This may not be the right place to ask this, but do you guys know of anywhere in the Middle East that would be good (and cheap) to learn Arabic?
I was looking at the Eton Institute in Dubai, as it's not too expensive and seems pretty good. Dubai doesn't seem like a very fun place to spend a few weeks though... I mean like organised programs rather than just living out there in a hostel or something as I'd probably just end up speaking English the whole time.
>>1135754
I'm interested, bumping
nope
love - alhab
wisdom - alhakmaa
peace - alselaam
life - alheeaa
something like that..
>>1135769
you mean:
love - al-hubb
wisdom - al-hikma
peace - as-salaam
life - al-hayya
Just being smug...
>>1135754
All national dialects are fairly unique and distinctive. Anything east of Egypt is a waste of time (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania) as they're too divergent and not fully intelligible to others. They borrow heavily from French, Berber and to a lesser extent Italian (in Libya's case). Ditto Oman and Yemen -- just pretty pigeon-holed. It's like learning strong rural Scottish English as your standard.
You don't want to live in Saudi, and you won't be allowed anyway. Iraq and Syria are obviously not options right now. I'd steer away from UAE or the other Gulf statelets, as their dialect is also kinda considered ugly and very guttural.
Egyptians like to think their dialect is THE BEST, and it is fairly widely understood even though it is a distinct dialect. This is because Egyptian movies/music are widespread in the Arab world. So Egypt is one option, although Egypt is a shit hole...
Levant dialects are not too divergent from the 'MSA' norm. Jordan and Lebanon are thus decent options. (Palestine and/or Israel too perhaps). Lebanese (and to a degree Syrian) borrows heavily from French and from Ottoman Turkish to some extent though. Beirut is pretty liberal for the Middle East and you can bang loads of Leb bitches easily enough. Jordan is probably the most western/liberal place in the Middle East, although I found Amman (where you'd presumably go) a little boring after a few days.
In other words, every dialect is kind of distinctly its own, so you'll have to just choose the one where you think you might be dealing with most.
>>1135826
Except the t sound is ommitted at the end of a sentence and not used in colloquial speech outside of an idafa
t. dli alumnus
>>1135962
None of those words were being used in a sentence, and I think it'd be reasonable to assume that we should use formal pronunciations given that there's no indication of what dialect it might be.
Saudi here.
>>1135785
This is probably the answer you're looking for.
Since you mentioned cheap, UAE is probably not the best option you have. And also not very easy to socialize with Emiratis (and all khalijis for that matter) which will slow down your progress.
I'd say stay out of the GCC. If I were you I'd look into Jordan. Lebanon is not safe by any means.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait to a lesser extent, The GCC states are the best places in the Middle East to live for a Westerner (UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar)
>>1135754
I'd recommend Syria as the Syrian accent is objectively the easiest and the most understood, unfortunately Syria is a bit busy right now, if I were you I would try Lebanon or Jordan ( their accent is very, very close to syrian) and levant arabs ( Syria-Palestine-Jordan-Lebanon) share almost the same habits and cultures ( apart from few minor differences ).
If I were you I wouldn't go to the gulf, we're not the best to socialize with if you're an outsider, like you really will never fit in, plus other people say our accents sound really bad ( it sounds normal to me since I was raised speaking it), so jordan or lebanon.
What dialect are you wanting to learn? There are good centers in Egypt for formal fusha Arabic but they're mostly for Muslim students so I don't know if it would be weird for you or even if they except non Muslims. I spent a year over there so if you have any questions about living in Egypt. Their dialect is better and as >>1136619 the Levantine dialect is the easiest, and I found it personally to be the closest to formal arabic and the most intuitive coming from formal arabic (somewhat like going from Latin to Italian).
There are a few places where you can learn dialects in a classroom but I know little about it. I would avoid the gulf because most people will just speak to you in okay English, that was even a problem in Egypt for me and I'm not even white. If you're white, people will assume you're ignorant of arabic and want to practice their English. I started pretending I don't know English and that helped a bit.
>>1135964
Not that guy but even if you're just reading that one word in fusha (formal dialect) you would pronounce as a soft h.
>>1135964
I have a Lebanese friend that recently went he said it's pretty safe.
>>1136674
>except
accept I mean
>>1136674
>>1136583
>>1135785
Thanks for the advice. I'd really like to go to Lebanon, but it's such a small country almost entirely surrounded by Syria... I was in Jordan a year ago, and Amman seemed like a bit of a boring city compared with a lot of the other major Arab cities.
I might have a look at Cairo or Alexandria I guess, but I never even considered the non-Muslim angle, it'd be very weird for me to spend a month learning the Qur'an. I like the idea of pretending to not speak English, it's always so frustrating when people in foreign countries insist on speaking English to you.
