I once had a professor tell me that the first ten years of studying Arabic were the hardest. With that criteria in mind, I’m almost halfway through the hardest years. Arabic is as beautiful as it is challenging, however, and I find myself constantly drawn to browsing my Hans Wehr dictionary. Thus came the idea of posting daily with Arabic vocabulary words.
I try to include at least three words with every post. Each day has a different theme, and that theme is either based on a current event or something that happened in my day. I hope that Arabic and non-Arabic speakers alike will enjoy this blog, and please do contact me if you have any questions, or if there are words you’d like to learn yourself.
A note about transliteration: I know that it’s not perfect. Transliteration is no easy feat. I am relying on the advice of my dictionary, the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, and the Wikipedia Manual of Style for Arabic transliteration. The mistakes are my own, and if you have a better suggestion for my transliteration, please let me know.
Posted by Little Swallow on December 24, 2008 at 4:27 pm
What a fabulous idea for a blog! I’m RSS-ing you!
Posted by Little Swallow on January 5, 2009 at 9:35 am
So I gotta ask: why the “green dictionary”?
Posted by The Arabic Student on January 25, 2009 at 9:19 pm
@Little Swallow
There’s a popular Arabic-English dictionary called the Hans Wehr and it’s green. =)
Posted by Katherine on November 11, 2009 at 9:45 am
That is funny – I had an Arabic professor tell me the first ten years are the easiest!!!