Is it very difficult to learn a language with a different alphabet? Like mandarin or arabic?
Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at
8:37 am
It seems to me that it would be, and I know that Rosetta Stone is coming out with an Arabic program soon, and I’m thinking of getting it. Has anyone done this? (Learn a language with a different alphabet, I mean) And was it very frustrating? Thanks a lot!
Tagged with: alphabet • arabic program
Filed under: Learn to Speak Mandarin
hi im learnin arbic at the moment
there is the phonetical way which uses english letters, apart from a few that arent in the english alphabet so they replace it with numbers "7,2,3" for example: ba7ibbu – the 7 = H’AA (A strong h)
the script arabic is of course harder because its so different from our own, but a program should be good enough to help u learn quickly. atm im learnin myself but plan to buy audio stuff
Yes it is very difficult.
I’m not familiar enough with Rosetta Stone to say much about it.
Arabic is hard if you don’t know the alphabet, but if you take a good and I repeat GOOD class on Arabic, you will just focus on the pronunciation and the writing for the first several weeks. After that, it’s a lot easier.
To answer your question, it is more difficult, yes, but what makes a language difficult also has to do with how much we want to learn it.
Arabic is very easy, well only if you have a good tutor/ or lessons. The more you practice the more you become better. 🙂 Hope this helped.
Have a nice day!
Yes, it’s difficult, but learning the original alphabet for you was difficult as a kid too. Don’t you remember all the hours (with your parents and at school) writing and rewriting all the letters? Reciting them? All the spelling quizzes you had to do every week throughout elementary school? All learning a new language’s writing system will do is put you back to that part of your life. It’s really not so bad.
HOWEVER, if you use Rosetta Stone to try to learn you Will. Not. Learn. Anything. Rosetta Stone is a waste of your time and your money. If you want to genuinely learn Mandarin or Arabic or ANYTHING you need to take a class with an instructor. Rosetta Stone or any other software program, book, website, et cetera cannot teach you correctly, accurately, or properly.
Given the current popularity for Mandarin and Arabic, I am sure there are classes at a local community college that you could attend. Those would be much much much much much more worth your time than anything else you can do. If you want one-on-one you could try to find a tutor. But whatever you do, do not waste your time and money on that useless product. If any product claims it can teach you a language "quickly and easily" it is LYING.
you know what?
if you learn, everything you do is very easy
so there are easy
Yes, I did but in the other way around, lol!!
I’m native Arabic speaker and learning English and Deutsch was at first difficult because thy have different alphabet. Anyhow, now after learning and practice, it becomes so easy to switch between any of these languages. You should know that in the world of learning languages, the person should learn until he dies 🙁
Well I learnt Greek. Thought that I never would be able to but did.
there is no alphabet in Chinese language…
NO, the alphabet part is easy- you just have to learn it. (For Arabic, Chinese has no alphabet). And actually, spelling as we know it practically doesn’t exist in Arabic- everything is perfectly phonetic.
And that’s where the easy part stops. 🙂 Arabic is *hard,* very hard. The pronunciation takes some practice, particularly ح and ع (the second sound doesn’t even have a transliteration. It’s impossible!) Conjugations are tough, but the thing that is (surprisingly) a nightmare is the plurals. In English and most European languages, plurals are formed one way (+s in English), with exceptions. In Arabic there are TEN ways, with exceptions.
It’s an extremely useful language to know, but don’t dig into it unless you really want to devote the time. This isn’t like picking up French- not because of the alphabet, but because the language is in such a different family. If you’re learning it for some sort of international studies job or you want to work for the government, you might actually be better off learning Farsi, Pashto or Urdu. (Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan- they’re in the same wider family as English). They aren’t as widely spoken as Arabic, but they’re *extremely* high in demand for specialized jobs. It depends on what you’re learning it for.
Not to scare you away! You should just know what you’re getting into. I, though, have long had a burning desire to speak Arabic, so I’m slugging through…
Edit: The person tearing apart Rosetta Stone is wrong. I’ve been studying languages for over ten years, I speak four and am learning Arabic, and I was actually quite impressed with the system. Learning to piece together things on your own is a great way to learn (I taught myself the alphabet with this program, and I learned about three times as fast as I did the Cyrillic alphabet, which I learned the traditional way). The other excellent option, the one used in many universities, is Al-Kitaab; put the two together and you’ll be well on your way.