Lower Intermediate - Cooking program

I’d like to comment briefly on two words:

(1) Since “salsa” is used both in Spanish and in Italian, it’s hard to decide which language ﺻﻠﺻﺔ was borrowed from.

(2) There are at least two Arabic words for “cooking pot”. I was wondering whether ﻮﻋﺎﺀ could be replaced by ﻗﺪﺮ in this context.

Before the change was made to the new website interface, I was able to type Arabic directly into the exercise for listening and typing the words. Now I am unable too. Is it possible to bring that feature back, as it was much more helpful (in learning to type in Arabic) than pasting text from an external source.
Also, I found the past two lessons particularly helpful. Excellent work!

Since the revamping of the website I've encountered other problems. The videos function somewhat erratically. Today I've been able to play all the videos, but yesterday I couldn't play any of them.

The other technical problem I mentioned some time ago has been resolved. I no longer receive an error message when I click on the left-hand side of the dark blue bar marked "Play".

I'm experiencing problems too with this new website. I can't even get the sound to play.

I was able to play one of the videos an hour ago, but I can't play any of them now.

Isnfleming you can’t play any of the podcasts except for the beginner ones because you’re not a paying subscriber.

We’re looking into the problem with writing the Arabic text in the exercises. Thanks for informing us about this problem, we do no need people to tell us when they see a bug in the site. With regards to the videos not playing sometimes, sounds like a server issue at the time. All our videos are hosted at Libsyn.com so if they have any issues it will affect the streaming of the videos here but I don’t think this happens often. Please bare with us, we’ll try to eliminate all the problems with the new design and introduce exciting new features

Thanks for the information, Mohamed. At the moment I can play two videos ("TV Tunes" and "Down the Beach"), but it's not yet possible to play the other ones. I can't think of any rational explanation.

The complete revamping of a website often causes considerable technical problems. When the website of the French radio network "Europe 1" was revamped a couple of years ago, Europe 1 was inundated with complaints because videos couldn't be played and it was often impossible to find or listen to podcasts. I was so exasperated that I completely abandoned Europe 1 for several months and listened to the programmes of other French radio networks.

In “Cooking program” Ehab makes some helpful remarks about the distinction between two Arabic words for "onion". The masculine word is a generic noun, while the feminine word is a unit noun. The distinction between generic and unit nouns is particularly important since it concerns a large number of Arabic words such as those which are used to denote fish ( ﺴﻤﻚ), chicken ( ﺪﺠﺎﺝ) or chewing gum ( ﻋﻠﻚ). These lexical items could be discussed in a podcast entitled “ism (ﺇﺴﻢ) al-jins (ﺍﻠﺠﻨﺲ) wa (ﻮ) ism (ﺇﺴﻢ) al-wahda (ﺍﻠﻮﺤﺪﺓ)”.

P.S. “TV Tunes”, which was available at 3.17 p.m. (GMT), has again done a disappearing trick.

Love the lessons. I listen to them while driving and other settings. One request: I was looking at the transcript of this lesson and noticed that the final ي was actually written as a ى . That is commonly done in Egypt, but for learners it can be very confusing. If the word is في, then please write it that way and not as فى . Thanks!

Keep up the great work! I've recommended your site to a number of people.