Talk:Learn Arabic (Language Of Quran)

Any suggestions/comments please leave them, they will be greatly appreciated! Istheway2 07:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Fonts

Do you know of any good FREE Arabic fonts?

The standard Unicode fonts that come with modern versions of Windows (XP & Later) have decent Arabic fonts characters, though to make them readable you have to enlarge the font size to at least 16pt. Josterhage 15:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Deleting external links

An anonymous user removed the link to Madinah Arabic, claiming it was not "free". While it is true that the external resource was not licenced under CC/GFDL, it was free of charge, and a quick examination suggested it was also useful and valuable. I don't think the external link should be removed, at least not without (a) discussion and (b) replacement with a better link. --McCormack 12:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you the teachings are free and there is no reason to use it as a compliment to this subject area. Enlil Ninlil 10:23, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Original Content

Is it possible to integrate the original content with the new sequence? It seems unnecessary to wipe everything out and reinvent the wheel from scratch. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes .. i'm doing the same, but sometimes i have to do some necessary changes :( --Ruaa Elias (discuss • contribs) 14:28, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

There may be some confusion here. Arabic is indeed the language of the Qur'an, but the Qur'an is written in w:Classical Arabic, which is somewhat different from w:Modern Arabic.

If the Qur'an is important to the study, perhaps the reader wants to be able to

1. Recite the Qur'an, pronouncing it correctly. Strictly speaking, there are various schools of recitation, one would be specified. w:Qira'at. Qur'ans are produced and marked according to the readings. The most common today is Hafs, so common that many Muslims don't know there are other readings. (And sometimes get upset about it! -- but any serious Muslim scholar knows about this.)
2. Understand the Qur'an.

If the goal is to learn modern Arabic, to read Arabic newspapers and other documents, and perhaps to speak Arabic, it's a very different goal and regional variations will become very important.

From personal experience, if the goal is to understand the Qur'an, I highly recommend learning to recite it correctly, and memorizing much of it. Starting from the beginning, not just focusing on the short suras at the end, which are often highly poetic. Baqara, the second chapter, is clear and relatively simple Arabic, and covers all the basics of Islam. In learning it, one can use an interlinear Qur'an, with English translation easily seen. With some memorized Arabic, it starts to become easy to use dictionaries and grammars. Arabic is famously difficult or impossible to learn if one doesn't know any Arabic! When I started out, I'd read a grammar and would retain almost none of it. Later, it got much easier, because I had something to hang the grammatical rules on. Oh! That explains why it is

in:a |ll:Aha ^ala| kul:i $ayi~ qadiyr, but

wa |ll:Ahu ^ala| kul:i $ayi~ qadiyr.

(the a at the end of the name of God instead of a u!) (to use my old ASCII transliteration scheme).

So what is the goal here? Reading the Qur'an, or modern Arabic? If modern Arabic, "Qur'an" should not be in the page name. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:37, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

There is no modern , classical Arabic for Quran .. it's one Arabic(Fusha) .. we as Arabs refer to the Quranic language as Fusha .. i learned Quran by reading what i've learned in the school( arabic letters and sentences) only! i didn't have to enter islamic school to know how to read Quran . it's Easy :). here i'm trying to explain every thing about Arabic , people will be able to read Quran as well as understand what they are reading, and that's the goal of this project .. UNDERSTAND the Meanings of the holy Quran . ALLAH Says In Quran
إنا أنزلناه قرآنا عربيا لعلكم تعقلون
Verily, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an in order that you may understand.
so for learning Quran u must learn the spoken Arabic and understand it .. what's the benefit of just reading characters ?? Thanx --Ruaa Elias (discuss • contribs) 08:22, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Ruaa. The issue is one of approach. First of all, Qur'an, when fully marked, is written phonetically. If one learns the script and marks, one can read it. Reading it well takes study and time and practice, but ... it is approachable. Remember, I'm not an Arab. I have studied Arabic. One of the best books on learning Arabic said, in the introduction, that Arabic was famously difficult, for non-Arabs. One could take several years of Arabic at a university and still be unable to read a newspaper. Yet children learn Arabic. How do they learn?

Children learn through exposure without rejection. When adults are speaking, children do not have the idea that "I don't understand this." That comes much later, after they have been punished, shamed, humiliated for not understanding something. Children just hear it, and they hear it in context. So they learn, this is very natural for human beings.

I knew all this when I started to approach the Qur'an, over forty years ago. So what I did was expose myself to the language, and since what I wanted to do was to read the Qur'an, I read the Qur'an! I first learned the letters and markings, and that is fairly simple, for the first level of approach. I remember my first attempt to read aloud. I was sitting at a kitchen table in Taos, New Mexico, and there was a Hopi Indian elder sitting across the table, Tell Us Good Morning. My reading was what I'd call "painful," like the reading of a child. Most adults would avoid this, not wanting to be a child, not wanting to be embarrassed. I just did it. He fell asleep, and then woke up saying, "I thought I was home."

Writing this, I decided to Google him. [1]. May he rest in peace.

Anyway, this is the problem, Ruaa. Language shifts with time. Root meanings, earlier meanings, are buried by centuries of interpretation and explanation and application. When the Qur'an was revealed, the words had meanings that were recognizable to the people of revelation, indeed, the Arabs, and specifically the Arabs of Makka and Madina. You may recall the hadith that the Qur'am was revealed in seven dialects and each one had seven meanings. What does that mean? 49 meanings? No. "Seven" is used to mean "many."

With time and what I'll call social pressure, the available meanings were narrowed.

There is a caution here: searching for "hidden meanings" is very dangerous. However, that's not what I was looking for. I was, in fact, looking for plain meanings, that would appear to an innocent Arab hearing the words. And it starts with the actual sounds, which is what we can easily learn to read.

By learning to read the sounds, we create, for ourselves, that original experience. However, we don't start out by knowing meanings. That takes context.

So what I did was to use an interlinear translation. I knew that no translation is reliable. So what a translation was telling me was what *one person* thought the text meant. At least one meaning of the text. Some translators are careful and use parenthesis to show words they have inserted that are not there in the original, as interpretations. Others are completely incautious about this.

I would commonly consult many other translations, dictionaries, I eventually bought Lane's Lexicon, etc. I'd look at whatever tafaasir were available to me. What does one get when one looks at something from more than one point of view?

Depth perception.

I was travelling when I started to read the Qur'an straight through. I decided that I would read for fifteen minutes a day, at least one "section" as the translation I was using had divided the text. Ruku'.

Very quickly I would become absorbed and keep reading. It took me about three months to read the whole book through. And then I started again from the beginning. And I found that I was now understanding much of it. And then I kept doing this.

At some point, years later, I started to memorize the Book. Enter houses by their doors. I started at the beginning. Obviously, I already knew the Fatiha, but, then, Alif, Laam, Miym.... dhAlika l-kitAb, right? laa rayba fihi, huda~ lil-mutaqiyn.

Isn't that what we want?

I have never learned to read Arabic, as such. Obviously, I can read much.

The book is clear. When we read it with filters, it can get murky. Our filters make it so. The filters are what we *already think it means.*

You mentioned Arabic as the language of revelation. The language of revelation of the Torah is Hebrew. So do those who have Hebrew as children have a superior understanding of the Torah? In some ways, obviously. In others, no.

So ... if the goal here is to learn Arabic, to be able to speak Arabic and read modern text, that's one goal, and surely a useful one. But if the goal is to approach the Qur'an, in the language of revelation, a different approach is suggested, learning the Qur'an by the Qur'an. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

May he rest in peace.

i still think that learning Arabic is the best way for understanding Quran , as you mentioned .. one Arabic word in Quran might contain alot of meanings. sometimes even the translators will not give the whole meanings. you r right , language has changed a little bit, but still we can find the old meanings .. every time i read QURAN believe me, every time i discover new meaning for the same verse! that's the benefit of reading Quran in Arabic when you will learn Arabic Insha' ALLAH , you will know what i mean :) --Ruaa Elias (discuss • contribs) 19:28, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I already know what you mean. No translator gives anything but a shadow of the meaning, a glimpse. However, if we look at all translations, we may see more. There are also tafaasir (the commentaries), likewise. However, the best guide to understanding the Qur'an is a knowledge of life, because, after all, the Qur'an is a dhikr, a reminder. Reminder of what? Of what we already know, obviously, we cannot be reminded if we don't already know. But perhaps we have forgotten or become confused.

Meanwhile, I write on Quora a lot, and a user there pointed me to the videos of wikipedia:Nouman Ali Khan. Amazing speaker. I don't normally watch videos. I made an exception for him. I'm not likely to learn a whole lot more Arabic at this time, I'm 71 this month, and it is not my major focus. Thanks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:22, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Masha' ALLAH ,may ALLAH give you a very long and happy life. You may not like the purpose of this project but, i will be happy if you keep giving me suggestions to improve it :) , too many thanks for you --Ruaa Elias (discuss • contribs) 08:59, 11 May 2015 (UTC)