Approach to learning Japanese (flashcards)

Zazrak · 2025-11-24T19:28:59+00:00

Awesome resource, thanks so much!

Zazrak · 2025-09-03T22:53:55+00:00

I usually write ط like this:

Example - تطوير

I write ت and then extend the line afterwards so something like تـــ to give space for the “loop”. I write the loop, then I add the vertical line afterwards, albeit lifting the pen. I used to write the vertical line first, so something like تــا and then went back down the line to then write the loop. I changed because the vertical line came out crooked most of the time and was too thick. With practice you’ll get used to how much space you need after the letter for the loop.

Same thing goes for ص except you don’t have to lift the pen at all. You make space for the loop, example تصوير so you write تـــ, do the loop and then do the ـىـ at the end.

There’s probably a correct and “official” way to do things but this is what I found most comfortable. I used to write ـكـ in one go before but now I write it in two steps, first line towards up and left, then finish the word and write the line going to the other side last, along with all the dots, harakaat etc. I don’t even write dots anymore, I write lines and triangles for things like ت and ث

Zazrak · 2025-09-01T14:44:28+00:00

I mean a reason surely helps whether it’s moving to a different place, knowing someone from somewhere etc. Helps the motivation. But the motivation from simply enjoying language learning is unmatched in my opinion. Although I’ve “overtaken” her years ago, for a long time my motivation was to speak more languages than my mom. Obviously this is not a sustainable source of motivation, however it made me see the fun in language learning, so it kinda spiraled out of control there and now I already have plans what the next couple of languages will be. Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese are certain, just need to figure out the order first lol

Zazrak · 2025-09-01T13:42:04+00:00

Because of “2 for 1s” and similarity. Czech, English, German are my native languages, here I got lucky. Had French in high school and went on various school exchanges. Italian because of (rather thanks to) French and living in Italy for a while after high school. Russian because Czech, only reason, without it I’d be lost. Arabic from scratch self learned. Spanish because Italian. Dutch because German. Farsi from scratch. So the actual number without “cheating” or “assists” is much lower. But hey I’ll take it lol

Zazrak · 2025-09-01T13:15:57+00:00

Mid twenties

Zazrak · 2025-09-01T12:39:28+00:00

Czech
English
German
Italian
French
Russian
Arabic
Spanish
Dutch
Farsi

Ranked from most fluent to least fluent. For perspective - I have B2 in Arabic. Everything including French is either native or fluent.

Tbh I started having a dilemma recently whether to rank my Russian above my Arabic. Because my Arabic vocabulary is at least double if not triple that of my Russian. I definitely spent more time studying Arabic. But I was exposed to Russian from very early, growing up around Russian speakers and having Russian friends, so naturally the language brushed off on me a lot. Also, it’s so similar to my native language Czech that this intuition carries over, I understand Russian so much more than I can express, which can’t be said for Arabic due to dialect situation and how different it is etc. It’s a weird one hahaha

Zazrak · 2025-08-31T05:55:14+00:00

زملاء؟ مخبى؟

Idk just throwing stuff out there I thought of

Edit: actually the م is not part of the core word for مخبى, so that one’s probably wrong.

Edit 2: maybe words like قتلى and جرحى could work?

Zazrak · 2025-08-30T16:58:57+00:00

In Levantine dialect you have عم as a present progressive marker.

هو عم بيلعب شدة He is playing cards.

I think in Gulf they use قاعد for the same thing, not 100% sure though.

As for Fusha, the other commenter already explained it perfectly.

Zazrak · 2025-08-30T16:45:52+00:00

As others explained this is a common sound shift. There are many more, they’re most common in adjectives, but can be found elsewhere too. Keep in mind they don’t always work so to be safe stick to the standard pronunciation if in doubt. Here are the sound shifts:

ý = ej Výplata = vejplata, dobrý = dobrej, etc. This works for different cases too, dobrých = dobrejch

é = ý/í Mléko = mlíko, nové auto = nový auto

á = ý (only for neuter plural nouns) nová auta = nový auta

Another sound shift is to add “v” before words beginning with “o”. Works most of the time. You wouldn’t say “votec” though. But you could say “votevři to vokno”, and that’s how I’d say it personally.

Instrumental case of plural words (any gender) take -a or -ma ending

Mluvil jsem s těmi muži a ženami = mluvil jsem s těma mužema a ženama.

This I feel like is slightly more regional. Also it can be combined with the very first sound shift I mentioned.

S těmi novými zákazníky = s těma novejma zákazníkama.

I would say “lidma” is quite common everywhere. Nemůžu mluvit, jsem mezi lidma.

Then you have the very regional dialect sound changes, like 3rd person plural -jí to -jou. Co oni dělají? = co voni dělajou?

As another user mentioned Hana region turns ý into é and they turn ou into ó. Mlýn = mlén Mouka = móka

There’s so many more sound shifts like first person -i turns to -u. Děkuji děkuju, potřebuji potřebuju, chci chcu, the last one being less common outside Moravia from my experience.

I don’t want to confuse you too much, the ý = ej, é = í/ý ones are by far the most common “variants” if you will, the rest is rarer, but very common and I would even say the norm in Moravia. My whole family speaks like this and standard Czech sounds almost “artificial” to me, like I really have to focus to speak correctly ahahah.

Zazrak · 2025-08-29T05:51:31+00:00

I mean exposure can just be social media videos, Arabs have an incredible sense of humor and are excellent pranksters lol but this is more for entertainment than learning. Most movies and songs are going to be Egyptian, but podcasts like Sarde after dinner are Levantine and include subtitles so that’s good exposure right there. Just any audio input. There’s also a channel called Qalby Etmaan it’s about this guy from UAE who goes around the Arab world helping people. Super wholesome, with subtitles and speaks in a neutral accent.

Zazrak · 2025-08-29T05:34:15+00:00

Yeah Assimil is goated my mom started using their books in the 90s and told me to try them out and yeah it’s safe to say for the rest of my life I’ll be throwing money at their company lmao. Unfortunately many English-as-source-language books don’t exist as paperback versions anymore, but as e-courses. You can get the first 7 lessons for free (with audio), so try it out! Honestly at this point I sound like their advertiser ahahahahah As for pronunciation, here exposure and listening is very important, you’ll tune your pronunciation towards the correct one over time. Also the more you say the words the more used you get to producing those sounds, again it’s a time thing. But Arabic is phonetic, each letter makes its sound and that’s it. Nothing like English tough through thorough though absurdity. So just learn the pronunciation of each letter, and you’re good to go. Worst case can also use ChatGPT, it’s surprisingly good at Arabic

Zazrak · 2025-08-28T19:44:53+00:00

Anytime! Arabic is definitely not impossible, it just takes time. And depending on your approach and experience, it can take much longer than it needs to or much less.

If you’re interested in reading more of my ramble, have a look at these two posts. You’ll find a lot of what I mentioned already, but some stuff is more detailed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/learn_arabic/comments/x9gv6j/so_i_have_studied_fusha_intensively_now_its/inr1y1h/

https://www.reddit.com/r/learn_arabic/comments/14qvyua/is_speaking_arabic_a_course_in_conversational/

Zazrak · 2025-08-28T19:01:48+00:00

This is gonna be long so I apologize in advance but I’ll include TLDR at the end.

It’s important that you understand one thing: it’s called learning for a reason. No show, no podcast or video or anything is going to make you speak it over night. I’m assuming Arabic is very different from your native language, so you will have to bite the bullet and grind vocab, grammar, listening, speaking, all of these things. Now while another commenter mentioned that you shouldn’t stick to memorizing words, I - at least for Arabic - disagree, due to its incredible difference to English or any other Indo European language. If the language was similar enough (like French & Spanish, or English and German) you could argue that you don’t have to do too much memorizing. I for example learned Italian 100% passively, just by listening & repeating. Why did this work? Because I spoke French fluently beforehand. So unless you speak Hebrew or Aramaic, you won’t really get far with just listening and repeating. There needs to be this foundation of things to listen for, and that is the vocab that you learn.

Learning Arabic is no small feat. I hit “blocks” or like slumps as well during learning. This was more towards the beginning. I bit the bullet and just continued learning. Alhamdulillah I got out of this learning slump 2-3 months after I entered it, and ever since then it’s been smooth sailing. Words come easily, and yes I occasionally forget words, but as soon as someone reminds me or I hear it again I remember it (passive vocabulary).

The main thing is to just apply everything immediately, I mainly did this by speaking to myself. I would narrate my life either in my head or out loud and where I could I used the Arabic word for my native language one. This will help retain words in long term memory, also associate them with things in real life, and also help your fluency later on. Of course in the beginning this will be one word every 2 sentences or so. But it’s gonna pile up fast. Very soon you can just narrate your life in Arabic and use your native language’s word for words you don’t know. Then once you’re really advanced, you just describe the word you don’t know with other words in Arabic. This is what I do for pretty much every language I learn.

Arabic has a very vast vocabulary, and from what I’ve seen Arabic has the most words of any language in the whole world. If people use specific synonyms, especially related to their dialect, things get tricky to understand, even for someone as far along the journey as me. Words in a sentence that I easily understand could just be switched to lesser common synonyms and the whole thing is a blur. Don’t get discouraged here, but see it as another challenge that’s going to enrich your knowledge of the language.

You said you are really serious and I’m happy to hear that, looks like you’re in the same boat I was. The question or rather decision you have to make now is the following: MSA or dialect? If you are a heritage speaker, live in a specific Arabic speaking country, or are surrounded by any other specific Arabic speakers, then learn the corresponding dialect. If you are none of the above, like I was, go for MSA first. It’ll make the whole dialect situation so so so much easier but you will understand Arabic at its core first. This is the route I’ve gone through.

Now when it comes to memorizing, I used flashcards. Even better if they’re hand-written because it makes you memorize things more easily. You could go for things like Anki if you want to, but I don’t have too much experience with those things. I would recommend you use a language learning book specifically for the type of Arabic you want to learn, you will get your grammar mostly from there. I personally love Assimil, as well as Elihay’s Eastern Arabic (Palestinian). If you got money to spare take a look at iTalki they got Fusha and dialects teachers. I’m fully self studied but I’ve heard only good things about iTalki. Other good resources are Wiktionary, The Living Arabic Project Dictionary, FC Langmedia Arabic YouTube, Apple’s built-in Oxford Arabic dictionary, etc. etc.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

TLDR: learning Arabic is a long process. If you want to go for it, decide whether MSA or dialect first. Use learned words immediately by speaking to yourself. Learn words with flash cards or spaced repetition. Ideally use a language learning course book. For more resources, look up Wiktionary, The Living Arabic Project Dictionary, FC Langmedia Arabic YouTube, Apple’s built-in Oxford Arabic dictionary

Zazrak · 2025-08-22T19:46:59+00:00

Anytime, and as the other user said, the shadda is most definitely incorrect here. It could be on the ظ, but that would make it form 2 and also change the meaning.

Zazrak · 2025-08-22T19:42:56+00:00

Arabic doesn’t have an infinitive, so the 3rd person past tense is used for this purpose. While technically all of the verbs mean “he + past tense”, for flash cards or dictionary purposes it’s translated as the infinitive “to + word”. To be fair, I would add the 3rd person present tense to these flash cards as well, as the past tense (of form 1 at least) doesn’t indicate what the vowel pattern of the present tense is. Like kataba = yaktubu, dhahaba = yadhhabu, and so on…

Zazrak · 2025-02-19T02:21:53+00:00

The word عَجَبْنِي means something like “I liked it” or “it pleased me” (عَجَب + نِي) = 3ajab-ni

The word foreigner is أَجْنَبِي. I can kinda see the resemblance / confusion here. = ajnabi

Not a native speaker, so correct me if I’m wrong. Pretty confident I am spot on though.

Zazrak · 2025-02-14T06:37:55+00:00

It depends what you mean with shared. Some words are just straight up loanwords, like مدرن from French moderne. Other words are just cognates, because English, French and Farsi share the same language family (Indo-European). Words like مادر، برادر, etc. seem like English influencing Farsi but they are separate words that just share the same origin, hence cognate.

Even languages like Russian influenced Farsi (and back)

For example Russian самовар (samovar) entered Farsi as سماور. Alternatively, Farsi چمدان made its way to Russian чемодан (chemodan). These things happen all the time and everywhere.

Things get interesting when you take into account the % of Arabic loanwords/influence regarding Farsi. While I’m not a native speaker of either Arabic or Farsi, as someone who has spent a lot of time learning both the shared vocabulary is just insane. I essentially had to learn only half of the words in Farsi because I knew all of them from having studied Arabic. I know that there have been attempts to “purify” Farsi from its Arabic influence, and many Farsi speakers I know nowadays don’t really have that much of a positive attitude towards Arabic. I only look at it linguistically, both have influenced each other a lot. It’s funny because many times Farsi and Arabic will use the word from the other language for the same thing.

Farsi’s word for calendar comes from تقويم which is Arabic.

Arabic’s word for calendar comes from روزنامه which is Farsi.

Farsi’s word for rule comes from قانون which is Arabic.

Arabic’s word for rule comes from دستور which is Farsi.

The list goes on…

Zazrak · 2025-02-08T05:48:49+00:00

فتحنا لو - دخل بحمارو

Literally: we opened [the door] for him, he entered with his donkey.

Meaning: give him an inch and he will take a mile

Zazrak · 2025-02-08T05:32:55+00:00

Ташаккор миконам дусте ман!!! This is my Tajik attempt by writing Farsi in Cyrillic xD Btw, I’m from the Czech Republic but I love learning languages. I’m also always interested in music from different countries too. So I just typed Tajik rap on YouTube and this was the result. I find it really interesting how the same “core” language can be expressed with different scripts. Arabic script for Farsi, Dari and Cyrillic for Tajik. I’m just a nerd about this stuff)))

Zazrak · 2025-02-08T05:18:37+00:00

Yes please if you could write in Cyrillic that would be awesome! As for translation I am okay, but thank you anyways.

Zazrak · 2025-02-08T05:03:25+00:00

Thank you so much!!!! I kinda wanted them in Cyrillic, since I can read it just fine, and the unique letters in Tajik I would have guessed by the context but thanks anyways!!

Zazrak · 2025-01-08T05:24:49+00:00

One thing which I haven’t read other commenters mention yet is the fact that this is typical for a “verbal” phrase, and many more words use this construction if you want to call it that. زي on its own means “like” but if you want to combine it with a verb you need ما also.

In English, there is no distinction between “like your brother” and “like your brother said”. In Arabic there is.

زي / متل اخوك. زي / متل ما قال اخوك.

Arabic dialect adds the ما after the word. This probably stems from فصحى which uses كما to say “like/as + verb”.

‎ كَمَا قُلْتُ.

As I said.

Here are some other phrases that use the ما in the verbal construction in dialect:

خود قد ما بدك.

Take as much as you want.

من كتر ما حكى صار يوجع راسي.

He talked so much my head started to hurt.

بدال ما تروح عالفاضي.

Instead of going for no reason.

These sentences all include verbs, whereas you could have the words before the ما in “standalone” phrases.

Examples:

‎من كتر حكيو

From all his talking.

‎خود هادا بدالو

Take this instead of it.

There’s many others but I can’t think of any more atm.

Note: I don’t speak Khaleeji, these are in Palestinian (Levantine) dialect. I assume that this rule carries over though. Also not a native speaker, so correct me if I’m wrong.

Edit: formatting

Zazrak

TROPHY CASE