Arabic: Language and Literature A-Term 2021

To start off the seventh day of my A-Term, I began to focus on the history of the Arabic language through reading more of the book, Introduction to Arabic: A Modern Literary Language.      The part that I was assigned to read today mainly talked in more detail about how the Arabic language developed from classical Arabic to the modern Arabic that's spoken today. One part that I thought was really interesting was how Arabic and the society around it was able to evolve and adapt to the changing world, yet still keeping many of it's classical roots.      In addition to this, the author also goes in-depth about how Arabic language can come to terms with modern phenomenon, One of the ways detailed in the book is "analogy" or "Al-Qiyas." For example, the Arabic verb sallata. The classic meaning was to give power or authority. This was thought to be analaogus in modern terms to electricity, which also uses the terms power.      In modern Arabic, the verb now means

 To begin the sixth day of my A-Term, once again, I started with my daily lessons with Ms. Samira!     At the start of the lesson, Ms. Samira introduced a new set of vocabulary for me to memorize, as well as some examples to help practice my Arabic more verbally.      The main vocabulary words that we focused on throughout the lesson were: نشط (Diligent), يدرس (Studies), بيعدة (Far), مدرس (School), احبُ (I love), اذحب (I go) and قريب (Near). These were all new words to me, so initially it was very challenging for me to get the hang of remembering each word and their meaning's, but with Ms. Samira's help, and our reviewing throughout the lesson, I was able to remember the new vocabulary.      In addition to the new vocabulary, there was also a set of examples that used the same vocabulary I learned before, as well as the new words I just learnt. This example also had some questions that went along with it, which was what Ms. Samira used to help me practice my Arabic and conversa

 For the fifth day of my A-Term, I started by reviewing all the new vocabulary I learned yesterday.     For the start of our lesson, I only took my notes in Arabic, as Ms. Samira wanted me to get more comfortable in speaking Arabic, as well as for me to be able to be more fluent in the language. We first began with making conversation in Arabic, based on the example conversation that we reviewed yesterday. Ms. Samira and I went over greetings, questions and many different vocabulary as seen in the picture below.       Next, we made a table for the different versions (masculine and feminine) of questions and answers in Arabic. The questions went over were "ماسمكِ؟" and "ماسمكِ", which both mean "What's your name". Then we went over what you would say in a conversation/as a response, which would be "مرحبابكِ" and "مرحبابكَ" (Hello/Hi).       Ms. Samira continued to review the new vocabulary with me by using our table, and also through

 To start off the fourth day of my A-Term, I once again began with my daily lessons.      Today, we started off with a whole new lesson, which was about the different versions of "I am" based on whether it was feminine or masculine. This lesson was probably one of the hardest ones so far, since the grammar and sentence structure for this vocabulary was very different to how it is in English.      Ms. Samira first made a table of each word: "You are (Masculine), You are (Feminine) and I am" to help me learn each word in an easier way.      Both "You are" masculine and feminine are when you're referring to a person directly, or if you're talking to them about something that they own/possess. For example, if you're talking to your sister you would say: "أنت اسمكِ", which means "Your name (Feminine)". This would be the same if you were talking to your brother, except it would be "أنتَ اسمكَ", with a line at the top of

 To start off the third day of A-Term, I started with my daily morning lessons.     For most of the lesson, Ms. Samira and I reviewed the new structures and vocabulary that we learnt yesterday since it was fairly difficult to grasp. This new grammar and vocabulary is probably the hardest part of Arabic that I've learned so far, as it's an entirely new concept for me.      Throughout the lesson, Ms. Samira gave me different examples to go through to help me understand how these sentence structures should be used. The main structures were how to conjugate and use the word "have." The two conjugations I learned were "You have" and "I have." Even though they were challenging to learn, I enjoyed the new concepts and new vocabulary today because Ms. Samira makes each lesson fun and easier to learn.      After we finished reviewing, I learned some new words to add on to the sentence structures I already knew. The new words I learned were "Yours/You&q

For the second day of A-Term, I began my day with my daily morning lessons.      In this lesson, we began to learn about Arabic numbers and how to write the date in Arabic.     Ms. Samira first helped me review the numbers from 1 to 10, and afterwards we worked on the corresponding words to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd up to 10th. This was a little difficult for me since the numbers in Arabic sound similar to 1st, 2nd and 3rd, but they're structured a slightly different way.      After learning about Arabic numbers, Ms. Samira taught me how to write the date in Arabic, which goes day/month/year. I also learned about the days of the week in Arabic, which were a little challenging as well. They were also similar to Arabic numbers like the 1st to the 10th, but they were still worded a little differently which is what made it slightly difficult for me as well.     Ms. Samira taught me one more important word, which was "In." She gave me some examples to help explain and go over how &quo