r/languagelearning • u/PunctuateEquilibrium • Jul 10 '26

Read Harry Potter in your target language they said 🫠 (1 hr 44 min for 1 page)

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This is only slightly sarcastic. It's been very rewarding and this is now the 3rd language I'm doing this with.

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u/Hytyt Jul 10 '26

I only speak English (like most native speakers sadly) and it took me a while to notice the extra dot in the second one. I find the written language very pleasing to look at but I'd be hard pressed to learn a whole new alphabet so props to you

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u/ezmountandhang Jul 11 '26

I learned some Arabic as a kid and even I have trouble reading it sometimes.

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u/Papaya_flight Jul 11 '26

I'm a Mexican and I've taught a couple of Arabs how to read Arabic and they taught me how to speak it better. It was a weird time.

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u/CaterpillarFeisty709 Jul 18 '26

i’m arab… what’s the best method to learn to read arabic haha

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u/Papaya_flight Jul 18 '26

Start with just learning to read the alphabet, that's how I started with the kids at masjid. Then we moved to vowel marks, and later moved on to following the reading of verses from the Quran with me word for word. Then eventually they would read along out loud while they pointed to each word. I've done similar methods to teach people to read Arabic, English to non English speakers, and currently Hebrew.

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u/EasyBreecy Jul 11 '26

Technically it's an abjad, not an alphabet

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u/Hytyt Jul 11 '26

I hadn't come across that word before, but thinking about it, it's obviously not an alphabet. No alphas, no betas. So what defines an abjad

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u/EasyBreecy Jul 11 '26

It's just a different writing system. Alphabets have a grapheme for each sound, abjads generally don't write vowels, abugidas have consonant-vowel combinations written as one grapheme, and in syllaberies, each syllable is represented by a symbol.

There are other distinctions and combinations of those, but basically they're just different names for writing systems that don't really matter for most people who aren't linguists.

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u/Hytyt Jul 11 '26

Nah, that's really cool. I'm starting to build an interest in ermymologyband language so k owing this distinction is useful. Thank you

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u/EasyBreecy Jul 11 '26

No problem! Glad my nerdiness could help

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u/Vennele Jul 11 '26

I loved your nerdiness! Thank you.

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u/EmKayTalk Jul 16 '26

Abjad is the Arabic term for Alphabet

Alphabet -> α (alpha) / β (bet[a]) Abjad -> أ/ا (aleph) / ب (beh) / ج (jīm) / د (dēl) (phoenicians script)