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great lesson lads(also for the verb)- good review of what i did learn in my arabic class - could you do one on the different "roots" of the verbs (1-2-3 etc..) and how to conjugate ?
cheers

مرحبا يا أستاذ
غيندي سوال , لمذا يستعمل في بعض الافعال "لي" و في اخرين "ني" مثلً "قلت لي" و "تجيبني" . مع هو الفرق

شكراً

really nice lessons,i like it alot, thank alot.

You guys have made it so easy to understand.
Bravo! Perhaps you could introduce more grammar, along with the conversation exercises. Definitely, you are doing a marvellous job. Bless you both, and your whole behind the scene team.

Thank you for this useful lesson, Ehab and Mohamed. I wonder if you could spare some time to go over the table of pronouns on page 3 of the transcript and make it more legible? I have printed it, but I am having difficulty distinguishing the various characters--perhaps it would be more legible if you did away with the bold text?

Agree with Mwanafunzi - great table, would be more helpful if more legible. Also, is there any way I might enlarge the Arabic text in the comments, say the text zaytuna wrote above (short of changing the screen resolution)? Have recently learned the alphabet and find the small text difficult to read. Maybe I can paste it into an Arabic text editor, for example, then enlarge it?
Charles

I adjusted the screen resolution - not difficult, but if anyone knows of a better way please let me know. Shukran.

Well,, there is a temp solution that you could do, which is to (zoom in) the entire page. Most browsers accept Ctrl++ as a (zoom in) command, to go back to the normal size you just need to zoom out (Ctrl--).
Hope that helps.

Thanks -- Exactly what I was looking for, and it makes zaytuna's message clear! Happy New Year.

Hello Ehab and Mohamed, once again, I would be grateful if you could modify page 3 of the pdf-transcript to make it more legible. I would also like to see how you answer the question that Zaytuna (above) asked almost six months ago. With regard to text, my experience has been that Arabic text almost always is so tiny as to be illegible, and I am constantly having to zoom in two or three times just to figure out the various characters, let alone make any sense of it. From a learner's point of view (and I consider myself very much a learner), this is not reader-friendly at all (it is, in fact, disheartening and discouraging), but I do not suppose there are many people out there who care enough about learners to do something about it. More's the pity, since so many of us are basically unfamiliar with Arabic script to begin with.

Hello Mwanafunzi! I've noticed that there are a lot of Google books where texts written in Arabic characters can only be fully deciphered with the aid of a zoom lens. In many cases, however, it is possible to read these texts without a zoom lens if one is familiar with the general appearance of the key words in the text.

I think you might find the Arabicpod dictionary helpful since the type of Arabic script used in the dictionary articles is very legible. If you click on the buttons beside the Arabic words you'll soon observe recurrent correspondences between letters and the sounds they represent, and if you have two computers you can copy the Arabic words you see on the screen of the computer that is connected to the Internet. Writing the words will speed up the learning process and help you to overcome your initial apprehension.

You might also have a look at the Arabic website of the BBC. The headlines are in very large letters, and even the texts written in smaller characters are quite legible.

Perhaps Ehab and Mohamed might consider producing a video lesson about the Arabic alphabet. The video could be presented in more or less the same way as the podcast about phonetic problems, and different kinds of script, including the one used in the transcripts, could be shown on the screen. The main problems are posed by some of the initial letters. "Miim" is a case in point.

Hi guys,

A better version of the pronouns table has been added and can be downloaded above for basic-premium members. Sorry that it wasn’t that clear already in the transcripts. With regards to the Arabic text, we’re working on it. For some reason, although it uses the same font size as the English text, it appears much smaller. Hopefully we’ll provide a viable solution soon

Just to answer Zaytuna's question as Mwanafunzi highlighted. The word (لي) means (to me) or (for me) while (ني) is a pronoun equivalent to (me) in English. Best example to give is saying (سألتني عن المكان) which means (you asked me about the place) where (ت) is referring to (you) and (ني) is (me). On the other hand (سألت لي عن المكان) means (you asked for me about the place) as in asking someone to ask for you about a place. So it is totally different meaning. However, I see where the confusion is coming from, the sentence (قلت لي) is normally translated to (you told me) but this is just how it is said in English, and the actual meaning is is (you said to me)! In fact the best way to say (you told me) in Arabic is (أخبرتني) so here you see the (ني) just as it is explained above. Hope this is clear enough.

By the way, about the Arabic text size, it is really down to the browser. I use Google Chrome and the Arabic text is always bigger than the English one. Nevertheless, inshallah we'll workout a solution to give more control on font sizes (i.e increase and decrease text size).

Thanks for a useful lesson. The issue of text size is complicated and seems also to depend on one's system, eg Mac or Windows although some printed Arabic dictionaries are also very challenging in this way. However, the choice of font is also relevant & the one used in the table (although common in the Arab world) is particularly difficult to discern, especially for those of us who are relative beginners!

A small error in the phonetics: 'our food' should be rendered 6a3aamanaa not 6a3aamamaa