow rhythmic recitation is perhaps the most faith-boosting act of worship. Having that ability is detrimental to really tasting the sweetness of iman and loving Islam more. Even without understanding much of the Arabic, the Quran has a soothing quality that penetrates every open believing heart and moves it. The Quran is the refuge of the Muslim and can bring comfort in ways that is sometimes difficult to achieve from anything else, even praying. It is also a direct link to listening to the words and instruction from Allah for you and the rest of humanity and the believers in specific. The Quran is Allah’s spoken Speech. To have those words flow through your own mouth is too awesome an experience to forgo or delay.

However, Arabic should not be the primary focus in the beginning of your Islamic studies if you’ve just entered Islam (like a month or two ago) and wouldn’t be able to recognize Arabic from Hebrew or even Sanskrit and haven’t studied Islam in detail beforehand. Take it slowly, and spend the most time learning creed and perfecting prayer. Then hone in on Arabic.

Your Arabic studies may start by learning the “Englarbic” (transliterated) versions of the Chapter “Al-Faatihah” and the last few chapters of the Qur’an. You should also be learning about Tawheed and strengthening your understanding of the Islamic ‘Aqeedah. Once you have learned how to pray along with a few short chapters of the Qur’an, start learning the alphabet, the diacritical marks, and practice pronouncing words. Your goal then should be to learn how to pronounce the Qur’an, in Arabic, while working on understanding Islamic fiqh and reading some tafseer to better grasp and appreciate the Quran.

When you have a satisfactory foundation of the Islamic ‘aqeedah and are beginning to recite the Quran, then start learning/memorizing basic words, like pronouns, interrogatives, and prepositions. Eventually, you can learn how to recognize verbs and nouns.

Also, a great help is the “80% of Quranic Words” (or here) worksheets and what they clarify of verb forms. Understanding verb and noun conjugations comes quickly and is a tremendous help in grasping Arabic. If you feel comfortable with it, go ahead and test yourself. Then, use the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Arabic 4^th Edition along with the Al-Mawrid as your references.

And then after that, consider a book set or class to teach you more vocabulary and grammar. As you are going through those books, find an educated practicing Muslim friend who can speak fus-Haa clearly. That is the name for classical and literary Arabic that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his companions spoke. Also, find an Arabic radio station online and listen to it to learn news, geographical and weather vocabulary and to train your ears. But if you have no reason to learn Arabic other than Islam, find and read Islamic books to build your vocabulary and listen to Islamic lectures to train your ears, and practice speaking with your friend to train your tongue and your ability to put it all together. Reading and listening to Islamic material will be the best exercise and test for you, and it will keep you interested. Otherwise, if you are not dealing with the “raw material” that constitutes your original goal, the enthusiasm may wane, as happens to people when all they do is study grammar or vocabulary, without actually opening a book they hope to read.

Lastly, if you’ve compiled a good grammar base, the finishing is strengthening your vocabulary. Some of the best vocabulary boosting books are story books, like the history of the Prophet’s Companions, or even children’s books.

And be patient. Learning a language comes in many stages. But I firmly believe, that if you pray to Allah to Aid you in learning the language of His Book to better worship Him, that He will come to your aid and can make that easy for you no matter where you are. This may seem daunting at first, but the most difficult step is learning how to recite, and nearly every ethnic Muslim can do that. I personally believe that learning Arabic is much easier than English, since Arabic words and sentences have structural frames that piece together and there are rarely exceptions to the rule. In English, the exceptions are so much more than “the rule” that for each grammar and word form there are several different possible rules depending on the letters of the word or the words of the sentence, each with their own exceptions.

As for the colloquial dialectal language, called aammiyyah, it is spoken on the streets of Arab countries today, but it bears little resemblance to the Arabic you’d find in the Quran and Sunnah. Pronunciation is more relaxed, to say the least, and in some instances very different and confusing. Not to mention, a lot of different vocabulary—some of it borrowed from other languages, and jumbled up abbreviated phrases. This has made some of the Arabic dialects mutually unintelligible. Generally speaking, if you’re going to take a course of colloquial Arabic, the Egyptian dialect is the most universally known, thanks largely in part to their film industry.

When I started studying Arabic in the Islamic University I initially only knew how to recite the Quran and a bit of vocabulary that I had discerned from listening to the Qur’an while trying to follow along in translations. My first semester (out of four total semesters in two years) I understood very little of what the teacher said, and then, as many other students experienced, it’s as if some day you just wake up and “know Arabic” because of your patience, prayer, and effort. It all pays off eventually, but perhaps not as soon as you would like. Eventually, not long after that, my understanding of Arabic seemed to mirror my understanding of English and I did not have to make any thought in my mind “what did he just say?” and I had even seen myself speaking Arabic in dreams.

Does it benefit you more to study Arabic in an Arab country?

Not as much as you might think, since you cannot practice literary Arabic with people on the street. They’ll laugh at you if you do, thinking you’re talking like Shakespeare. Plus, if you’re learning in a school with several other English speaking students, more often than not, you’ll find yourself chatting with them in English. The real key to breaking into Arabic is practicing your speech, even if it is just having a conversation with yourself while no one is looking. This can be done anywhere. The main advantage of learning Arabic in an Arab country is that you’ll be surrounded by Arabic. Street signs, store names and products, for the most part, will be in Arabic. To be fair, you’ll also be able to communicate with more teachers and hopefully be in a more Islamic environment. But nonetheless, after experiencing what I have experienced, I don’t believe learning Arabic in an Arab country provides too huge an advantage over those who strive to learn it elsewhere.

And Allah knows best.