Is it really so hard to learn Arabic?

Question

I really need to learn Arabic but i get discouraged because i keep hearing how it's incredibly difficult and that it takes about 6 years before you can even have a conversation in it! Is it really that difficult for a native English speaker to learn?

Answer 1

It is hard. I speak Arabic because it is my native language. But I do not read and write it, which is another challenge in itself. I came to the US when I was 7. So that was the time when I would have started reading and writing it. There are quite a few different dialects. And for all those dialects there is a formal Arabic spoken in the media, by politicians, clergymen etc. It is the same dialect in the Koran. Which is a very formal type of Arabic. Since I grew up speaking the "street" language in the dialect of my parents homeland, the formal Arabic is difficult for me to understand.

Not only that, there are lots of letters and sounds that do not exist in the English language. Most Arabic speakers who have been speaking it since birth develop a different set of muscles or facial features to accommodate some of the sounds in our language. Its a cultural thing throughout many languages.

However, like any language it is learn-able. Be patient. Do not give up. May I suggest you study abroad? I learned how to speak English through total immersion. My sister went to Spain for a year and is is now fluent in Spanish. So she has three languages under her belt. So I know you can do it. Do not be discouraged. Learn as much as you can. And yes it is a hard language to learn, but I can assure you like anything else in life, it will be a great accomplishment for you.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Is Arabic Hard To Learn

Answer 3

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Answer 4

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Answer 5

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RE:
Is it really so hard to learn Arabic?
I really need to learn Arabic but i get discouraged because i keep hearing how it's incredibly difficult and that it takes about 6 years before you can even have a conversation in it! Is it really that difficult for a native English speaker to learn?

Answer 6

It is hard for an adult who has no idea about how to speak Arabic as there are some letters that u don't have in English .
I'm an Arabic speaker 'child' because I come from Egypt whichs Main language is Arabic.
I'd say if u try really hard it might take u 1 or 2 years only to have a proper conversation. Arabic is a really beautiful language though.
While learning Arabic u might notice that there are more than 3 ways to write the letters and u might also notice that instead of calling more than one thing with the plural u call more than two things with a plural, u call tow things with something called al mothana wihch means two and u call one thing with a single obviously.
good luck

Answer 7

Arabic can be both the hardest or the easiest language in the world.
1. why hardest? Because NO ARAB currently speaks Arabic. Every Arab in this world speaks a dialect of Arabic, which is utterly different from what "Arabic language" refers to. The best speakers of Arabic in the world are probably only a few thousand foreigners that studied it in a formal environment. It has declensions and conjugations exactly like Latin does. Up to this day (in 10 years) I have NEVER met a single Arab who can speak Arabic perfectly. I, nonetheless, met a bunch of foreign researchers on Arabic, who can utilize all the case endings and conjugation markers without slipping for a single second. Think about this: People at Al-Jazeera, where you can hear the cleanest Arabic in the world nowadays, still require prompters to read the texts and DO NOT read them 100%, as they should, given the fact that the written language demands it to be also read.
2. why the easiest? because it's grammar has been built by, probably, non-Arabs or non-Arabic speakers, on mathematical patterns. If you learn the few hundred equations in the Arabic grammar, you needn't know vocabulary, all you will ever need is a series of three-consonant sequences, that have a certain meaning, and using the aforementioned patterns, you can re-arrange those consonants, so that you can build your own words, with <15% errors in meaning.
Example: take sequence [k-t-b]. this sequence has to do with the concept of "writing". KiTaaB is "book", maKTaB is "office", KaaTiB is "writer".
Example 2: take sequence [ʃ-r-b]. this this sequence has to do with the concept of "drinking". ʃaRaaB is "drink", maʃRaB is "place where people drink", ʃaaRiB is "drinker".
and so on and so forth...
My advice: go study one of the lower Arabic varieties, like the dialects. NEVER bother learning how to read and write it, it will squeeze your valuable time out of your life.

Answer 8

It is not that difficult to understand it & speak it. Writing can be very difficult. Many Arabs (including me) cannot write good Arabic. Reading comes second in difficulty. But as I said, to understand and to speak is easy. I have a British friend who has learned it in only 2 years. If you live between Arabs, you will learn it easy because you will be practicing it. Hearing people conversate in Arabic is very helpfull. Books and tapes can teach you, but it'll take you longet to learn.

Not to discourage you BUT to learn Arabic fully (writing, reading & speaking) will take you more than 6 years to learn. I am 27 years old and was born an Arab. Have been taught Arabic since I was born and still did not excell it & most probably will not. Do you know those who excell Arabic are few? And once they do excel the language they are considered as professors :)

Answer 9

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Answer 10

Well, I'm a native English speaker. I lived in Qatar for 18 months, and studied Arabic there for about a year. A reliable source says that the hardest languages for English speakers to learn are Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic, in that order. I've had dealings with all 4, and I agree. But I had simple conversations in Arabic after only about a year, and I'm not very gifted at languages. So don't get discouraged. For me, the hard part of learning Arabic is that some sounds in Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew are completely different from Indo-European languages like English. And singular and plural are often very different; in English you usually just add an S to the end of a word to make the plural. Oh yeah, and usually the script doesn't include vowels, only consonants. For instance, words to do with writing contain the 4 consonants m, k t and b, so the words for office, writing and book, and many others, all look similar. Learning to read and write Arabic is surprisingly easy. The alphabet has only about as many letters as ours. I learned it in about a month. Of course, the quickest way to learn the language is to live there, like I did. I worked with people who could speak English in Qatar, but even so I learned a little Arabic reasonably quickly. I've dealt with kids who go on 1-year overseas student exchanges, where they're totally immersed in the language. All of them come back after a year almost fluent, including the kids who go to Japan and Finland, which both have very difficult languages. So work at it. Good luck. Marsalaam, saddiq.

Answer 11

Arabic is somewhat difficult, however if you study and really want to learn it, it's not that hard. Any language that does not use the same alphabet as us is going to be harder to learn, simply because you need to get used to it. I've been taking Arabic for two semesters and i can have decent conversations with people. they aren't in depth intellectual conversations, but it is possible to speak with people. If you are taking it at a college i would recommend having a good relationship with the teacher, doing your homework and studying. Usually at a college there are native Arabic speakers in the class to get an easy A, but try to make friends with them or go to Arab/Greek restaurants, mosques, or Halal stores to talk to people. Arabic isn't all that bad. Good Luck!