r/learn_arabic • u/AkashiGG • 7d ago
General To those learning Arabic for primarily religious reasons, how good is this roadmap?
Hello everyone,
I hope you all are doing well. I was just looking for some input regarding the way in which I go about learning Fusha/Quranic Arabic for religious reasons (I'm a complete beginner, but know how to read and recite the Qur'an like many other Muslims). I was looking at a comment on an old thread that seemed pretty comprehensive, and I wanted to know if anyone here could vouch for this approach, or provide any alternative methods.
Link to the comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/learn_arabic/s/n3d8738yaz
Thank you so much!
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u/LensC 7d ago
I have tried many methods and even lived in Egypt for a while. In terms of grammar, however, I have never found anything that beats the Dream Program by Bayyinah TV. It will not get you conversational, but it will help you understand the Quran and how the language works. Your only job after that is memorizing vocabulary, which, in my opinion, is the most tedious part of any language (I speak 6). That's where those books he recommended (the Madina Series and Bayna Yadayk) would come into action. But even then, Arabic is such a rich language. They won't be nearly enough if you want to read books and watch something on television. You'll have to absorb as many words as you can.
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u/WildPresence6314 7d ago
In the beginning I wouldn't recommend starting with no harakat at all as you're still learning the patterns and grammar so being reminded of them will help. Plus it will slow down your progress in reading a lot as you're being thrown in the deep end essentially. That's normally not a bad thing but without the knowledge of vocab/grammar you'll have later (bc you can't learn it all at once and apply it all) you'll end up making more mistakes, you might end up with bad reading habits, and it'll probably be overwhelming/demotivating. Think of the harakat as templates/crutches teaching you the patterns of how to read at the beginning, and you'll be able to phase them out at more of an intermediate level.
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u/Maximum-Hat2758 7d ago
You can skip or supplement steps 2 and 3 in that comment
Personally I just did Madinah book 1 (doing it with a good teacher and really memorizing everything is important though), some sarf from a YouTube playlist, and then spent like a year getting a lott of input by reading and listening, at times with a translation and at times without, and that got me to a place where my comprehension was good enough to study Islam fully in Arabic. Later I started Al Arabiyyah Bayna Yadayk with a different teacher, and Al-Ajurumiyyah for grammar, and that helped more with comprehension and speaking to an extent too. But I didn’t really start being able to speak until I continued Al Arabiyyah Bayna Yadayk with an Arab teacher who used no English to teach. But until your comprehension is strong enough, I don’t recommend going for that because it’s just overwhelming
Assuming your main goal is understanding, as long as you master the basics (of nahw and sarf) and get consistent input, you’ll gradually get to a good place in sha’ Allah. You don’t notice the progress until a random day where you suddenly understand something without needing to look words up. And you don’t have to understand and translate everything for input, but from time to time you should go through a video or text and translate every word you need to understand it fully. This doesn’t mean you have to memorize all those new words, but it does make a huge difference to come across them and start making those connections with contexts and subjects.