أهلا يا أصدقاء
As an Arabic student at Reed, I’m here to commiserate. While we’re blessed with fantastic language scholars like Asma, there are very few of us and we don’t have a department like other languages. And considering that the vast majority of contemporary Arabic-language media is not in Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic), it can be hard even to just interact with the language in a natural way. Also, coming from an English-speaking background, Arabic is HARD! All this to say: I get it. You love learning Arabic, but you feel overwhelmed by endless conjugations and roots and forms and regional specificities? Allow me to present a few online resources I’ve found.
Arguably the most reputable Arabic/English dictionary but in online form! You can even type in Roman letters and it will transliterate for you. You can type a root and it will give you all of the forms and nouns that derive from it.
2. ACON Online
ACON is a really useful conjugation tool. You select the three letters that form the root of the word, its form, and the perfect and imperfect vowel sounds, and it will list all of the possible conjugations laid out in the Western (starting with أنا) or Arabic order (starting with هو) according to your preference.
Struggling still?
Maybe you feel like you still don’t quite have enough of a grasp on things to use these tools – you might be wondering what all of these forms mean and what they’re for, or why I’m calling the present tense “imperfect”. If that’s the case, that’s totally okay too! Go visit Asma during her office hours or book a tutoring session with me on IRIS and we’ll try to make things a little clearer.