Speaking Syrian dialect

Painting by Syrian artist Mohammed Ghanoum 
Read about him (in German) here: Der-Schoengeist-der-mit-Farbe-um-Syrien-kaempft

Whenever learning a language one often faces the following problems: 

  • the written and the oral variants are quite different
  • the regional variants vary greatly, sometimes up to the point, that they are mutually unintelligible
So, for instance, I am learning European Spanish because I'm traveling to Spain more often than to Latin American countries and also I speak the Southern variant of Mandarin used in Shanghai rather than the Beijing variant, which is actually the one used in most textbooks for foreigners.

When learning Arabic it is even more difficult to choose a variant to learn. See the following comic and you get my point. 

Comic by itchyfeet (http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/)

So, when I decided to learn Arabic I chose to learn Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) first and later to learn to speak Levantine dialect since most of my Arabic speaking friends are from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The Levantine dialect is also pretty close to MSA, so I hoped that it wouldn't be too difficult.

I'm a very script and grammar oriented person, so I just started with a textbook, doing exercises, writing little texts and uploading them on italki. I received a lot of helpful feedback, but I always had the feeling that I'm not progressing. That Arabic is really hard. And I felt self-conscious about speaking in Arabic. I always thought, that there are some Arabic sounds, that I just can't produce. Like 'ayn. Read the following description of this consonant:




Great, how to sound like "you are swallowing your tongue or being strangled"? This consonant is very important since it is one of the most common letters in Arabic and the Arabic word for "Arabic" even starts with it... But today I realized that it sounds a bit like the Chinese third tone, which is also a sound, deep, deep down in the throat. So, as I wrote in my last post, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and start talking Arabic, and that's why I took my first Syrian Arabic online lesson today. I used my little trick, always imagining the Chinese third tone when trying to pronounce 'ayn and it worked!

My teacher Mohammed was very patient and encouraged me to come out of my shell (check him out on italki: https://www.italki.com/teacher/2678645). We talked about numbers today and I also realized that Arabic numbers are quite easy for German learners because Arabic and German share a peculiarity when it comes to numbers between 20 and 100. Let's take the number 42 as an example. In English and many other languages (like French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese) the number is constructed like this 40+2 (forty-two), but in Arabic and German, it's 2+40 (two-forty). At last, I found a language, where the numbers don't give me a headache (oh, French is the worst with 99 = 4x20+19)! I'll definitely continue with the Syrian dialect.

The Resources

NassraArabicMethod: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCODocY1zzmorLGtWffXB87w/playlists
A Youtube channel for learning Syrian dialect. Apart from everyday phrases, they also have this video in Arabic and English about the terrible situation in Syria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqdMr0y1-Mg.

The Music

Khebez Dawle, a Syrian rock band, who turned their escape to Europe into a music tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16wr2CKPywc
Some of their songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VngVH7LKAJQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYJZMHK6pg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHFUtshcEk


 Gene band, a Syrian rock band. Their song Ya Waladi is based on a poem by Tunisian poet Adam Fathi. This song is so powerful! The first musical rendering of this poem was made by Egyptian singer El Sheikh Imam. At the end of the rendering of Gene band, you can also hear a snippet of the version by El Sheikh Imam.
Ya Waladi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqMuEcI8eMk (with English captions)
The Arabic lyrics: http://www.arabology.org/2013/03/gene-band-remakes-classic-song-ya-waladi.html

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