From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:00 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:00 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:ddomingo at fluentialinc.com Subject:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 [Please share this information with students or anyone you believe may be qualified.] Hello. My name is Dave Domingo. If you are a non-native speaker of Arabic, you can earn $40 for approximately 1 hour of work, helping my company develop a DLI-funded language learning tool. (You must have completed at least one college- level course in Arabic as a *second* language to qualify for this opportunity.) My company, Fluential, is creating a computer-based language learning system called T-MINDS, which is being developed under a contract with the Defense Language Institute. (Click here to view a presentation about T-MINDS.) At this stage of development, we are collecting speech data from non-native Arabic speakers. This enables us to model correct and incorrect speech so the system will correct and give feedback at the right level. Your total time on task is about 1 hour, but you can break your session up into shorter chunks – see below. If you would like to help with this project and earn $40, just call this toll-free number to begin: 1-877-358-3684 The system begins by assigning you a unique PIN so you can hang up at any time and continue your session when it is convenient for you. When you finish your session, e-mail me at ddomingo at fluentialinc.com . Include your full name, your mailing address, your phone number and the PIN you were assigned. Without these four items of information, we will not be able to process your payment. This data collection project will end on or about July 15. Please feel free to call me at (925) 895-2294 if you have any problems or suggestions. Thanks very much for your help. -- Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:07 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:07 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Test Normers (for free online course) Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs non-native Arabic Speakers for on-line recording -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Needs Test Normers (for free online course) Subject:Needs non-native Arabic Speakers for on-line recording Are you interested in taking a $99 online Arabic course FOR FREE? Would you like to be able to speak, read, write, and understand Arabic? Are you interested in testing your proficiency in Arabic? Arab Academy is pleased to announce that it is offering a FREE online Arabic course to a select number of students (a $99 value). In return, students will be asked to sit for the Arabic Language Proficiency Test (ALPT) which is currently being developed and validated by Arab Academy. If selected, you will be asked to sit for the ALPT test 3 times to allow us to test the uniformity and validity of its scoring process. The test is approximately 3 hours long and includes speaking, reading, writing, and listening components. Your scores will be used to determine your proficiency in Arabic and you will subsequently be placed in a free ONE MONTH Arabic course online with Arab Academy (a $99 value). Sign-up NOW by visiting: http://www.arabacademy.com/alpt_free Offer expires Sunday July 15th, 2007 ABOUT ARAB ACADEMY Arab Academy is the world's leading provider of online Arabic language courses. To date, Arab Academy has served 22,500 students from 182 countries. We offer courses for all ages and language levels. To learn more about Arab Academy, please visit: http://www.arabacademy.com Best regards, Sanaa Ghanem (http://www.arabacademy.com/ghanem) President, Arab Academy, 3 Kamil El-Shinnawi Street (Formerly: Al-Nabataat Street), Garden City 14511, Cairo, Egypt E-mail: info at arabacademy.com Web Inquiries: http://www.arabacademy.com/contact_e.htm Web Site: http://www.arabacademy.com Tel.: +2 012 218 0305 Fax: +202 589 1499 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:03 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:03 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Max Maxxxxxxx Subject:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects Hi! My name is Maksym Vaskiv. I'm from Ukraine. I'm a student of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University. I study at the faculty of Oriental Philology. My speciality will be Arabic language and literature and English language. Beginning from the next September I will be a third-year student. I think it advisable that I should tell you a few words about myself. Nobody can estimate themselves by their own. I can't tell you I'm a good student, I have no right for this. Maybe the only persons to do it are my lecturers, but because of their absence here, in my letter, my studying results can talk instead of them. So, now I have finished four semesters, I had 15 exams. The grades of all the exams were A. As for me, it is not a great achievement. The main achievement for me is possibility to use your knowledge in practice, helping people and making some great things. Until now I hadn't had a lot of opportunities to do this. But, nevertheless, I've managed to use the few of them. The first thing I want to say is that I'm always looking for Arabs to communicate with them and improve my spoken Arabic. But I do feel a lack of people from Arabic countries here, in Kyiv. So, though I have some friends who are Arabs, I'm hardly ever able to have some conversation with them. One of the greatest achievements for me during my studying in the university was a practice in Egyptian Embassy in Kyiv. I have gained a lot of experience there. Now I'm planning to have a practice there again. And also in the embassy of Jordan. As I had realized before that it is necessary that person should know not just a literary Arabic Language, but, which is much more important, Arabic dialects, I'm trying to find some opportunity in learning and improving Arabic dialects. I think, I have found a very original way for this. I have started creating a computer program for comparing and learning dialects. The program is constantly being upgraded. It is called "AudioLiahjat". The main goal for the program is to help the student studying Arabic language to understand the main differences in Arabic dialects, now mostly in phonetics, but in future, I think, in grammar and lexicon. And it should make the language adaptation of the student who hadn't been in any Arabic country before or is going to visit one of the countries much easier. Now the program contains literary Arabic language (not classical, but one used by people in Arabic countries to talk) and three dialects: Egyptian, Iraqi and Lebanese. Now I'm looking for people to help me in creating the program or sponsoring it. Now I have a few projects for the future. Next September or October I'm planning to organize Middle East Culture Festival. There will be presented music, poetry and culture of Arabic countries, Iran, India. There will be folk bands, different seminars in national poetry, history of Arabic fonts and much more. Now I'm gathering the information about everything connected with that and contacting different bands, people and embassies to help me in organizing the festival. The next project is creating Middle East culture magazine. I'm not sure about the time when the first one will be published. I have a lot of people wishing to write articles for the magazine. There are as Ukrainians, as Arabs and Iranians among them. But the main problem is a lack of money for publishing the journal. I'm going to visit some embassies asking them to sponsor the journal. I feel a great desire in working with Arabic language, and especially, with Arabic dialects! DESCRIPTION OF THE PROGRAM Last few months in my free time I have been developing the program. The program is called "Audio Liahjat". The main object of the research is Arabic language. But as Literary Arabic Language isn't really spoken in Arabic countries I think it quite advisable that I should have studied Arabic dialects, which are real-time used languages that are possible to be named as separate languages connected with one main aspect - Allughatu Alarabiyatu Fusha - Literary Arabic Language. This language isn't used by Arabs because of its artificiality and a lot of difficulties in grammar. Instead of it they prefer to use much more simplified dialects. Such a situation is common for all the Arabic countries when Arab from Lebanon can't understand another one from Morocco. It is quite possible that they would easier have a conversation with each other not by using Literary Arabic, but by using French language, as these two countries were French colonies. And the situation with the other dialects is the same, as most of the Arabic countries were colonies of European countries, such as France, England, Spain and Italy. And the dialects have a significant layer of the foreign words, which makes them a mixture of two languages. It is logically to make a conclusion that if Arabs from different countries quite often do not understand each other, the situation with the foreigner is much more serious. Those who study Arabic after 5 years in the university having been very good at Literary Arabic very often do not understand Arabs who use their local dialects. The students say the dialects are other languages. And it is true. I know there are a lot of Arabic phrase books. And most of them are in Literary Arabic. So, their usefulness sometimes can be quite doubtful. The rest of the phrase books are created especially for some separate Arabic countries with using the local dialect phrases. This part of the phrase books is created for tourist countries, such as Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Jordan. As my program uses audio materials, I had made a little research in this field of market. The results were the next: some programs that allow the user to listen to some words or phrases in Arabic exist, but mostly these are dictionaries allowing the user to hear only separate words. Those for listening to Arabic phrases are created mostly for one dialect, or in some cases, for three dialects from one region. Such programs that remain to be mobile for using in real-time conversation for Pocket PC, Windows Mobile or Symbian haven't been found by me, which don't excepts their existing. The main concept of the program is that user is able to listen to all the spoken phrases written in the program. The program is made in Macromedia (Adobe) Flash, and its realization is very simple that only allows to express the main concept of it. Now it consists only of 3 dialects and Spoken Literary Arabic which is nevertheless used by Arabs, which is impossible to say about Simple Literary Arabic. But the difference between them isn't as significant as if comparing with dialects. The program consists now of two parts. The first is a list box for Phrases in Arabic. There are 150 phrases, which are split into 3 blocks: I - Questions, II - Statements, III - Negatives. The phrases use all the tenses that allows to see the main differences in grammar and phonetics of the dialects. The rest of the program field is divided into 2 equal parts for comparing the dialects. In the list boxes "dialects" you are able to choose dialects. When you push the sound buttons you can hear the phrases said by native speakers. In the field "written phrases" you can see the differences in writing the same phrases that allows you to learn differences in grammar. The second part is a comparative phonetic table, which represents all the letters and sounds of Arabic language and dialects, showing the main differences among them and helping the user learn those sounds in literary Arabic language and its dialects. The user is able changing the dialects. Also he can choose if he wants to listen to just separate sounds or sounds with a word-example beginning from that letter. He can change the mode of displaying the sounds between the table of the sounds and just a simple displaying of the sounds. On pressing the separate letter-sound the user is able to hear saying it by the native speaker. This program is only a top of an iceberg. It only shows the main concepts, ways of developing and fields for using. I see a few ways of its development. The first and the main field as for me is a market of dictionaries and phrase books which now has a lack of such a product. So the practical use of the program is obvious. According to my vision of the program it should be used by people who don't know Arabic language at all or know some its main aspects, who is going to visit Arabic country. The other potential users of the program are Arabs traveling from one Arabic country to another. At first from one to two thousands of most frequent phrases of Arabic language should be collected. How could it be done? At first records of conversations between native speakers in every Arabic country should be made. After that they should be converted into a text format which is much more convenient to research. Than with the help of the program of one lecturer from our university the text records should be analyzed and most frequent phrases and words should be collected. Using the gathered information, those phrases and words should be voiced by a native speaker and recorded. The average number of Arabic dialects in Arabic country is about 10 - 15 dialects. The most frequently used are often 3 - 4 ones. So, as 22 Arabic countries are, we have a number from 66 to 88 dialects. The user would be able not only to see what to say, but also he would hear the pronunciation, including such aspect as intonation that would make Arabs easier to understand the user. Also, some theoretical materials and recommendations could be given to a user about the pronunciation some specific sounds with a purpose to help the user in learning the new unusual sounds. The phrases could be organized as a real-time conversation. The user chooses one block, for example "In The Hotel". He has a list of first more frequent phrases in the hotel and a list of potential replies to the phrases with translation. Having listened to the potential answers before, now the user is able to conduct the real-time conversation in the hotel. The program could be significantly upgraded by using the microphone of the Pocket PC, phone or notebook. In this case the program could understand the phrases told by somebody in the hotel, give the user the translation of them and a list of possible replies. The user is able to choose, should the program talk or should he repeat the phrases by himself. And, as for me, it could be a great way for people to learn languages, not even Arabic, but any language, because, when you talk, and the conversation isn't taken somewhere from a book, but it is real-time, you are able to control it, the learning of the language would fa! sten significantly. Also I think it necessary to use in it 1000 of most frequent words of Arabic Language with pronunciation. This year in a month the Bachelor paper was defended in our university, the result of which is a frequency dictionary of Arabic Language that is the first in the world. Using the data from this Bachelor paper, we can get this 1000 of most frequent Arabic words. It could be created the core and the graphical surface of the program and the user would be able to download from internet the dialects he needs. The main platform for this kind of program is mobile platform, such as I had told before as Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Symbian so that the user is able to use it during the conversation which he has with native Arab speakers. For Windows platform or Mac it could be useful too. Talking about another field of its using, I think it could be a great opportunity for students and lecturers of the Arabic to conduct some researches or learn common aspects of Arabic dialects' phonetics, grammar and lexis. The main platform here is Windows or Mach. Firstly, the program could work with some additional equipment as Phonetic Rooms, Audio Recording Equipment. Firstly, when the students learning Literary Arabic come to any Arabic country they can't speak, they do not understand anyone and often Arabs do not want to speak Literary Arabic. So, such a program could be a great opportunity for them to get acquainted with the dialect that is in the country they are going to visit. Secondly, the program could help them to conduct some researches in comparing Arabic dialects' phonetics, grammar etc. When upgrade the program, the students could record some phrases in dialects and the program would tell them about some wrong sounds pronounced by them in a wrong way, or, which is very important, correct the intonation of the pronunciation. Showing the students grammar of the dialects could help them not only learn some common phrases, but learn how to speak some dialect on the beginning level which could make their adaptation in the Arabic country very easy. The additional thing for that is creating some exercises helping to learn the grammar. And such a program might be very useful for American army. As some troops are in Arabic countries, or in some other, the program would make their communication there much easier. And they would have an opportunity to learn some dialect or language very fast. In this case, of course, the list of phrases should be gathered according to the frequency of using them by the troops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:18 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:18 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Dialect course syllabi Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs Dialect course syllabi -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:nmisleem at duke.edu Subject:Needs Dialect course syllabi As part of the required courses for the Arabic major in the university where I teach, students are required take a dialect course. This coming year, we're planning to start with Egyptian dialect course.I was trying to find a good textbook to use "insha'Allah" in the coming year until a colleague of mine suggested abook entitled 'Kallimni Arabi". I liked the book and I decided to use it as a textbook for our students.I wonder if someone, who's taught a dialect course "especially Egyptian" is willing to provide me with a syllabus/syllabi. I'd really appreciate it if I can receive any relevant material....(supplemantory handouts, tests,.....anything you find helpful) Salaam, Nasser Isleem nmisleem at juno.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:11 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:11 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic in XP suggestions Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic in XP suggestions -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:"George Hallak" Subject:Arabic in XP suggestions For the Arabic, it will work with Windows XP either English or Arabic, you have to select "Install Complex Script" from the "Regional and Language" from Control Panel, then click Details button and click "Add" button then select "Arabic" from the list box, so now you will have Arabic Keyboard and you can type Arabic, check the below message and please let me know if you have any issue regarding Arabic. It would also help to making Setting Arabic as the Default language of Win XP on your PC. For the other question, there is something called MUI (Multi Language Support) for Arabic, so you can install Windows XP English and install Arabic MUI, this will enable Arabic for the user who want to have the Arabic UI, it will be according to the user login. Let me know if I can be of further help to you. Best Regards, George N. Hallak www.aramedia.com www.arabicsoftware.net www.aramediastore.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:05 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:05 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New online journal Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New online journal -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:National Foreign Language Resource Center Subject:New online journal Our apologies for any cross-postings . . . The National Foreign Language Resource Center and the University of Hawai'i Press are pleased to announce that the inaugural issue (Volume 1, Number 1) of Language Documentation & Conservation (LD&C) is now available at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/. LD&C is a fully refereed, open-access, online journal that is published twice a year, in June and December. Please visit the LD&C webpage and subscribe. It's free. ---------- Volume 1, Number 1 (June 2007) Table of Contents ARTICLES: Endangered Sound Patterns: Three Perspectives on Theory and Description Juliette Blevins Solar Power for the Digital Fieldworker Tom Honeyman and Laura C. Robinson Copyright Essentials for Linguists Paul Newman Managing Fieldwork Data with Toolbox and the Natural Language Toolkit Stuart Robinson, Greg Aumann, and Steven Bird Ethics and Revitalization of Dormant Languages: The Mutsun Language Natasha Warner, Quirina Luna, and Lynnika Butler Writer's Workshops: A Strategy for Developing Indigenous Writers Diana Dahlin Weber, Diane Wroge, and Joan Bomberger Yoder TECHNOLOGY REVIEWS Review of TshwaneLex Dictionary Compilation Software Reviewed by: Claire Bowern Review of Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) Reviewed by: Lynnika Butler and Heather van Volkinburg Review of Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) Reviewed by: Felicity Meakins BOOK REVIEWS Review of A Grammar of South Efate: An Oceanic Language of Vanuatu Robert Early Review of Kerresel a klechibelau: Tekoi er a Belau me a omesodel: Palauan language lexicon Robert E. Gibson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:15 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:15 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Study in Yemen response Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Study in Yemen response 2) Subject:Study in Yemen response -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Sana N Hilmi Subject:Study in Yemen response Hello, I wasn't sure if you are going to the capital, Sana'a. I led a study abroad in the winter through the Yemen College for Middle Eastern Studies, and I should be going again this winter. I would recommend that you contact Matthew Kuehl at, ycmes at ycmes.com you can mention my name. Their web site is, http://www.ylcint.com/ Some faculty don't speak English, they might be better tutors. some classes end up in one to one basis. Few faculty have Ph.D., some Masters and some BA. Experience varies. Make sure your grammar teacher speaks English. The institute is clean, they have Internet access, and use the same electricity codes. Very close to the museums, market and downtown Sana'a. Shopkeepers will help you practice your Arabic. They'll also take you on tours. Go od experience. Downside of this place, many foreigners (I mean non Arabs) try to avoid speaking in English. Do not get into their habit, I mean Qat :). please feel free to contact me if you need further info. Miss Sana Hilmi, M.A. Arabic Professor and Coordinator Modern and Classical Languages George Mason University 4400 University Drive, MS 3E5 Fairfax, VA 22030 Fax: 703-993-1245 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:mutarjm at aol.com Subject:Study in Yemen response Greetings. In addition to the organizations the original requestor cited, the American Institute of Yemeni Studies (AIYS) has a branch?office in Sanaa'. That office?has arranged and conducted courses for foreigners on the Yemeni dialect of Arabic. What else was the requestor planning to study in Yemen for?only a few months (a?prepared research plan is not mentioned)? If the study will start in August, perhaps one of the local universities can develop a program for specialized classes and tutoring, a la a similar program in Gulf (Emirati) Arabic offered?by UAE University a few years back. Getting the old?FSI textbook (and accompanying audiocassette tapes) on the?Yemeni Arabic might also?be helpful because of the textbook's useful descriptions of the dialect and insights into (Sanaa'- specific) Yemeni culture and customs. HTH. Regards, Stephen H. Franke Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:13 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:13 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First 3) Subject:Colloquial First 4) Subject:Colloquial First 5) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Waheed Samy Subject:Colloquial First May I suggest bringing into this discussion specific linguistic features in this discussion: Lexicon Morphology Syntax Phonology For example, is there a reason that the relative pronoun illi should not be introduced? How about words like haaza, as opposed to hadha? And what about the "bi" prefixed to the imperfective verb? Arabic is quite often not even diglossic, rather it displays hybrid qualities from the above linguistic features --so much so that one is at times at a loss as to whether some spoken utterances are purely standard or colloquial. Waheed ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial First Dear Colleagues, The comments supporting the teaching of (some) dialect, before or together with MSA, by Profs. Wilmsen and Mughazy, are all well taken. Yet no one has mentioned the TEACHING TIME LIMITATION we have during the regular academic year; and no one has dared to make an estimate as to how many hours of CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION it would take a student to become competent to dicipher today's Arabic newspaper (with the aid of a dictionary; and with virtually NO ORAL INPUT) with reasonable competence. Let me put myself out on a limb: If first and second year Arabic are given as 5 hours/week classes, and third year Arabic is the (vanilla) 3 hour/week class, (after more than a quarter century in this business), I think that that it would take even the most gifted of non-Arabic speaking students a minimum of three years of MSA study to read the daily news (with the aid of a dictionary [of which there exists NONE which is even remotely up-to-date]). Not to mention the INTRODUCTION TO ARABIC LITERATURE, and the genius of ARABIC CULTURE. Vishnu created summer vacations for Middlebury and the Arabic dialects (all of which, as a linguist, I recognize as fully developed and full-fledged independent LANGUAGES). Mike Schub ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:haider bhuiyan Subject:Colloquial First I believe the issue is not whether to teach both vernacular and fusha. The issue is rather whether to teach vernacular only. Or teach vernacular first and then fusha. In this respect I find it counterproductive to the learning of a language, especially Arabic. In one of my previous discussions, I stated that vernacular is almost an independent language within the family of Arabic, although both overlap each other very much, just like Urdu, Hindi, and Persian languages do, but they each are independent language. If our objectives are to teach vernacular only, well and good, we can do so. But if our teaching and learning objectives are to learn Arabic with special emphasis on any particular vernacular, say Egyptian, then we are better off teaching the basics of fusha along with the vernacular, and not vice versa, just like Professor Mustafa Mughazy suggested in his (a) and (b) options. what I have been observing is the fact that students who begins with vernacular suffer from lack of confidence and ability to communicate effectively. On the other hand, if they start with fusha followed by vernacular, they are better off. So, I would maintain that it is alright to teach fusha and vernacular together, but fusha first.All the best, Haider Bhuiyan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 4) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:haider bhuiyan Subject:Colloquial First I found Professor David Wilmsen’s explanation, against an expressed view concerning students of Arabic, vernacular or fusha, being lazy or incapable, very intriguing. In a bit twisted way I would complement, students are just like the teachers, some of them are lazy and incapable, while some others are hard working, capable, dedicated, and successful. Since the learning process in the classroom reflects the personalities and characteristics of both students and teachers, (B. Davis, 1993) we, both, must take the responsibility of students failure and success in learning of either vernacular or fusha. That being said, I would like to share some of my thoughts and experience with you. In my view one can justifiably decide whether to learn vernacular or fusha Arabic and he or she should do well in the process of learning, on condition of student-teacher commitment in and outside of the classroom activities. But it becomes a problem when our curriculum is mixing these two, vernacular and fusha, languages into one. We need to make up our mind in terms of which language we want to teach or learn. Apparently, our discussion and debates are being advanced in the view that both vernacular and fusha are Arabic language. Yes, fusha is, but not the vernacular. Take a scenario of Arab people from any geographical area who is not educated in Arabic language or Islamic studies you find that person is not capable of speaking Fusha with some one like us who prefer to speak fusha, but fluent in the vernacular. If you speak with the person in fusha, soon you will be told, ‘sorry I cannot speak fusha well’ and keep struggling to keep up with you. Of course, it will be a different story if the person is learned in the fusha. This situation is widely acknowledged, as far as my experience. What does it tell us? It tells us that vernacular and fusha are two different languages within the same origin, although overlap each other like any other languages. So, in my view, stressing in favor or against of either of vernacular or fusha is rather counterproductive and obscuring the very issue of teaching language objectively. If we continue thinking in the conventional way, I would submit the following observation. We must prioritize the fusha over vernacular. If not, we are not helping our students learn truly, neither the vernacular nor fusha. A student learning vernacular without mastering the fusha will bound to fail to learn the Arabic. In the past two years I have encountered number of students who can hardly speak the vernacular, and almost ignorant of fusha, in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. It may be counter productive, because, I believe, it is not their fault, it is ours. We are teaching them vernacular only, not fusha together with vernacular which I think should be ok. To be more specific, I have come across 3 of my own students in the past two years who came to take with me the same course they had already took in the past (course #1010 and 1020 of 1st and 2nd semester of 1st year). I was saddened to observe the level of ambiguity about the structure of language in them, including alphabets, vocab., accent, and comprehension, etc. Occasionally, their only excuses were, ‘we did not learn this way, we learned al-‘ammiya’. In the class, however, they did a bit better than those other freshmen, but not significantly. I found them really confused about how the learning of a language works. These students are so enthusiastic to learn the language, but, in my view, were misguided. On the other hand, the challenge that I take, it is not that difficult of an issue for the learner of the Fusha to master any vernacular in very short period of time. It is easy and comes almost by default. Here I would like to quote Professor David Wilmsen’s own statement. He wrote in his last critique: It does not take much time to begin understanding a new vernacular once the student has mastered one. This happened to me once in Morocco: at first utterance my speech was not understood, as my interlocutors expected me to address them in French, Spanish, or perhaps English; when I repeated, they could understand easily and in fact they would laugh because to them I sounded like Adel Imam. I had a bit more of a problem understanding them; but after about a week, I had learned most of the dialect differences in the functional vocabulary of the Marakesh vernacular and we all got along splendidly. He, however, put it in a different perspective than mine. Regardless, he made it clear that learning vernacular is not that of a difficult task. For a learner of fusha, it takes a week or so to master any vernacular. Can it be vice-e-versa? I am convinced to assure that it cannot be so. A student educated in vernacular will not be able to learn the fusha, not even months. I am open to learn otherwise. We must teach our students fusha first followed by occasional practices in vernacular, not otherwise. Best regards, Haider Bhuiyan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 5) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Abdulkafi Albirini Subject:Colloquial First This is an interesting discussion. I believe there is something missing in the argument for the colloquial first, which concerns students' interests. My experience is that most students are not learning Arabic just to speak it. In fact, many of them want to have a comprehensive understanding of the language and be able to use the language to read different literary and scholarly texts as well as to read the news. Moreover, the majority of the students prefer to have a "language" that is understood across the Arab world before they try to command a particular dialect. Thus, if we are to furnish our students with a better and more comprehensive understanding of the Arabic language (including the various skills of the language), then we have to focus on the Standard dialect first. I recognize that there are some students who are interested in commanding one dialect, who are a minority among our students (or maybe the students that I have taught thus far). For these students, we can create courses that focus on these dialects. Best Abdulkafi Albirini Coordinator of the Arabic Language Program at UIUC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:17 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:17 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LIST:break Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:break -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:moderator Subject:break I will be out of e-mail contact for about a week, so the list will take a mini-vacation. I usually don't get 'urgent' messages at this time of year, but if you have one that you want to get out before July 16 or 17, send it to me as early today as possible (marked urgent) and I will try to get it out. Dil dil at byu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:21 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:21 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First 3) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Jeremy Palmer" Subject:Colloquial First I congratulate Western Michigan for basing its forthcoming renovation of their Arabic program on empirical research. Those of you who disagree with such an approach ought to consider basing, and expressing, your statements on research. I will do the same. Thank you, Jeremy Palmer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Antonio Giménez Subject:Colloquial First I apologize for coming so late into the discussion. After reading the comments so far, I think some of us may have lost sight of the 'experimental side' of Mustafa’s initiative at Western Michigan University, which, while not being absolutely novel (Qafisheh's pilot study has been mentioned) it is nevertheless rather uncommon and will bring us a great opportunity to put our assumptions (whatever they might be) to test. As non-native adult learners, many of us know the experience of going from Fusha to colloquial Arabic. Some say it is dead easy, some say it is hard, but actually few of us have the experience of going the other way round (as non-native adult learners, I must insist). We can pontificate all we want about the potential risks and dangers of teaching colloquial first, but how many of us know someone who has been taught this way? Furthermore, how could we reach any conclusion out of individual cases? Unless a whole curriculum is set to work in this new direction, we cannot expect to have any reliable evidence either in favor or against the colloquial-first approach. As a matter of fact, many experiments like this will be needed to equate (in terms of quality and amount of researchable experience) what we know about the long-standing Fusha-only and the more recent Fusha-first approaches —the last of which more than often sounds like a "colloquial? Sure, one of these days" approach. This said, I wonder who really are spinning in their graves: Sibawayh and Ibn Jinni or some 19th- and 20th-century Orientalist scholars? ("Bald heads forgetful of their sins, / Old, learned, respectable bald heads", I would dare to add, quoting Yeats.) Traditional curricula have just brought about what I call 'deaf-mute' graduates in Arabic: as literate as their dictionaries and grammar books allow them to be, i.e., not literate on their own but rather dependent on this sort of 'learning prosthesis', and nearly unable to communicate in any way (not to mention the many forever Arabic-impaired). Some may disagree, but this is the case here in Spain and I guess it is the same in the States. And please, do not be misled by those ubiquitous notable exceptions who have become fully conversant with spoken Arabic "on the way": we are not talking about such-and-such an individual, but about programs, curricula and institutions that should assure students the best available instruction. Like Dina El Zarka, I cannot agree more with Mustafa and David Wilmsen, just as I get a mixed feeling of relief and sorrow: relief that ideas such as theirs start to make their way into the Arabic curriculum, but sorrow in seeing that some of us, teachers, keep on being a big part of the problem, even bigger than diglossia; for, much as I may agree with Mustafa, I am afraid that we cannot put ideologies aside so easily (in case we actually, firmly ever want to). Perhaps we should move from language to people. It is all useless to insist on Arabic diglossia: some people, teachers and students alike are just not interested in spoken Arabic. Either they have "a spoken Arabic of their own" or simply have none, which is quite a respectable decision, all the more if one is fully aware of its shortcomings. The thing is, should academic institutions take sides in this matter on the sole basis of what has been traditionally done or what some people think is best? Of course not. We should give the colloquial-first approach a try, then see. At the very worst, Mustafa's students will remain functionally illiterate after one entire year —but never completely so, as Mike Schub pretends, since colloquial is intended to be taught in Arabic script from the very first semester. Furthermore, should they remain functionally illiterate, they would be as functionally illiterate as many traditionally-instructed students if you take their Hans Wehr dictionaries away! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Kevin Schluter Subject:Colloquial First As a graduate student who has received three FLAS fellowships for Arabic, I'd like to comment not on the issue of colloquial first per se, but colloquial at all. I wanted to use my fellowship this summer to study a colloquial dialect (particularly Lebanese, Syrian, or Iraqi). That did not happen. In part, this was due to my FLAS's restrictions on locations I could go and number of classroom hours required in the program. Mostly, it was due to the fact that there are almost no programs which actually focus on any sort of colloquial Arabic. Of course, an ambitious student can make the best of any program and find a way to study colloquial, but it seems that most Arabic programs don't just teach MSA first, but teach MSA only. Obviously each university may not be equipped to teach any given dialect, but most programs can probably manage to teach one dialect. Whether it is as distinct course or as an additional or optional discussion section, colloquial sometime would be a welcome option by many students. Kevin Schluter University of Minnesota ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:23 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:23 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:Maria Persson Subject:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member Dear colleagues, I am about to order a database from The Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC)but before I do so I would like to ask if someone else has experience from buying material from them as a non-member. Sincerely, Maria Persson --------------------------------------------- Maria Persson Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University, Sweden ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:25 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:25 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Response to Comparing Dialects program Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Response to Comparing Dialects program -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From: "Richard Durkan" Subject:Response to Comparing Dialects program Dear Maksym I was very interested in reading your message, particularly your reference to the Arabic frequency dictionary. Can you please let me have further details of this dictionary and where it is available? I look forward to hearing from you. Richard Durkan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:26 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:26 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:mohammadkhaqani at yahoo.com Subject:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language [If the script doesn't come through, it just says they have published volumes 1 and 2 of their online journal which you can access at the urls given. The triple lam was a feature of the original, in case you were wondering.] زملائي الکرام ببالغ السرور نشرنا أبحاث الرقم الأول والثاني من مجلة الجمعية العلمية الإيرانية لللغة العربية وآدابها علی موقع الجمعية www.iaal.ir www.allesan.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:28 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:28 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Dialect Course syllabus Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Dialect Course syllabus -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From: Iman Soliman Subject:Dialect Course syllabus Dear Nasser I am very glad you decided to use Kallemni Arabi for teaching ECA. I am a co-author of the book. If you are using the book you do not need a syllabus as this is laid out clearly for you in the table of content section. You will find the language point , the vocabulary, the skills you focus on for each Unit. The syllabus is progressive and the vocabulary is recycled and built on unit by unit. This means it is best to do the lessons in sequence. As for tests, in a colloaquial class, tests are prefrebally regulated through : students' presentations and listening comprehension. At the end of each Unit, you have the Real life section which you can also use as a test or a review unit for all the language you have taught in a particular Unit. Of course you can always conduct a vocabulary test every other week to review vocabulary , these tets are better done through pictures (you can use the ones provided in the book or your own. For review of expressions you can always record situations and ask students to select from multiple choices the best expression to use according to their understanding of the situation. If interested i can prepare a demo test for you after the 26th of july in shaa allah. Hope you find this information useful. In case of any further questions regarding the book or its methodology please do not hesitate to ask. Best Iman A. Soliman iaziz at aucegypt.edu Home: 002 02 30 28 443 Mobile: 0101633350 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:39 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:39 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:lawrence at gerlach-books.de Subject:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (August 16, 1888 - May 19, 1935), professionally known as T E Lawrence, but most famously known as Lawrence of Arabia, gained international renown for his role as a British liaison officer during the years 1916 to 1918. His very public image was in some part the result of U.S. traveller and journalist Lowell Thomas's sensationalised reportage of the Revolt, as well as Lawrence's autobiographical account, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". We were able to purchase a small private collection of 53 titles by or on T E Lawrence. Request our title list showing the individual titles. The price for the collection is EUR 2,450.00 plus shipping. Books cannot be purchased separately. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best wishes from Berlin Kai-Henning Gerlach ********************************************* KAI-HENNING GERLACH - BOOKS & ONLINE Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies D-10711 Berlin, Germany Heilbronner Straße 10 Telefon +49 30 3249441 Telefax +49 30 3235667 e-mail khg at gerlach-books.de www.gerlach-books.de USt/VAT No. DE 185 061 373 Verkehrs-Nr. 24795 (BAG) EAN 4330931247950 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:41 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:41 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"Megerdoomian, Karine" Subject:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages ********** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ********** THE SECOND WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO ARABIC SCRIPT-BASED LANGUAGES (CAASL-2) July 21-22, 2007 LSA 2007 Linguistic Institute Stanford University, California, USA http://www.zoorna.org/CAASL2 DESCRIPTION ============= The workshop aims to bring together researchers working on the computer processing of Arabic script-based languages such as Arabic, Persian (Farsi and Dari), Pashto, Urdu and Kurdish. The usage of the Arabic script and the influence of Arabic vocabulary give rise to certain computational issues that are common to all these languages despite their being of distinct language families, such as right to left direction, encoding variation, absence of capitalization, complex word structure, and a high degree of ambiguity due to non-representation of short vowels in the writing system. The workshop will provide a forum for researchers from academia, industry, and government developers, practitioners, and users to share their research and experience. The goal of the workshop is to provide the participants with an opportunity to exchange ideas, approaches and implementations of computational systems, to highlight the common challenges faced by all practitioners, to assess the state of the art in the field, and to identify promising areas for future collaborative research in the development of NLP resources and systems for Arabic script languages. This second workshop also provides an opportunity to assess the progress that has been made since the first workshop held at Coling 2004. This year's keynote speaker is Prof. Richard Sproat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). This workshop is being held in conjunction with the LSA 2007 Linguistic Institute at Stanford University. WORKSHOP PROGRAM ================= Detailed program available at http://www.zoorna.org/CAASL2/program.html ---------------------------------- DAY 1: Saturday, July 21st, 2007 ---------------------------------- "Computer processing of Arabic script-based languages: Current state and future directions", Ali Farghaly and Karine Megerdoomian "Urdu morphology, orthography and lexicon extraction", Muhammad Humayoun (University of Savoy), Harald Hammarström and Aarne Ranta (Chalmers University of Technology) "Generating Arabic text from Interlingua", Khaled Shaalan (The British University in Dubai), Ahmed Rafea (American University in Cairo), Azza Abdelmonem (Central Lab for Agricultural Expert Systems in Egypt), and Hoda Baraka (Cairo University) Invited Speaker: "Named entity transliteration in a variety of scripts", by Richard Sproat (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) "Information retrieval and the Arabic noun construct", Ali Farghaly (Oracle USA) "Using OWA fuzzy operator to merge retrieval systems", Hadi Amiri, Farhad Oroumchian, Caro Lucas, and Masoud Rahgozar (University of Tehran) "A note on extracting 'sentiments' in financial news in English, Arabic and Urdu", Yousif Almas (University of Surrey) and Khurshid Ahmad (Trinity College) "The first parallel multilingual corpus of Persian: Towards a Persian BLARK", Behrang Qasemizadeh (Text and Speech Technology LTD), Saeed Rahimi (Text and Speech Technology LTD/University of Tehran), and Behrooz Mahmoodi Bakhtiari (University of Tehran) "Supervised lexical acquisition for Persian from a web corpus", Nick Pendar (Iowa State University) and Serge Sharoff (University of Leeds) "A rule-based semantic role labeling approach for Persian sentences", Mahrnoush Shamsfard (Shahid Beheshti University) and Maryam Sadrmousavi (Azad University in Tehran) ---------------------------------- DAY 2: Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 ---------------------------------- "The challenges and pitfalls of Arabic romanization and arabization", Jack Halpern (CJK Dictionary Institute, Inc.) "Transcription of names written in Farsi into English", Joshua Johnson (Inxight Software, Inc.) "Automatic transliteration of proper nouns from Arabic to English", Mehdi M. Kashani, Fred Popowich, and Anoop Sarkar (Simon Fraser University) "Implementation of reverse chain mechanism in Pango for rendering Nastaliq script", Aamir Wali (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Shafiq-ur Rahman (National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences at Lahore) "Frame approach to Persian verb generation for educational purposes", Artem Lukanin (South Ural State University) and Constance Bobroff (University of Texas at Austin) "Statistical POS tagging experiments on Persian text", Fahimeh Raja (University of Tehran), Samira Tasharofi (University of Tehran), and Farhad Oroumchian (University of Wollongong in Dubai/University of Tehran) "Part-of-speech tagging for Persian", Sanaz Jabbari and Ben Allison (University of Sheffield) "Evaluation of part of speech tagging on Persian text", Fahimeh Raja , Hadi Amiri , Samira Tasharofi and Hossein Hojjat (University of Tehran) and Farhad Oroumchian (University of Wollongong in Dubai/University of Tehran) ---------------------------------- Demos and Posters ---------------------------------- "FieldWorks language explorer and Arabic script data", Beth Bryson (SIL International) "The Koran database", Mahmooud Elsayess (Read~Verse Company) "Human vision inspired Optical Character Recognition", Mandana Hamidi (Azad University of Qazvin), Ali Borji (Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) and Fariborz Mahmoudi (Azad University of Qazvin) "Pashto-English machine translation using TranSphere", Craig Kopris (AppTek Inc.) "Speech-Translation of languages with scarce resources", Hassan Sawaf and Craig Kopris (AppTek Inc.) "Extensible integrated Treebank annotation environment", Otakar Smrž (Charles University in Prague) ---------------------------------- Alternates ---------------------------------- "Algorithm for subject zero pronoun detection and restoration in Urdu discourse", Abid Khan, Aamir Khan, and Naveed Ali (University of Peshawar) "A Persian morphological parser using POS tagging", Ali Azimizadeh (Center of Speech Technology Research, SimAva Co), Mohamad Mehdi Arab (Center of Speech Technology Research, SimAva Co), and Aarvin Farahmand (Ryerson University) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Discussion Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First Discussion 2) Subject:Colloquial First Discussion -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial First Discussion But to do any serious study of subjects related to 'Orientalism' the traffic is, as it is with massive emigration, ONE WAY: from THERE to HERE. miish heek? ms ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"John Joseph Colangelo" Subject:Colloquial First Discussion I wanted to ask Jeremy if those of us who do not base their comments on "empirical research" could base them on personal experience instead. In relation to Prof. Giménez´s comment on the nineteenth century orientalists, if Caspari and Wright could be considered representative of their 19th century colleagues then it would be fair to say that they were much more prepared than late 20th and 21st century Spanish orientalists who I have observed in situ. Again, from personal experience late twentieth century orientalists, generally, are what you would call those people that claim classical Arabic is like Latin or ancient Greek. These are the people that cannot speak MSA nor "aamiyya" of any kind. Those students who learned how to speak Arabic (and then a dialect) while studying in the classrooms of Filología Semítica were the nerds who invested more than triple the class time after class hours studying Arabic: reviewing grammar, conducting an exchange with Arab students (My very good friend Naser from ِAl-Khaleel used to come to my house every Sunday morning where we would sit down speaking in English for an hour and a half and then in Arabic for another hour and a half. By the way, one of the advantages of living in Granada), reading Arabic newspapers, listening to the BBC in Arabic everyday. Of course, not everyone has the buena suerte to live in Granada which is really a blessing for a very applied student of Arabic where it isn´t difficult to find an Arabic tutor. But before I go off topic here, let me propose a few questions here. What if we were to radically change the Arabic program? What if we we could teach 2 hours a day, five days a week? Wouldn´t 2 hours a day, five days a week, from September to May using MSA and a dialect (or October to June if you study in Europe) for the first two years of university study give the student the foundations he or she needs so they may benefit from their year abroad in the Arab world hence returning with a solid command of the language for the 3rd and 4th year of university study? Please excuse this foolish proposal but it seems that one of the greatest problems we are facing (besides the non-native teachers who cannot speak Arabic and native Arab teachers who prefer not to speak Arabic in the classroom) is of a bureaucratic nature: university syllabi that do not take into consideration the nature of different languages. Let me illustrate the latter with a real life example: At the Translation & Interpreting Faculty of the University of Granada, all C languages (languages we only translate or interpret from and not to) are taught the same number of hours. This means that all C languages whether they be Chinese, Arabic, French, German, Italian or English are taught the same number of hours per week. Is this problem common in US universities as well? John Joseph Colangelo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:35 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:35 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From: Subject:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update Hello, Dr. Parkinson. The response to my original announcement for T-MINDS data collection has been great, thanks in very large part to your publicizing it via your list. We plan to keep the data collect tool running for a few more weeks now. I noticed that the long URL to my presentation about T-MINDS tends to get cut in half, making it impossible to access the file by clicking. Can you please send out this alternative URL so people who are interested can see the presentation? http://tinyurl.com/ytwwee Thanks very much again. -- Dave [moderator's note: here was the original message:] Hello. My name is Dave Domingo. If you are a non-native speaker of Arabic, you can earn $40 for approximately 1 hour of work, helping my company develop a DLI-funded language learning tool. (You must have completed at least one college- level course in Arabic as a *second* language to qualify for this opportunity.) My company, Fluential, is creating a computer-based language learning system called T-MINDS, which is being developed under a contract with the Defense Language Institute. (Click here to view a presentation about T-MINDS.) At this stage of development, we are collecting speech data from non-native Arabic speakers. This enables us to model correct and incorrect speech so the system will correct and give feedback at the right level. Your total time on task is about 1 hour, but you can break your session up into shorter chunks – see below. If you would like to help with this project and earn $40, just call this toll-free number to begin: 1-877-358-3684 The system begins by assigning you a unique PIN so you can hang up at any time and continue your session when it is convenient for you. When you finish your session, e-mail me at ddomingo at fluentialinc.com . Include your full name, your mailing address, your phone number and the PIN you were assigned. Without these four items of information, we will not be able to process your payment. This data collection project will end on or about July 15. Please feel free to call me at (925) 895-2294 if you have any problems or suggestions. Thanks very much for your help. -- Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:37 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:37 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Needs online source for Arabic business terms Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs online source for Arabic business terms -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"oxyi i" Subject:Needs online source for Arabic business terms hello I' m from turkey.I am deaLing with trading and ý need to learn some trade terms in arabic.such as:shipment,freight,letter of credit,advising bank,bill of lading,bill of exchange.....etc.could you recommend me an online source or ,website to learn arabic equivelant of these? thanks and regards......... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New Dissertation Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Dissertation -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:New Dissertation Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:40:13 From: Muhammet Gunaydin < gunaydin at alumni.upenn.edu > Subject: Al-Sirafi's theory of 'lingua-logical' grammar: An analytical study of the grammatical work of al-Sirafi... Institution: University of Pennsylvania Program: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2006 Author: Muhammet gunaydin Dissertation Title: Al-Sirafi's theory of 'lingua-logical' grammar: An analytical study of the grammatical work of al-Sirafi (Sharh Kitab Sibawayhi) within the context of a discussion on language and logic in medieval Islam Dissertation URL: http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3211077/ Linguistic Field(s): History of Linguistics Ling & Literature Philosophy of Language Dissertation Director(s): Roger M. A. Allen Joseph E Lowry Barbara von Schlegel Dissertation Abstract: This is a study of the problematic relationship between language, grammar, and logic in the linguistic thought of Abu Said al-Sirafi (d. 979), the judge and grammarian. It offers an analytical study of the first seven chapters of his famous work on grammar, Sharh Kitab Sibawayhi within the context of the famous debate over Arabic grammar and Aristotelian logic that took place in Baghdad, in 932 C.E. between him and Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus (d. 940), the philosopher and logician. In the debate, against Matta's thesis that logic is an instrument by which we differentiate correct speech from incorrect and sound meaning from unsound, al-Sirafi argues that correct speech can only be distinguished from incorrect by grammatical investigation, and sound meaning from unsound by reason. Al-Sirafi further argues that grammar includes logic, and thus there is no need to study logic separately. This study examines al-Sirafi's Sharh to investigate whether these ideas are based on a verifiable linguistic theory found in his Sharh, or stated only for the sake of discussion during the debate. At the end of the study it is concluded that al-Sirafi's approaches to linguistic issues are consistent and complementary to each other in both the debate and the Sharh. However, there is no evidence found in the Sharh to support his criticism of logic put forward in the debate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:50 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:50 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First (Intermediate Approach) 2) Subject:Colloquial First (Integrated Program) 3) Subject:Colloquial First (Research and Experience) -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Waheed Samy Subject:Colloquial First (Intermediate Approach) I think it is important to consider that there is an intermediate approach (thus mirroring the language situation itself). For example, in an MSA curriculum, there is plenty of room to introduce 'non-MSA'. In linguistic terms one could introduce simple phonological contrasts between the MSA dipthongs /ai/ and /aw/ and show their corresponding equivalents /ee/ and /oo/ in 'non-MSA'. Similarly one would take aspects from morphological, syntactic, and lexical, features, including mixtures thereof, and introduce these during the course of instruction. For example, it would be useful for learners to know the MSA definite article 'al as well as the 'non- MSA' one 'il, and that the many relative pronouns in MSA are all equivalent to 'illi, and so on. Waheed ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial First (Integrated Program) For the past 16 years, we have been following an "integrated" approach to teaching Arabic at Cornell University. According to this approach, classroom teaching and the textbooks used reflect the sociolinguistic realities of Arabic. MSA is introduced for reading and writing purposes, while colloquial Levantine is used for informal conversation and discussion of all kinds, including discussion of MSA materials. The instructors of the program find this approach quite effective, natural, and easy to follow, since they converse in a variety of the language that is actually used for conversation and they read and write the variety of Arabic that is used for those functions. My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. I, as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma ssabti"? A lot of teachers are horrified at the idea of "contaminating" Fusha, the language of literature, culture, and Arab glory and unity, with the despised dialect in the classroom. Not much can be done about this attitude (although much can be said about it). Other teachers are worried about the confusion that might result from introducing the two varieties simultaneously. Our experience at Cornell demonstrates that most of this worry is the result of teacher biases, misinformed and untested assumptions. The goal of the majority of our students is to understand, speak, read, and write Arabic the way the language is used in real life. We betray them when we insist on teaching it the way we think it should be used, which is the result of a poor understanding of the way human languages really work. Arabs dream of seeing Fusha as the only language variety that is used by Arabs everywhere and all the time, and they wish that the dialects would simply vanish. We as teachers should be able to dream and wish as much as we want, but our wishes and dreams should not determine the approach we take in our efforts to serve our students to the best of our abilities. If anyone is interested in learning more about our integrated program, I'll be happy to share more of our experiences. Munther Younes Director of the Arabic Program Cornell University ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:M"Jeremy Palmer" Subject:Colloquial First (Research and Experience) Yes, John Joseph Colangelo can base his comments on personal experience. Personal experience is wonderful. It leads to ideas and questions. My simple hope is that the field of Arabic SLA will publish (including reduplicated studies) a large body of research regarding the positives and negatives of learning and teaching colloquial Arabic. Everyone has personal experience that is valuable and important for this issue. Perhaps when there is a large body of research about this topic we will be able to identify trends and practices that will allow us to make wise decisions in our curricula? Such is my hope. Good luck to all. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:48 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:48 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:New Version of Lesson-Designer Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Version of Lesson-Designer 2) Subject:Quran Database presentation at Stanford Conference -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:melsayess at socal.rr.com Subject:New Version of Lesson-Designer Greetings and Peace from California, USA Read~Verse would like to bring to your attention the new release of Lesson~Designer which is free of charge for instructors and students Lesson~Designer is a component of the Read~Verse suite of teaching software brought to you by the Read~Verse American Company, specialists in advanced education delivery tools for worldwide learning. What language are you teaching today? Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Korean, Urdu, Spanish, Japanese, English, French, Hebrew, Portuguese...?? Read~Verse's Lesson~Designer can deliver any digital language course to students worldwide. This is a list of the new features: Dictation: Lesson~Designer includes a voice messaging feature that lets a teacher to test students remotely by stating phrases and words, and requiring them to type what they have heard. Recording: Another Lesson~Designer feature that lets students read and record a text, and send the recording to the instructor for review. Attachments: Lesson~Designer now permits students and teachers to append objects including a word document, text, video and zipped files to a lesson. Print security: While both students and teachers can print lessons and questions, only teachers can print answers. Chat room: Instructors and students can participate in a synchronized dialog via a chat session. Such real time, personal exchanges will both enhance the effectiveness of teachers and enrich the learning experience of students. Questions & Answers: Since active participation is crucial in the learning process, Lesson~Designer will include a Q & A facility to enrich the learning process. When students post questions related to a specific lesson, teachers can post their replies. Please visit: http://www.lessondesigner.com/ Professor Mahmoud Elsayess, president of Read~Verse, was a guest presenter at WordCom ‘07, on June 26, 2007; in Las Vegas conference sponsored by several renowned organizations including Intel, MIT and Harvard. He will again be a guest presenter at the Stanford Linguistic Scientists’ Conference on July 21, 2007. Your feedback and acknowledgment of this email are highly appreciated. Thank you. Read~Verse Company Westminster, CA, USA Mahmoud Elsayess, president mahmoud.elsayess at readverse.com Cell (714) 376-4862 Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:melsayess at socal.rr.com Subject:Quran Database presentation at Stanford Conference I am sure you have noticed that I will be presenting our product at Stanford as seen below. "The Koran database", Mahmooud Elsayess (Read~Verse Company) And very soon, we will release Lesson Designer upgraded software that is really good and free. I am sure you would like the new lesson Designer! Thank you. Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:49 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:49 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Mustafa Mughazy Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Dear Colleagues, Does anyone know what al-Dajira means? There is an anthology of Andalusian Arabic literature from the end of the eleventh century by Ibn Bassam (d. 1147), from Santarem (Portugal), titled Al-Dajira. I would appreciate any help. Mustafa Mughazy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:52 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:52 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Online business terminology sources Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Online terminology source 2) Subject:Business Arabic textbook -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Martine Pétrod Subject:Online terminology source Hi, Your might find this site useful - it is an on-line multilingual terminology base covering many domains. http://basm.kacst.edu.sa/Default.aspx Martine Pétrod ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:"raram" Subject:Business Arabic textbook Hello: I have developed two textbooks for Business Arabic: Business Arabic (Intermediate Level) accompanied by DVD and Interactive Multimedia Computer Program, Business Arabic (Advanced Level) Both textbooks can be ordered from the University of Michigan Distribution Center at this address: Client Distribution Services 1094 Flex Drive Jackson, TN 38301 Telephone: (800)343-4499 Fax: (800) 351-5073 Email : orderentry at cdbooks.com Raji Rammuny Professor of Arabic University of Michigan Department of Near Eastern Studies Ann Arbor, Mi 48104 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:36 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:36 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"J" Subject:Colloquial First Dear Colleagues: I studied colloquial first at Georgetown U. in the late 60s: 2 semesters, 8 credits per semester. This was required of all Arabic majors. Then we did MSA and only MSA for the rest of the undergraduate program. My only regret is that there was not a second year of colloquial and that so much of the focus of so much of the MSA study (I eventually got a Ph.D.) was on i'raab, parsing sentences, and defending one's choice of case endings and mood markers -- and not on useful vocabulary and expressions and such. If I had it to do all over again I'd love to try the integrated approach used by Munther or the approach that Mustafa is planning. I especially like the idea of conversing in colloquial but reading and writing MSA. It irks me to be able to completely vowel an Arabic text more accurately than most Arabic native speakers but not to know how to say some simple thing in colloquial. And I might add, familiarity with colloquial is very helpful in MSA reading comprehension and for translation, which is my field, because regardless of what some people would like, real Arabs use regionalisms and colloquialisms all the time in their supposedly MSA texts. Glad I did colloquial first, -- Jackie Murgida ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"John Joseph Colangelo" Subject:Colloquial First I really have to apologize to Dil as well as the others for insisting on this question but my next question is for Prof. Munther Younes who I quote: "My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. I,as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma ssabti"? Then wouldn't it also be hilarious to watch the news on any Arabic television channel where fusha is used and not dialect? Thanks again, John Joseph Colangelo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:38 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:38 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New article and review Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New article and review -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:forwarded by Uri Horesh from LINGUIST Subject:New article and review Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:47:33 From: Matt Glidden < blackwellnews at bos.blackwellpublishing.net > Subject: Journal of Sociolinguistics Vol 11/ No 1 (2007) Publisher: Blackwell Publishing http://www.blackwellpublishing.com Journal Title: Journal of Sociolinguistics Volume Number: 11 Issue Number: 1 Issue Date: 2007 [...] BOOK REVIEWS [...] The Arabic Language and National Identity, Edited by Yasir Suleiman Lauren Wagner [...] Dialects Across Borders: Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002, Edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä Patricia Poussa [...] All available for free at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/josl/11/1 [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:40 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:40 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Suffolk Community College Job Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Suffolk Community College Job -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:barneta at sunysuffolk.edu Subject:Suffolk Community College Job We have extended the search for candidates for the Arabic position we announced in the Spring. Would you mind posting the position through ARABIC-L, please? Thank you very much. The text follows: Instructor/Assistant Professor of Modern Standard Arabic The Michael J. Grant Campus of Suffolk County Community College, located in Brentwood, Long Island, New York, seeks experienced Arabic language instructor for a full-time tenure track appointment beginning Fall 2007. Rank will be determined by qualifications and teaching experience. Masters degree in Arabic, Applied Linguistics or a related field required; doctorate preferred. Initial responsibilities will include course and curriculum development as well as participation in the development of the Institute for the Study of Critical Languages and Cultures. Subsequently, the successful candidate will be expected to teach two courses each semester in elementary and/or intermediate Arabic. Familiarity with a broad range of instructional materials and methodologies, including multimedia and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) resources is desirable. Native or near native competency in Arabic and excellent command of English are required. The exact salary will be determined by prior teaching experience and placement on the salary scale negotiated by the Faculty Association of SCCC. Applicants may apply online to Human Resources at www.sunysuffolk.edu (SCCC Reference 07-39). SCCC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educator. Andrew Barnette, Ph.D. College Associate Dean for ESL/Transitional Programs Suffolk County Community College Michael J. Grant Campus Crooked Hill Road Sagtikos Building Room S101B Brentwood, New York 11717-1092 Phone: (631) 851-6231 Fax: (631) 851-6347 Email: barneta at sunysuffolk.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:forwarded by "raram" Subject:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) From: steve.f.williams at gmail.com [mailto:steve.f.williams at gmail.com] Dear Dr. Rammuny, My name is Steve Williams and I am a language teacher by profession, as well as being a founder of Praxis Language Ltd. We are leaders in the innovation of language training, and run the successful ChinesePod.com and SpanishSense.com services. I am contacting you because I think we may be able to offer an opportunity to University of Michigan Middle Eastern Studies graduates. We are expanding, and will add Arabic to our portfolio, and so need to recruit an Arabic Program Manager. They should be a fluent Arabic-speaker with teaching experience, a strong understanding of Arabic linguistics, and a passion for teaching the language and for innovation in general. The successful candidate will lead all aspects of the service, and it will be a really exciting role. Do you think any of your recent Masters degree graduates would be suitable/interested in this position? I would greatly appreciate it if you forwarded my mail to anyone you think may be interested. Alternatively, could you introduce me to whoever is responsible for campus recruitment? Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Best Regards -- Steve Williams Co-Founder Praxis Language Ltd. 3rd Floor, Building 4 751 Huangpi Nan Road Shanghai, China 200025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira 2) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira 2) Subject:Meaning of Al-Darija -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"Katia Zakharia" Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Good evening. Dajira is merely dhakhiira written the way it may be pronounced in spanish and referring to Ibn Bassam's anthology al-Dhakhiira fii mahaasin ahl al-djaziira. KZ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:Farouk Mustafa Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Maybe you should think of it as al-Dhakhira. Hope this helps, Farouk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:Zouheir Khalsi Subject:Meaning of Al-Darija Meaning of Al-Darija? Since I am Tunisian, here in Tunisia, the local variety of Arabic is often refered to as Darija. So Darija, as it is used in Tunisia, is the usual term for Tunisian Arabic. Zouheir khalsi ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From ruth_faris at HARVARD.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:48:03 2007 From: ruth_faris at HARVARD.EDU (Ruth Faris) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:48:03 -0400 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: I will be out of the office on Friday July 20th. Ruth Rashed Faris Human Resource Manager From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Books on Islam Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Books on Islam -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Global Media Pblications" Subject:Books on Islam **Shop online at our secure online bookstore: www.gmpublications.com. 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Abdullah M.bin Yazid Ibn * *ISBN: 8171512909, Publisher:Kitab Bhavan* *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=14184 * * * * * *MISHKAT-UL-MASABIH * *By Sheikh Wali-ud-din Muhammad Bin , Abdul Hamid Siddiqui (Tr.) * No. of Volumes: 3 Language: English *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=14185 * * * *Shamaa-il-Tirmidhi * *By M.M. Zakariyya * ISBN: 8174350993, Publisher:Adam Publishers Year of Publication: 2005 *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=11590 * * * *Minhaj Et Talibin: A Manual of Muhammadan Law * By M. Abu Zakaria Yahya ibn Sharif ISBN: 817435249X, Publisher:Adam Publishers Year of Publication: 2005 *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=11749 * * * *The Awarif-Ul-Maarif * By Shaikh Shahab-ud-din Umar B. 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ISBN: 8126127368, Publisher:Anmol Publishers No. of Volumes: 30, 11896 pages Year of Publication: 2007 *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=18944 * * * * * * **To unsubscribe please send an e-mail to unsubscribe at gmpublications.com Please contact Global Media Publications J-51-A, 1st Floor, AFE, Jamia Nagar, Okhla, New Delhi-110025 India Tel: 91-11-55666830, 9818327757 E-mail: info at gmpublications.com Or shop online at our secure online bookshop www.gmpublications.com * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:55 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:55 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From: Subject:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP Call for Papers The Arabic Linguistics Society and the University of Maryland announce the Twenty-Second Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics to be held at the University of Maryland, College Park. March 8-9, 2008 Papers are invited on topics that deal with theoretic and applied issues of Arabic Linguistics. Research in the following areas of Arabic linguistics is encouraged: grammatical analysis (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), applied linguistics, socio- linguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, etc. Persons interested in presenting papers are requested to submit a one- page abstract giving the title of the paper, a brief statement of the topic, and a summary clearly stating how the topic will be developed (the reasoning, data, or experimental results to be presented). Authors are requested to be as specific as possible in describing their topics. Print your name, affiliation and return e-mail address at the top of the e-mail. It will be removed before being forwarded to the review committee. Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail to Saleh Al-Nusairat at: nfli-arabic at umd.edu 2007 ALS membership dues of $25 and conference fees of $50 (total $75) are to be submitted with all abstracts and must be received by the abstract deadline. Membership dues are non-refundable; conference fees are refundable, if requested, only to those whose papers are not accepted. Deadline for Receipt of Abstracts: November 15, 2007 Abstracts questions to: Saleh Al-Nusairat E-Mail: nfli-arabic at umd.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:49 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:49 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Language Policy in Israel Conference Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Language Policy in Israel Conference -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:Language Policy in Israel Conference Full Title: Language Policy Research Center Short Title: LPRC Date: 30-Apr-2008 - 30-Apr-2008 Location: Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Contact Person: Miriam Shlesinger Meeting Email: shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il Web Site: http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics Call Deadline: 10-Feb-2008 Meeting Description: The Language Policy Research Center (Bar Ilan University, Israel) is holding a conference on research into language policy in Israel. Date: April 30 2008. Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 400 words): February 10 2008. For further details: Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il The Language Policy Research Center Faculty of Humanities Bar Ilan University Call for Papers Language Policy Research in Israel: the state of the art The Language Policy Research Center was established at Bar-Ilan University in order to conduct research in all aspects of language policy and related fields relevant to the development of language policy, including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, translation, interpreting, language planning and language teaching and assessment. Its areas of concern comprise both those aspects of language policy that are determined by official rulings and those that evolve over time, gaining ground as social norms. In particular, the Center aims at studying issues in language policy in Israel and promoting research in these areas. Towards this end, the LPRC will hold a conference dedicated to examining current directions in language policy in Israel. Date: April 30, 2008 Venue: Feldman Auditorium, Bar Ilan University Abstracts (maximum of 400 words) should be sent by February 10, 2008 to: Prof. Miriam Shlesinger Language Policy Research Center Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies Bar Ilan University Kort Building (1004), room 206 Ramat Gan, Israel 52900 shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 25, 2008. The Scientific Committee: Dr. David Doron, Department of Arabic Prof. Joel Walters, Department of English Prof. Emeritus Bernard Spolsky, Department of English Prof. Roselyne Koren, Department of French Dr. Dovid Rier, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Prof. Ora R. Schwarzwald, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial in the Curriculum Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 2) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 3) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 4) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 5) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 6) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:Karin Ryding Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum First of all, thanks to all for the wide-ranging discussion on colloquial Arabic in the curriculum. It has been very interesting and timely, and I would just like to add my two cents. As we all know, written and spoken Arabic are closely interwoven components of any Arabic speech community. In order to progress to teaching advanced communicative competence in Arabic, Arabic teachers and scholars need to come to terms with authentic forms of Arabic primary discourse and acknowledge that for teaching non-native speakers of Arabic, we need the training and the scholarly resources to help students learn everyday spoken Arabic as well as academic/ written Arabic. There is a vital need to develop a range of testable curricular models (formulas, templates, paradigms, schemata) to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each, to provide data and feedback for analysis, and to judge effectiveness in all four skills. Right now there are only a few curriculum models that incorporate significant amounts of spoken Arabic (such as the programs at BYU, Cornell, and Western Michigan), but these provide significant options to the MSA-only curriculum. Programs such as those that use Educated Spoken Arabic/Formal Spoken Arabic for teaching communicative skills are also important experiments whose materials, methods, and results need to be much more visible to the field in general. There is not one single answer to the issue of effective language programs, methods, and materials. The Arabic field is enriched by those who undertake careful, closely-monitored, and documented experimentation with the nature, amount, and calibration of authentic spoken and written Arabic in both educational and government training institutions. The most important thing for non-native Arabic learners is to introduce interactive spoken skills early on in any curriculum, and not to ignore them. Leaving crucial everyday communicative skills outside the curriculum unnecessarily handicaps and discourages our younger students who are learning Arabic in order live, study, and work in the Arab world and to be able to hold and understand sensible and creative conversations with Arab friends, acquaintances and everyday contacts in a wide range of situations. From what I have seen in the discussion on Arabic-L, there is some sense that spoken Arabic vernaculars are “simpler” or “less complex” than fusha. And I know that some individuals believe that teaching spoken Arabic is neither a challenging nor stimulating intellectual task because its structure and vocabulary are more elementary. But I think the opposite. Although it may be true that the colloquials have fewer inflectional categories than fusha, they are by no means simple. Think of the complexities of the Egyptian negation system, for example. Also, and most importantly, when viewed from a sociolinguistic perspective, the interactional dynamics and the range of discourse norms, functions, formulas, options, strategies, and taboos is highly sophisticated and complex, even within a single speech community. I therefore think the earlier the exposure to spoken Arabic, the better. There is a great deal to learn, not so much in terms of traditional grammatical categories perhaps, but in terms of interactive strategies, creation of meaning, conversation protocols, and narrative skills. Our students are certainly up to the challenge, but are we prepared to venture into this discourse world? Thanks, Karin Ryding ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:Klaus Lagally Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Hello all, I have been following this discussion for some time, and as I have to admit, with no little consternation. Let me add some personal experience. In Germany, generally the 'higher classes' speak and write High German, the official language, which has a strict formal grammar and is taught at all schools, even in classes for foreigners, exclusively. They will also understand, and to some extent, also speak, the local dialect. There are several dialects, some of them rather different from High German and from each other, and they generally cannot be written except phonetically; that usually looks awkward and ridiculous. Contrary to common belief the dialects also have a strict grammar each, but it is generally only known to linguists. People from the rural areas, and also members of the 'lower classes' (there is no strict separation!) will generally use the local dialect, even at school, except in formal language classes, or whenever something has to be written down. The teachers are supposed to use High German only, but will tolerate the students using colloquial language whenever sufficient for the purpose. I was born and brought up in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, in the south of Germany. My parents spoke High German exclusively, and so as I got into Primary school, in a rural area, I had some problems at the outset as nearly all the other students spoke only colloquial which additionally was somewhat different from the dialect used in Munich. I could not understand everything, and my language was considered funny, but the problem went away after a few weeks when I found out a few simple empirical rules how to translate a term in High German into colloquial, and vice versa. At that stage, when just entering school, the differences in grammar just did not matter. Later on my command of High German and of the dialect improved in parallel, and it was easy to use both, even after switching to other schools in different regions of Germany where the local dialect was quite different. There never was a problem of confusing the language levels, and I only mix them up sometimes for fun, or when conversing privately with my wife :-) As to Arabic: when I went to an evening class on Arabic (this was the only possibility at that time within reach, except travelling weekly to the next available university, one hour away), the class was designed for tourists who wanted to go to Egypt, and thus concentrated only on Colloquial. However, myself and a few other participants were also interested in Fusha, and the teacher gladly complied, and taught both language levels in parallel; it seems that he liked that, and it was definitely fun! As to the informal translation rules: these are not taught formally anywhere as far as I know, but I found them easy to find and easy to use, if you will tolerate occasional errors. As a surprising example: I studied Latin rather thoroughly at school, and this payed off: I am usually able, using some educated guesses and wild hypotheses, to read newspapers in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (I never tried Roumanian) without ever studying these languages in detail. They are all derived from (colloquial) Latin; and whereas some pronunciation has drastically changed, and the grammar has been changed and simplified, they are still fairly easy to manage, if you are content with getting the general idea. Of course the vocabulary has expanded greatly so you sometimes will need a dictionary if you insist on an exact translation; but most of the time you will guess the idea correctly. Of course, trying to speak the language in this experimental way might lead to surprises, and laughter. I am not quite sure if these observations are relevant to your problem; but judging from my own experience I definitely should, whenever I plan to teach two related languages (suchas Fusha and some Colloquial) or, e.g. Latin and Spanish), teach them in parallel, pointing out the common features and the differences. Of course this needs dedicated and willing students, at least at college level; but learning two languages need not take twice the effort if they are related, and may even be fun. But enough of speculation. Somehow this discussion reminds me of an old joke, about the difference between Pedagogics and Medicine: In Medicine there are three stages of a case: Anamnesis, Diagnosis, and Therapy. In Pedagogics it is just the other way round. What about just trying out the ideas, and looking at the result? Peace Klaus -- Prof. Dr. Klaus Lagally | mailto:lagally at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Institut fuer Formale | http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ ... Methoden der Informatik| ... fmi/bs/people/lagally.htm Abteilung Betriebsoftware| Tel. +49-711-7816392 |Zeige mir deine Uhr, Universitaetsstrasse 38 | FAX +49-711-7816370 | und ich sage dir, 70569 Stuttgart, GERMANY | | wie spaet es ist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"khorshid" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Dear colleague, I have three observations on the colloquial-first discussion: FIRST OBSERVATION: I´m afraid that concentrating on the approach may distract our attention from another more important factor; namely, the shameful lack of teaching material. If you follow the "right" approach without the backing of suitable teaching material, the results will not be up to our aspiration. Look at the commonly used textbook and compare them to a basic check list of what a good textbook is!! By teaching material I don´t mean the main textbook only. Rather, there should be a wide range of other material. When I taught English, my problem was choosing from a wide variety of available good material. Now, can we take collective action to remedy this crippling shortage? SECOND OBSERVATION: If Mostafa wants to experiment with the colloquial-first approach again, what is the difference between this and previous experiments with the same approach elsewhere? How long will your experiment last? One semester? Four? If you have the courage to challengen the prevailing approaches, I recommend that your experiment be extended for as long as possible so that the results could be more conclusive. How much colloquial can you learn in one semester in the States anyway?! THIRD OBSERVATION: "al-qird fii aini ummihi ghazaal". Who is going to evaluate this and other existing programs? Certainly not the ones undertaking them. If you evaluate your own program positively, this doesn´t necessarily mean it´s good, or bad. It may just mean you are used to it, or you have been doing it for long. Can there be a collective effort to evaluate different programs by neutral people and report the findings to the whole profession? Who can lead this collective effort for the good of the profession? salaam wa tahiyya. Ahmad Khorshid Arabic Language Instructor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 4) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From: Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum In response to Mr. Colangelo's question (below), no, it wouldn't be "hilarious to watch the news on any Arabic television channel where fusha is used. The reason is that Fusha has been accepted by the Arabs as the language of news broadcasts (and scripted speech in general), but it has not been accepted as a means of ordinary conversation. On the other hand, most Arabs would find a formal news bulletin in the colloquial quite hilarious or at least very odd. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 5) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Tressy Arts" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum First of all, let me introduce myself: I am a Dutch Arabist currently finishing an MA at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, specialization linguistics. I have been a contributor to the first Dutch-Arabic/Arabic Dutch dictionaries, coordinated by Jan Hoogland and published by Bulaaq, Amsterdam; and lexicography is my passion. I am writing a thesis on the "matrice-étymon-racine"-theories of Georges Bohas, under supervision of professor C. Versteegh, and work part-time as a teacher of Arabic and the Egyptian colloquial to adults. I am glad to be a part of this list, and have read many interesting posts already. The comment quoted here made me think: > > "My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used > for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking > English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, > because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. > I,as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my > students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think > that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree > with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom > issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma > ssabti"? > Prof. Munther Younes states here that English and colloquial Arabic are "naturally spoken languages", and MSA is not, and therefore it feels unnatural to him to speak MSA with his students. I can see where you are coming from, I feel slightly odd when I teach my students to say "haat li burtuqaalatan min faDlika", but I wonder where this distinction originates: is it intrinsic in the languages, or is it caused by the fact that one never hears anyone speak MSA as a native language? If it is the second, could one not learn MSA as a "second language" the same way as I learned English, and become quite proficient in it, so that it becomes nearly natural to speak it? Or is it necessary to hear it spoken as a natural language for anyone to be comfortably using it in daily life? Would a group of children raised in standard Arabic feel and use it as a natural language, or are there elements in MSA that are foreign to natural languages? I hope I have expressed myself correctly, I think this an interesting question raised and would be delighted to read all your views on this. Sincere regards, Tressy Arts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 6) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum touche. m ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:02 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:02 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From: "Mahmoud Elsayess" Subject:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input Greetings, Currently, visitor must type the search augment as it is written in the Koran, when I gave a demonstration at Stanford last week, a suggestion was made to allow visitors type a word the way they want and that may not be the same as in the Koran. However, the result will be the correct format. Norm1 Norm2 إِبْرَاهِيمَ ابراهيم With or without Hamza _ Norm1 Norm2 عِيسَى عيسي With ي or ى Norm1 Norm2 آتاه اتاه With Mada And witout Mada From your experience, what are other common typing errors you experienced with your students? Your help is greatly appreciated. Peace, California, USA Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:11 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:11 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New Articles Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Articles -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:New Articles Journal Title: Language & Intercultural Communication Volume Number: 7 Issue Number: 2 Issue Date: 2007 Subtitle: Intercultural Approaches to the Integration of Migrating Minorities Recent History of the Maghreb: A Sociological Approach Ana Isabel Planet Contreras The Mudawwana and Koranic Law from a Gender Perspective. The Substantial Changes in the Moroccan Family Code of 2004 Yolanda Aixelà Cabré East Meets West: Cultural Confrontation and Exchange after the First Crusade Dana Florean ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:09 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:09 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Desktop Suite Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Desktop Suite -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Dora Johnson" Subject:Arabic Desktop Suite This came from a newsletter that focuses on translation and interpretation. I have no idea how good it is. Perhaps more technologically oriented folk on this list could try it out and let us know! Basis Technology Corp., a provider of software solutions for multilingual text mining and information retrieval applications, has released Arabic Desktop Suite, a trio of productivity applications for Microsoft Windows. This suite enables translators, report writers and intelligence analysts to translate foreign names from Arabic and Persian into the Latin alphabet. It also includes applications for locating Middle Eastern place names against maps and for typing Arabic with an ordinary English keyboard. Basis Technology Corp., E-mail: info at basistech.com, Web: http://www.basistech.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:00 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:00 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Question about ALS symposium Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Question about ALS symposium -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:Uri Horesh Subject:Question about ALS symposium Could one of the ALS organizers please inform us where dues are to be sent? The call for papers only mentions an e-mail address, but I presume a physical address is available for checks to be mailed to. Thanks, Uri -- Uri Horesh Lecturer of Arabic Department of Middle Eastern Studies The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, F9400 Austin, TX 78712-0527 Tel : 512-475-6644 Cell: 267-475-5594 Fax : 512-471-7834 urih at mail.utexas.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:20:58 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:20:58 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:summersale at gerlach-books.de Subject:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock Of these 19 Brill titles we have got one copy each left in our stock. Benefit from our Summer Offer and order your copy with 30% or more special discount today. If you order 3 or more books you will be granted an additional 10% discount. Please note the following conditions of this offer: - Offer valid until 3 August only - Prepayment by credit card is required - Prices include surface mail delivery (airmail on request) - European VAT added if applicable - Limited stock only, sold on first come first serve basis Looking forward to your order. Best regards from Berlin, Kai Gerlach (1) This title is out of print ! Arab Dress. A Short History by Stillman, Y. K.; Stillman, N. ISBN: 9004113738 Publication date: 2000 Price: EUR 120 (2) One copy in stock Women in the Ottoman Empire. Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era by Zilfi, M.C. (ed.) ISBN: 9004108041 Publication date: 1997 Regular: EUR 132 Now: EUR 92 (3) One copy in stock Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914. A Muslim Town in Transition by Yazbak, M. ISBN: 9004110518 Publication date: 1998 Regular: EUR 132 Now: EUR 92 (4) One copy in stock Civil Society in the Middle East - 2 volumes by Norton, A.R. (ed.) ISBN: 9004101756 Publication date: 1995 Regular: EUR 250 Now: EUR 170 (5) One copy in stock Legal Pluralism in the Arab World by Dupret, B.; Berger, M.; al-Zwaini, L. (eds.) ISBN: 9041111050 Publication date: 1999 Regular: EUR 134 Now: EUR 94 (6) One copy in stock The Sudan of the Three Niles. The Funj Chronicle 910-1288/1504-1871 by Holt, P.M. ISBN: 9004112561 Publication date: 1999 Regular: EUR 98 Now: EUR 65 (7) One copy in stock The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem by Cohen, Amnon ISBN: 9004119183 Publication date: 2001 Regular: EUR 106 Now: EUR 70 (8) One copy in stock Kordofan Invaded. 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ISBN: 9004131965 Publication date: 2003 Regular: EUR 119 Now EUR 80 (19) One copy in stock Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul. Fluidity and Leverage by Yi, Eunjeong ISBN: 9004129448 Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 94 Now: EUR 64 ********************************************m* KAI-HENNING GERLACH - BOOKS & ONLINE Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies D-10711 Berlin, Germany Heilbronner Straße 10 Telefon +49 30 3249441 Telefax +49 30 3235667 e-mail khg at gerlach-books.de www.gerlach-books.de USt/VAT No. DE 185 061 373 Verkehrs-Nr. 24795 (BAG) EAN 4330931247950 ******************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:13 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:13 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New LDC resources Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New LDC resources -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:ldc at ldc.upenn.edu Subject:New LDC resources (2) GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text - Part 1 is the first part of the three-part GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text, which, along with other corpora, was used as training data in year 1 (Phase 1) of the DARPA-funded GALE program. This corpus contains transcripts and English translations of 17 hours of Arabic broadcast news programming selected from a variety of sources. A manual selection procedure was used to choose data appropriate for the GALE program, namely, news and conversation programs focusing on current events. Stories on topics such as sports, entertainment news, and stock market reports were excluded from the data set. The selected audio snippets were then carefully transcribed by LDC annotators and professional transcription agencies following LDC's Quick Rich Transcription specification. Manual sentence units/ segments (SU) annotation was also performed as part of the transcription task. Three types of end of sentence SU are identified: statement SU question SU incomplete SU After transcription and SU annotation, the files were reformatted into a human-readable translation format and were then assigned to professional translators for careful translation. Translators followed LDC's GALE translation guidelines, which describe the makeup of the translation team, the source data format, the translation data format, best practices for translating certain linguistic features (such as names and speech disfluencies), and quality control procedures applied to completed translations. All final data are in Tab Delimited Format (TDF). TDF is compatible with other transcription formats, such as the Transcriber format and AG format, and it is easy to process. Each line of a TDF file corresponds to a speech segment and contains 13 tab delimited fields. The source TDF file and its translation are the same except that the transcript in the source TDF is replaced by its English translation. GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text - Part 1 is distributed via web download. 2007 Subscription Members will automatically receive two copies of this corpus. 2007 Standard Members may request a copy as part of their 16 free membership corpora. Nonmembers may license this data for US$1500. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:08 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:08 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Dora Johnson" Subject:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar CMU hosted workshop to motivate Arabic language technology Information technology researchers and executives from around the Middle East participated in an "Arabic Search Engine Workshop" hosted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Qatar, on June 17-18, 2007. The meeting mainly focused on ways Qatar could become a commercial and research center for the advancement of Arabic language technologies. CMU has expressed an interest in teaming with academic and business groups in the area to develop regional expertise in language technology. Its faculty and students would be made available to provide scientific and technological support for web search and Arabic<>English machine translation. Participating organizations in the workshop included CMU, Qatar University, ictQatar, iHorizons, Microsoft Egypt, Qatar Foundation, Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar Science & Technology Park and Qatar Capital Partners. Carnegie Mellon University, Web: http://www.cmu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:04 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:04 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial in the Curriculum Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 2) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Ms. Tressy Arts asks if one: "could not learn MSA as a "second language" the same way as I learned English, and become quite proficient in it, so that it becomes nearly natural to speak it? Or is it necessary to hear it spoken as a natural language for anyone to be comfortably using it in daily life? Would a group of children raised in standard Arabic feel and use it as a natural language, or are there elements in MSA that are foreign to natural languages?" These are interesting questions, and I am not sure they can be answered in a satisfactory manner. However, it seems to me that an essential characteristic of a natural language is that it is used for ordinary conversation by a speech community. An experiment in which children are raised speaking MSA would not be easy to complete for a variety of practical reasons, and stories of parents trying to raise their children speaking MSA suggest that the practice generally ends in failure. The evidence available strongly suggests that MSA (or Classical Arabic or Fusha) as we know it now and as we know it from the old books (with cases and moods and other features which are unique to it) was never the language of daily conversation for any speech community in the history of the Arabic language. In spite of this, attempts at imposing this variety of the language on Arabic speakers continue unabated amid accusations that it is lack of patriotism or intelligence or both that are responsible for their failure to master it. Munther Younes Cornell University ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Ola Moshref" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum salaam I remember one day some colleagues at one of the institutions I worked at argued fiercely about whether this word or that would be classified as colloquial or fusha. Even with an indisputable word like /haadha/, how many times do natives use it in ordinary speech? There is no clear cut answer. It depends on the speaker and the context. Whole standard sentences can suddenly be uttered by a native Arab amid the flow of colloquial speech. How are you going to teach that? How will the learner who spends years learning colloquial alone or fusha alone follow up this very "natural" native Arabic discourse? Regarding the "unnaturalness" of speaking MSA in class, I think I disagree. As an instructor, I do not feel unnatural, because the purpose is to sow a foreign language into the learner's soil, and speaking, even if it is not "natural" is highly necessary for internalizing a foreign language and learning how to read and write it. When you plant, you do not only rely on natural watering and sunlight, you manipulate all sorts of man made illumination, irrigation and fertilizers! Why not think along the "third language" notion advocated by late Tawfiq al-Hakim raHimahu Allah? It is said that art is not to mimic real life, but is a reformulation of it. Why should language instruction and learning mimic first language acquisition? Learners are not natives who heard all varieties of the target language while they were still embryos! The players are different and the setting is different. And language learning is one of the creative "arts". Ola Moshref TA- Linguistics UIUC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:00 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:00 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:ddomingo at fluentialinc.com Subject:Needs Non-native Arabic speakers (students) for one hour recording for $40 [Please share this information with students or anyone you believe may be qualified.] Hello. My name is Dave Domingo. If you are a non-native speaker of Arabic, you can earn $40 for approximately 1 hour of work, helping my company develop a DLI-funded language learning tool. (You must have completed at least one college- level course in Arabic as a *second* language to qualify for this opportunity.) My company, Fluential, is creating a computer-based language learning system called T-MINDS, which is being developed under a contract with the Defense Language Institute. (Click here to view a presentation about T-MINDS.) At this stage of development, we are collecting speech data from non-native Arabic speakers. This enables us to model correct and incorrect speech so the system will correct and give feedback at the right level. Your total time on task is about 1 hour, but you can break your session up into shorter chunks ? see below. If you would like to help with this project and earn $40, just call this toll-free number to begin: 1-877-358-3684 The system begins by assigning you a unique PIN so you can hang up at any time and continue your session when it is convenient for you. When you finish your session, e-mail me at ddomingo at fluentialinc.com . Include your full name, your mailing address, your phone number and the PIN you were assigned. Without these four items of information, we will not be able to process your payment. This data collection project will end on or about July 15. Please feel free to call me at (925) 895-2294 if you have any problems or suggestions. Thanks very much for your help. -- Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:07 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:07 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Test Normers (for free online course) Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs non-native Arabic Speakers for on-line recording -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Needs Test Normers (for free online course) Subject:Needs non-native Arabic Speakers for on-line recording Are you interested in taking a $99 online Arabic course FOR FREE? Would you like to be able to speak, read, write, and understand Arabic? Are you interested in testing your proficiency in Arabic? Arab Academy is pleased to announce that it is offering a FREE online Arabic course to a select number of students (a $99 value). In return, students will be asked to sit for the Arabic Language Proficiency Test (ALPT) which is currently being developed and validated by Arab Academy. If selected, you will be asked to sit for the ALPT test 3 times to allow us to test the uniformity and validity of its scoring process. The test is approximately 3 hours long and includes speaking, reading, writing, and listening components. Your scores will be used to determine your proficiency in Arabic and you will subsequently be placed in a free ONE MONTH Arabic course online with Arab Academy (a $99 value). Sign-up NOW by visiting: http://www.arabacademy.com/alpt_free Offer expires Sunday July 15th, 2007 ABOUT ARAB ACADEMY Arab Academy is the world's leading provider of online Arabic language courses. To date, Arab Academy has served 22,500 students from 182 countries. We offer courses for all ages and language levels. To learn more about Arab Academy, please visit: http://www.arabacademy.com Best regards, Sanaa Ghanem (http://www.arabacademy.com/ghanem) President, Arab Academy, 3 Kamil El-Shinnawi Street (Formerly: Al-Nabataat Street), Garden City 14511, Cairo, Egypt E-mail: info at arabacademy.com Web Inquiries: http://www.arabacademy.com/contact_e.htm Web Site: http://www.arabacademy.com Tel.: +2 012 218 0305 Fax: +202 589 1499 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:03 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:03 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Max Maxxxxxxx Subject:Description of Program for Comparing Dialects Hi! My name is Maksym Vaskiv. I'm from Ukraine. I'm a student of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University. I study at the faculty of Oriental Philology. My speciality will be Arabic language and literature and English language. Beginning from the next September I will be a third-year student. I think it advisable that I should tell you a few words about myself. Nobody can estimate themselves by their own. I can't tell you I'm a good student, I have no right for this. Maybe the only persons to do it are my lecturers, but because of their absence here, in my letter, my studying results can talk instead of them. So, now I have finished four semesters, I had 15 exams. The grades of all the exams were A. As for me, it is not a great achievement. The main achievement for me is possibility to use your knowledge in practice, helping people and making some great things. Until now I hadn't had a lot of opportunities to do this. But, nevertheless, I've managed to use the few of them. The first thing I want to say is that I'm always looking for Arabs to communicate with them and improve my spoken Arabic. But I do feel a lack of people from Arabic countries here, in Kyiv. So, though I have some friends who are Arabs, I'm hardly ever able to have some conversation with them. One of the greatest achievements for me during my studying in the university was a practice in Egyptian Embassy in Kyiv. I have gained a lot of experience there. Now I'm planning to have a practice there again. And also in the embassy of Jordan. As I had realized before that it is necessary that person should know not just a literary Arabic Language, but, which is much more important, Arabic dialects, I'm trying to find some opportunity in learning and improving Arabic dialects. I think, I have found a very original way for this. I have started creating a computer program for comparing and learning dialects. The program is constantly being upgraded. It is called "AudioLiahjat". The main goal for the program is to help the student studying Arabic language to understand the main differences in Arabic dialects, now mostly in phonetics, but in future, I think, in grammar and lexicon. And it should make the language adaptation of the student who hadn't been in any Arabic country before or is going to visit one of the countries much easier. Now the program contains literary Arabic language (not classical, but one used by people in Arabic countries to talk) and three dialects: Egyptian, Iraqi and Lebanese. Now I'm looking for people to help me in creating the program or sponsoring it. Now I have a few projects for the future. Next September or October I'm planning to organize Middle East Culture Festival. There will be presented music, poetry and culture of Arabic countries, Iran, India. There will be folk bands, different seminars in national poetry, history of Arabic fonts and much more. Now I'm gathering the information about everything connected with that and contacting different bands, people and embassies to help me in organizing the festival. The next project is creating Middle East culture magazine. I'm not sure about the time when the first one will be published. I have a lot of people wishing to write articles for the magazine. There are as Ukrainians, as Arabs and Iranians among them. But the main problem is a lack of money for publishing the journal. I'm going to visit some embassies asking them to sponsor the journal. I feel a great desire in working with Arabic language, and especially, with Arabic dialects! DESCRIPTION OF THE PROGRAM Last few months in my free time I have been developing the program. The program is called "Audio Liahjat". The main object of the research is Arabic language. But as Literary Arabic Language isn't really spoken in Arabic countries I think it quite advisable that I should have studied Arabic dialects, which are real-time used languages that are possible to be named as separate languages connected with one main aspect - Allughatu Alarabiyatu Fusha - Literary Arabic Language. This language isn't used by Arabs because of its artificiality and a lot of difficulties in grammar. Instead of it they prefer to use much more simplified dialects. Such a situation is common for all the Arabic countries when Arab from Lebanon can't understand another one from Morocco. It is quite possible that they would easier have a conversation with each other not by using Literary Arabic, but by using French language, as these two countries were French colonies. And the situation with the other dialects is the same, as most of the Arabic countries were colonies of European countries, such as France, England, Spain and Italy. And the dialects have a significant layer of the foreign words, which makes them a mixture of two languages. It is logically to make a conclusion that if Arabs from different countries quite often do not understand each other, the situation with the foreigner is much more serious. Those who study Arabic after 5 years in the university having been very good at Literary Arabic very often do not understand Arabs who use their local dialects. The students say the dialects are other languages. And it is true. I know there are a lot of Arabic phrase books. And most of them are in Literary Arabic. So, their usefulness sometimes can be quite doubtful. The rest of the phrase books are created especially for some separate Arabic countries with using the local dialect phrases. This part of the phrase books is created for tourist countries, such as Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Jordan. As my program uses audio materials, I had made a little research in this field of market. The results were the next: some programs that allow the user to listen to some words or phrases in Arabic exist, but mostly these are dictionaries allowing the user to hear only separate words. Those for listening to Arabic phrases are created mostly for one dialect, or in some cases, for three dialects from one region. Such programs that remain to be mobile for using in real-time conversation for Pocket PC, Windows Mobile or Symbian haven't been found by me, which don't excepts their existing. The main concept of the program is that user is able to listen to all the spoken phrases written in the program. The program is made in Macromedia (Adobe) Flash, and its realization is very simple that only allows to express the main concept of it. Now it consists only of 3 dialects and Spoken Literary Arabic which is nevertheless used by Arabs, which is impossible to say about Simple Literary Arabic. But the difference between them isn't as significant as if comparing with dialects. The program consists now of two parts. The first is a list box for Phrases in Arabic. There are 150 phrases, which are split into 3 blocks: I - Questions, II - Statements, III - Negatives. The phrases use all the tenses that allows to see the main differences in grammar and phonetics of the dialects. The rest of the program field is divided into 2 equal parts for comparing the dialects. In the list boxes "dialects" you are able to choose dialects. When you push the sound buttons you can hear the phrases said by native speakers. In the field "written phrases" you can see the differences in writing the same phrases that allows you to learn differences in grammar. The second part is a comparative phonetic table, which represents all the letters and sounds of Arabic language and dialects, showing the main differences among them and helping the user learn those sounds in literary Arabic language and its dialects. The user is able changing the dialects. Also he can choose if he wants to listen to just separate sounds or sounds with a word-example beginning from that letter. He can change the mode of displaying the sounds between the table of the sounds and just a simple displaying of the sounds. On pressing the separate letter-sound the user is able to hear saying it by the native speaker. This program is only a top of an iceberg. It only shows the main concepts, ways of developing and fields for using. I see a few ways of its development. The first and the main field as for me is a market of dictionaries and phrase books which now has a lack of such a product. So the practical use of the program is obvious. According to my vision of the program it should be used by people who don't know Arabic language at all or know some its main aspects, who is going to visit Arabic country. The other potential users of the program are Arabs traveling from one Arabic country to another. At first from one to two thousands of most frequent phrases of Arabic language should be collected. How could it be done? At first records of conversations between native speakers in every Arabic country should be made. After that they should be converted into a text format which is much more convenient to research. Than with the help of the program of one lecturer from our university the text records should be analyzed and most frequent phrases and words should be collected. Using the gathered information, those phrases and words should be voiced by a native speaker and recorded. The average number of Arabic dialects in Arabic country is about 10 - 15 dialects. The most frequently used are often 3 - 4 ones. So, as 22 Arabic countries are, we have a number from 66 to 88 dialects. The user would be able not only to see what to say, but also he would hear the pronunciation, including such aspect as intonation that would make Arabs easier to understand the user. Also, some theoretical materials and recommendations could be given to a user about the pronunciation some specific sounds with a purpose to help the user in learning the new unusual sounds. The phrases could be organized as a real-time conversation. The user chooses one block, for example "In The Hotel". He has a list of first more frequent phrases in the hotel and a list of potential replies to the phrases with translation. Having listened to the potential answers before, now the user is able to conduct the real-time conversation in the hotel. The program could be significantly upgraded by using the microphone of the Pocket PC, phone or notebook. In this case the program could understand the phrases told by somebody in the hotel, give the user the translation of them and a list of possible replies. The user is able to choose, should the program talk or should he repeat the phrases by himself. And, as for me, it could be a great way for people to learn languages, not even Arabic, but any language, because, when you talk, and the conversation isn't taken somewhere from a book, but it is real-time, you are able to control it, the learning of the language would fa! sten significantly. Also I think it necessary to use in it 1000 of most frequent words of Arabic Language with pronunciation. This year in a month the Bachelor paper was defended in our university, the result of which is a frequency dictionary of Arabic Language that is the first in the world. Using the data from this Bachelor paper, we can get this 1000 of most frequent Arabic words. It could be created the core and the graphical surface of the program and the user would be able to download from internet the dialects he needs. The main platform for this kind of program is mobile platform, such as I had told before as Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Symbian so that the user is able to use it during the conversation which he has with native Arab speakers. For Windows platform or Mac it could be useful too. Talking about another field of its using, I think it could be a great opportunity for students and lecturers of the Arabic to conduct some researches or learn common aspects of Arabic dialects' phonetics, grammar and lexis. The main platform here is Windows or Mach. Firstly, the program could work with some additional equipment as Phonetic Rooms, Audio Recording Equipment. Firstly, when the students learning Literary Arabic come to any Arabic country they can't speak, they do not understand anyone and often Arabs do not want to speak Literary Arabic. So, such a program could be a great opportunity for them to get acquainted with the dialect that is in the country they are going to visit. Secondly, the program could help them to conduct some researches in comparing Arabic dialects' phonetics, grammar etc. When upgrade the program, the students could record some phrases in dialects and the program would tell them about some wrong sounds pronounced by them in a wrong way, or, which is very important, correct the intonation of the pronunciation. Showing the students grammar of the dialects could help them not only learn some common phrases, but learn how to speak some dialect on the beginning level which could make their adaptation in the Arabic country very easy. The additional thing for that is creating some exercises helping to learn the grammar. And such a program might be very useful for American army. As some troops are in Arabic countries, or in some other, the program would make their communication there much easier. And they would have an opportunity to learn some dialect or language very fast. In this case, of course, the list of phrases should be gathered according to the frequency of using them by the troops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:18 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:18 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Needs Dialect course syllabi Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs Dialect course syllabi -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:nmisleem at duke.edu Subject:Needs Dialect course syllabi As part of the required courses for the Arabic major in the university where I teach, students are required take a dialect course. This coming year, we're planning to start with Egyptian dialect course.I was trying to find a good textbook to use "insha'Allah" in the coming year until a colleague of mine suggested abook entitled 'Kallimni Arabi". I liked the book and I decided to use it as a textbook for our students.I wonder if someone, who's taught a dialect course "especially Egyptian" is willing to provide me with a syllabus/syllabi. I'd really appreciate it if I can receive any relevant material....(supplemantory handouts, tests,.....anything you find helpful) Salaam, Nasser Isleem nmisleem at juno.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:11 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:11 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic in XP suggestions Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic in XP suggestions -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:"George Hallak" Subject:Arabic in XP suggestions For the Arabic, it will work with Windows XP either English or Arabic, you have to select "Install Complex Script" from the "Regional and Language" from Control Panel, then click Details button and click "Add" button then select "Arabic" from the list box, so now you will have Arabic Keyboard and you can type Arabic, check the below message and please let me know if you have any issue regarding Arabic. It would also help to making Setting Arabic as the Default language of Win XP on your PC. For the other question, there is something called MUI (Multi Language Support) for Arabic, so you can install Windows XP English and install Arabic MUI, this will enable Arabic for the user who want to have the Arabic UI, it will be according to the user login. Let me know if I can be of further help to you. Best Regards, George N. Hallak www.aramedia.com www.arabicsoftware.net www.aramediastore.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:05 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:05 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New online journal Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New online journal -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:National Foreign Language Resource Center Subject:New online journal Our apologies for any cross-postings . . . The National Foreign Language Resource Center and the University of Hawai'i Press are pleased to announce that the inaugural issue (Volume 1, Number 1) of Language Documentation & Conservation (LD&C) is now available at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/. LD&C is a fully refereed, open-access, online journal that is published twice a year, in June and December. Please visit the LD&C webpage and subscribe. It's free. ---------- Volume 1, Number 1 (June 2007) Table of Contents ARTICLES: Endangered Sound Patterns: Three Perspectives on Theory and Description Juliette Blevins Solar Power for the Digital Fieldworker Tom Honeyman and Laura C. Robinson Copyright Essentials for Linguists Paul Newman Managing Fieldwork Data with Toolbox and the Natural Language Toolkit Stuart Robinson, Greg Aumann, and Steven Bird Ethics and Revitalization of Dormant Languages: The Mutsun Language Natasha Warner, Quirina Luna, and Lynnika Butler Writer's Workshops: A Strategy for Developing Indigenous Writers Diana Dahlin Weber, Diane Wroge, and Joan Bomberger Yoder TECHNOLOGY REVIEWS Review of TshwaneLex Dictionary Compilation Software Reviewed by: Claire Bowern Review of Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) Reviewed by: Lynnika Butler and Heather van Volkinburg Review of Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) Reviewed by: Felicity Meakins BOOK REVIEWS Review of A Grammar of South Efate: An Oceanic Language of Vanuatu Robert Early Review of Kerresel a klechibelau: Tekoi er a Belau me a omesodel: Palauan language lexicon Robert E. Gibson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:15 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:15 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Study in Yemen response Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Study in Yemen response 2) Subject:Study in Yemen response -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Sana N Hilmi Subject:Study in Yemen response Hello, I wasn't sure if you are going to the capital, Sana'a. I led a study abroad in the winter through the Yemen College for Middle Eastern Studies, and I should be going again this winter. I would recommend that you contact Matthew Kuehl at, ycmes at ycmes.com you can mention my name. Their web site is, http://www.ylcint.com/ Some faculty don't speak English, they might be better tutors. some classes end up in one to one basis. Few faculty have Ph.D., some Masters and some BA. Experience varies. Make sure your grammar teacher speaks English. The institute is clean, they have Internet access, and use the same electricity codes. Very close to the museums, market and downtown Sana'a. Shopkeepers will help you practice your Arabic. They'll also take you on tours. Go od experience. Downside of this place, many foreigners (I mean non Arabs) try to avoid speaking in English. Do not get into their habit, I mean Qat :). please feel free to contact me if you need further info. Miss Sana Hilmi, M.A. Arabic Professor and Coordinator Modern and Classical Languages George Mason University 4400 University Drive, MS 3E5 Fairfax, VA 22030 Fax: 703-993-1245 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:mutarjm at aol.com Subject:Study in Yemen response Greetings. In addition to the organizations the original requestor cited, the American Institute of Yemeni Studies (AIYS) has a branch?office in Sanaa'. That office?has arranged and conducted courses for foreigners on the Yemeni dialect of Arabic. What else was the requestor planning to study in Yemen for?only a few months (a?prepared research plan is not mentioned)? If the study will start in August, perhaps one of the local universities can develop a program for specialized classes and tutoring, a la a similar program in Gulf (Emirati) Arabic offered?by UAE University a few years back. Getting the old?FSI textbook (and accompanying audiocassette tapes) on the?Yemeni Arabic might also?be helpful because of the textbook's useful descriptions of the dialect and insights into (Sanaa'- specific) Yemeni culture and customs. HTH. Regards, Stephen H. Franke Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 2 18:19:13 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:19:13 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First 3) Subject:Colloquial First 4) Subject:Colloquial First 5) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Waheed Samy Subject:Colloquial First May I suggest bringing into this discussion specific linguistic features in this discussion: Lexicon Morphology Syntax Phonology For example, is there a reason that the relative pronoun illi should not be introduced? How about words like haaza, as opposed to hadha? And what about the "bi" prefixed to the imperfective verb? Arabic is quite often not even diglossic, rather it displays hybrid qualities from the above linguistic features --so much so that one is at times at a loss as to whether some spoken utterances are purely standard or colloquial. Waheed ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial First Dear Colleagues, The comments supporting the teaching of (some) dialect, before or together with MSA, by Profs. Wilmsen and Mughazy, are all well taken. Yet no one has mentioned the TEACHING TIME LIMITATION we have during the regular academic year; and no one has dared to make an estimate as to how many hours of CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION it would take a student to become competent to dicipher today's Arabic newspaper (with the aid of a dictionary; and with virtually NO ORAL INPUT) with reasonable competence. Let me put myself out on a limb: If first and second year Arabic are given as 5 hours/week classes, and third year Arabic is the (vanilla) 3 hour/week class, (after more than a quarter century in this business), I think that that it would take even the most gifted of non-Arabic speaking students a minimum of three years of MSA study to read the daily news (with the aid of a dictionary [of which there exists NONE which is even remotely up-to-date]). Not to mention the INTRODUCTION TO ARABIC LITERATURE, and the genius of ARABIC CULTURE. Vishnu created summer vacations for Middlebury and the Arabic dialects (all of which, as a linguist, I recognize as fully developed and full-fledged independent LANGUAGES). Mike Schub ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:haider bhuiyan Subject:Colloquial First I believe the issue is not whether to teach both vernacular and fusha. The issue is rather whether to teach vernacular only. Or teach vernacular first and then fusha. In this respect I find it counterproductive to the learning of a language, especially Arabic. In one of my previous discussions, I stated that vernacular is almost an independent language within the family of Arabic, although both overlap each other very much, just like Urdu, Hindi, and Persian languages do, but they each are independent language. If our objectives are to teach vernacular only, well and good, we can do so. But if our teaching and learning objectives are to learn Arabic with special emphasis on any particular vernacular, say Egyptian, then we are better off teaching the basics of fusha along with the vernacular, and not vice versa, just like Professor Mustafa Mughazy suggested in his (a) and (b) options. what I have been observing is the fact that students who begins with vernacular suffer from lack of confidence and ability to communicate effectively. On the other hand, if they start with fusha followed by vernacular, they are better off. So, I would maintain that it is alright to teach fusha and vernacular together, but fusha first.All the best, Haider Bhuiyan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 4) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:haider bhuiyan Subject:Colloquial First I found Professor David Wilmsen?s explanation, against an expressed view concerning students of Arabic, vernacular or fusha, being lazy or incapable, very intriguing. In a bit twisted way I would complement, students are just like the teachers, some of them are lazy and incapable, while some others are hard working, capable, dedicated, and successful. Since the learning process in the classroom reflects the personalities and characteristics of both students and teachers, (B. Davis, 1993) we, both, must take the responsibility of students failure and success in learning of either vernacular or fusha. That being said, I would like to share some of my thoughts and experience with you. In my view one can justifiably decide whether to learn vernacular or fusha Arabic and he or she should do well in the process of learning, on condition of student-teacher commitment in and outside of the classroom activities. But it becomes a problem when our curriculum is mixing these two, vernacular and fusha, languages into one. We need to make up our mind in terms of which language we want to teach or learn. Apparently, our discussion and debates are being advanced in the view that both vernacular and fusha are Arabic language. Yes, fusha is, but not the vernacular. Take a scenario of Arab people from any geographical area who is not educated in Arabic language or Islamic studies you find that person is not capable of speaking Fusha with some one like us who prefer to speak fusha, but fluent in the vernacular. If you speak with the person in fusha, soon you will be told, ?sorry I cannot speak fusha well? and keep struggling to keep up with you. Of course, it will be a different story if the person is learned in the fusha. This situation is widely acknowledged, as far as my experience. What does it tell us? It tells us that vernacular and fusha are two different languages within the same origin, although overlap each other like any other languages. So, in my view, stressing in favor or against of either of vernacular or fusha is rather counterproductive and obscuring the very issue of teaching language objectively. If we continue thinking in the conventional way, I would submit the following observation. We must prioritize the fusha over vernacular. If not, we are not helping our students learn truly, neither the vernacular nor fusha. A student learning vernacular without mastering the fusha will bound to fail to learn the Arabic. In the past two years I have encountered number of students who can hardly speak the vernacular, and almost ignorant of fusha, in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. It may be counter productive, because, I believe, it is not their fault, it is ours. We are teaching them vernacular only, not fusha together with vernacular which I think should be ok. To be more specific, I have come across 3 of my own students in the past two years who came to take with me the same course they had already took in the past (course #1010 and 1020 of 1st and 2nd semester of 1st year). I was saddened to observe the level of ambiguity about the structure of language in them, including alphabets, vocab., accent, and comprehension, etc. Occasionally, their only excuses were, ?we did not learn this way, we learned al-?ammiya?. In the class, however, they did a bit better than those other freshmen, but not significantly. I found them really confused about how the learning of a language works. These students are so enthusiastic to learn the language, but, in my view, were misguided. On the other hand, the challenge that I take, it is not that difficult of an issue for the learner of the Fusha to master any vernacular in very short period of time. It is easy and comes almost by default. Here I would like to quote Professor David Wilmsen?s own statement. He wrote in his last critique: It does not take much time to begin understanding a new vernacular once the student has mastered one. This happened to me once in Morocco: at first utterance my speech was not understood, as my interlocutors expected me to address them in French, Spanish, or perhaps English; when I repeated, they could understand easily and in fact they would laugh because to them I sounded like Adel Imam. I had a bit more of a problem understanding them; but after about a week, I had learned most of the dialect differences in the functional vocabulary of the Marakesh vernacular and we all got along splendidly. He, however, put it in a different perspective than mine. Regardless, he made it clear that learning vernacular is not that of a difficult task. For a learner of fusha, it takes a week or so to master any vernacular. Can it be vice-e-versa? I am convinced to assure that it cannot be so. A student educated in vernacular will not be able to learn the fusha, not even months. I am open to learn otherwise. We must teach our students fusha first followed by occasional practices in vernacular, not otherwise. Best regards, Haider Bhuiyan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 5) Date: 01 Jul 2007 From:Abdulkafi Albirini Subject:Colloquial First This is an interesting discussion. I believe there is something missing in the argument for the colloquial first, which concerns students' interests. My experience is that most students are not learning Arabic just to speak it. In fact, many of them want to have a comprehensive understanding of the language and be able to use the language to read different literary and scholarly texts as well as to read the news. Moreover, the majority of the students prefer to have a "language" that is understood across the Arab world before they try to command a particular dialect. Thus, if we are to furnish our students with a better and more comprehensive understanding of the Arabic language (including the various skills of the language), then we have to focus on the Standard dialect first. I recognize that there are some students who are interested in commanding one dialect, who are a minority among our students (or maybe the students that I have taught thus far). For these students, we can create courses that focus on these dialects. Best Abdulkafi Albirini Coordinator of the Arabic Language Program at UIUC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 01 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:17 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:17 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LIST:break Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:break -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:moderator Subject:break I will be out of e-mail contact for about a week, so the list will take a mini-vacation. I usually don't get 'urgent' messages at this time of year, but if you have one that you want to get out before July 16 or 17, send it to me as early today as possible (marked urgent) and I will try to get it out. Dil dil at byu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:21 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:21 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First 3) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Jeremy Palmer" Subject:Colloquial First I congratulate Western Michigan for basing its forthcoming renovation of their Arabic program on empirical research. Those of you who disagree with such an approach ought to consider basing, and expressing, your statements on research. I will do the same. Thank you, Jeremy Palmer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Antonio Gim?nez Subject:Colloquial First I apologize for coming so late into the discussion. After reading the comments so far, I think some of us may have lost sight of the 'experimental side' of Mustafa?s initiative at Western Michigan University, which, while not being absolutely novel (Qafisheh's pilot study has been mentioned) it is nevertheless rather uncommon and will bring us a great opportunity to put our assumptions (whatever they might be) to test. As non-native adult learners, many of us know the experience of going from Fusha to colloquial Arabic. Some say it is dead easy, some say it is hard, but actually few of us have the experience of going the other way round (as non-native adult learners, I must insist). We can pontificate all we want about the potential risks and dangers of teaching colloquial first, but how many of us know someone who has been taught this way? Furthermore, how could we reach any conclusion out of individual cases? Unless a whole curriculum is set to work in this new direction, we cannot expect to have any reliable evidence either in favor or against the colloquial-first approach. As a matter of fact, many experiments like this will be needed to equate (in terms of quality and amount of researchable experience) what we know about the long-standing Fusha-only and the more recent Fusha-first approaches ?the last of which more than often sounds like a "colloquial? Sure, one of these days" approach. This said, I wonder who really are spinning in their graves: Sibawayh and Ibn Jinni or some 19th- and 20th-century Orientalist scholars? ("Bald heads forgetful of their sins, / Old, learned, respectable bald heads", I would dare to add, quoting Yeats.) Traditional curricula have just brought about what I call 'deaf-mute' graduates in Arabic: as literate as their dictionaries and grammar books allow them to be, i.e., not literate on their own but rather dependent on this sort of 'learning prosthesis', and nearly unable to communicate in any way (not to mention the many forever Arabic-impaired). Some may disagree, but this is the case here in Spain and I guess it is the same in the States. And please, do not be misled by those ubiquitous notable exceptions who have become fully conversant with spoken Arabic "on the way": we are not talking about such-and-such an individual, but about programs, curricula and institutions that should assure students the best available instruction. Like Dina El Zarka, I cannot agree more with Mustafa and David Wilmsen, just as I get a mixed feeling of relief and sorrow: relief that ideas such as theirs start to make their way into the Arabic curriculum, but sorrow in seeing that some of us, teachers, keep on being a big part of the problem, even bigger than diglossia; for, much as I may agree with Mustafa, I am afraid that we cannot put ideologies aside so easily (in case we actually, firmly ever want to). Perhaps we should move from language to people. It is all useless to insist on Arabic diglossia: some people, teachers and students alike are just not interested in spoken Arabic. Either they have "a spoken Arabic of their own" or simply have none, which is quite a respectable decision, all the more if one is fully aware of its shortcomings. The thing is, should academic institutions take sides in this matter on the sole basis of what has been traditionally done or what some people think is best? Of course not. We should give the colloquial-first approach a try, then see. At the very worst, Mustafa's students will remain functionally illiterate after one entire year ?but never completely so, as Mike Schub pretends, since colloquial is intended to be taught in Arabic script from the very first semester. Furthermore, should they remain functionally illiterate, they would be as functionally illiterate as many traditionally-instructed students if you take their Hans Wehr dictionaries away! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:"Kevin Schluter Subject:Colloquial First As a graduate student who has received three FLAS fellowships for Arabic, I'd like to comment not on the issue of colloquial first per se, but colloquial at all. I wanted to use my fellowship this summer to study a colloquial dialect (particularly Lebanese, Syrian, or Iraqi). That did not happen. In part, this was due to my FLAS's restrictions on locations I could go and number of classroom hours required in the program. Mostly, it was due to the fact that there are almost no programs which actually focus on any sort of colloquial Arabic. Of course, an ambitious student can make the best of any program and find a way to study colloquial, but it seems that most Arabic programs don't just teach MSA first, but teach MSA only. Obviously each university may not be equipped to teach any given dialect, but most programs can probably manage to teach one dialect. Whether it is as distinct course or as an additional or optional discussion section, colloquial sometime would be a welcome option by many students. Kevin Schluter University of Minnesota ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:23 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:23 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:Maria Persson Subject:Wants advice on LDC purchases as non-member Dear colleagues, I am about to order a database from The Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC)but before I do so I would like to ask if someone else has experience from buying material from them as a non-member. Sincerely, Maria Persson --------------------------------------------- Maria Persson Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University, Sweden ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:25 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:25 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Response to Comparing Dialects program Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Response to Comparing Dialects program -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From: "Richard Durkan" Subject:Response to Comparing Dialects program Dear Maksym I was very interested in reading your message, particularly your reference to the Arabic frequency dictionary. Can you please let me have further details of this dictionary and where it is available? I look forward to hearing from you. Richard Durkan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:26 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:26 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From:mohammadkhaqani at yahoo.com Subject:Allesan-Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language [If the script doesn't come through, it just says they have published volumes 1 and 2 of their online journal which you can access at the urls given. The triple lam was a feature of the original, in case you were wondering.] ?????? ?????? ????? ?????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ???? ??????? ??????? ????????? ????? ??????? ??????? ??? ???? ??????? www.iaal.ir www.allesan.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 6 15:16:28 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:16:28 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Dialect Course syllabus Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 06 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Dialect Course syllabus -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Jul 2007 From: Iman Soliman Subject:Dialect Course syllabus Dear Nasser I am very glad you decided to use Kallemni Arabi for teaching ECA. I am a co-author of the book. If you are using the book you do not need a syllabus as this is laid out clearly for you in the table of content section. You will find the language point , the vocabulary, the skills you focus on for each Unit. The syllabus is progressive and the vocabulary is recycled and built on unit by unit. This means it is best to do the lessons in sequence. As for tests, in a colloaquial class, tests are prefrebally regulated through : students' presentations and listening comprehension. At the end of each Unit, you have the Real life section which you can also use as a test or a review unit for all the language you have taught in a particular Unit. Of course you can always conduct a vocabulary test every other week to review vocabulary , these tets are better done through pictures (you can use the ones provided in the book or your own. For review of expressions you can always record situations and ask students to select from multiple choices the best expression to use according to their understanding of the situation. If interested i can prepare a demo test for you after the 26th of july in shaa allah. Hope you find this information useful. In case of any further questions regarding the book or its methodology please do not hesitate to ask. Best Iman A. Soliman iaziz at aucegypt.edu Home: 002 02 30 28 443 Mobile: 0101633350 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 06 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:39 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:39 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:lawrence at gerlach-books.de Subject:Lawrence of Arabia Collection available Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (August 16, 1888 - May 19, 1935), professionally known as T E Lawrence, but most famously known as Lawrence of Arabia, gained international renown for his role as a British liaison officer during the years 1916 to 1918. His very public image was in some part the result of U.S. traveller and journalist Lowell Thomas's sensationalised reportage of the Revolt, as well as Lawrence's autobiographical account, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". We were able to purchase a small private collection of 53 titles by or on T E Lawrence. Request our title list showing the individual titles. The price for the collection is EUR 2,450.00 plus shipping. Books cannot be purchased separately. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best wishes from Berlin Kai-Henning Gerlach ********************************************* KAI-HENNING GERLACH - BOOKS & ONLINE Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies D-10711 Berlin, Germany Heilbronner Stra?e 10 Telefon +49 30 3249441 Telefax +49 30 3235667 e-mail khg at gerlach-books.de www.gerlach-books.de USt/VAT No. DE 185 061 373 Verkehrs-Nr. 24795 (BAG) EAN 4330931247950 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:41 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:41 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"Megerdoomian, Karine" Subject:Computational Approaches to Arabic Script Based Languages ********** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ********** THE SECOND WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO ARABIC SCRIPT-BASED LANGUAGES (CAASL-2) July 21-22, 2007 LSA 2007 Linguistic Institute Stanford University, California, USA http://www.zoorna.org/CAASL2 DESCRIPTION ============= The workshop aims to bring together researchers working on the computer processing of Arabic script-based languages such as Arabic, Persian (Farsi and Dari), Pashto, Urdu and Kurdish. The usage of the Arabic script and the influence of Arabic vocabulary give rise to certain computational issues that are common to all these languages despite their being of distinct language families, such as right to left direction, encoding variation, absence of capitalization, complex word structure, and a high degree of ambiguity due to non-representation of short vowels in the writing system. The workshop will provide a forum for researchers from academia, industry, and government developers, practitioners, and users to share their research and experience. The goal of the workshop is to provide the participants with an opportunity to exchange ideas, approaches and implementations of computational systems, to highlight the common challenges faced by all practitioners, to assess the state of the art in the field, and to identify promising areas for future collaborative research in the development of NLP resources and systems for Arabic script languages. This second workshop also provides an opportunity to assess the progress that has been made since the first workshop held at Coling 2004. This year's keynote speaker is Prof. Richard Sproat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). This workshop is being held in conjunction with the LSA 2007 Linguistic Institute at Stanford University. WORKSHOP PROGRAM ================= Detailed program available at http://www.zoorna.org/CAASL2/program.html ---------------------------------- DAY 1: Saturday, July 21st, 2007 ---------------------------------- "Computer processing of Arabic script-based languages: Current state and future directions", Ali Farghaly and Karine Megerdoomian "Urdu morphology, orthography and lexicon extraction", Muhammad Humayoun (University of Savoy), Harald Hammarstr?m and Aarne Ranta (Chalmers University of Technology) "Generating Arabic text from Interlingua", Khaled Shaalan (The British University in Dubai), Ahmed Rafea (American University in Cairo), Azza Abdelmonem (Central Lab for Agricultural Expert Systems in Egypt), and Hoda Baraka (Cairo University) Invited Speaker: "Named entity transliteration in a variety of scripts", by Richard Sproat (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) "Information retrieval and the Arabic noun construct", Ali Farghaly (Oracle USA) "Using OWA fuzzy operator to merge retrieval systems", Hadi Amiri, Farhad Oroumchian, Caro Lucas, and Masoud Rahgozar (University of Tehran) "A note on extracting 'sentiments' in financial news in English, Arabic and Urdu", Yousif Almas (University of Surrey) and Khurshid Ahmad (Trinity College) "The first parallel multilingual corpus of Persian: Towards a Persian BLARK", Behrang Qasemizadeh (Text and Speech Technology LTD), Saeed Rahimi (Text and Speech Technology LTD/University of Tehran), and Behrooz Mahmoodi Bakhtiari (University of Tehran) "Supervised lexical acquisition for Persian from a web corpus", Nick Pendar (Iowa State University) and Serge Sharoff (University of Leeds) "A rule-based semantic role labeling approach for Persian sentences", Mahrnoush Shamsfard (Shahid Beheshti University) and Maryam Sadrmousavi (Azad University in Tehran) ---------------------------------- DAY 2: Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 ---------------------------------- "The challenges and pitfalls of Arabic romanization and arabization", Jack Halpern (CJK Dictionary Institute, Inc.) "Transcription of names written in Farsi into English", Joshua Johnson (Inxight Software, Inc.) "Automatic transliteration of proper nouns from Arabic to English", Mehdi M. Kashani, Fred Popowich, and Anoop Sarkar (Simon Fraser University) "Implementation of reverse chain mechanism in Pango for rendering Nastaliq script", Aamir Wali (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Shafiq-ur Rahman (National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences at Lahore) "Frame approach to Persian verb generation for educational purposes", Artem Lukanin (South Ural State University) and Constance Bobroff (University of Texas at Austin) "Statistical POS tagging experiments on Persian text", Fahimeh Raja (University of Tehran), Samira Tasharofi (University of Tehran), and Farhad Oroumchian (University of Wollongong in Dubai/University of Tehran) "Part-of-speech tagging for Persian", Sanaz Jabbari and Ben Allison (University of Sheffield) "Evaluation of part of speech tagging on Persian text", Fahimeh Raja , Hadi Amiri , Samira Tasharofi and Hossein Hojjat (University of Tehran) and Farhad Oroumchian (University of Wollongong in Dubai/University of Tehran) ---------------------------------- Demos and Posters ---------------------------------- "FieldWorks language explorer and Arabic script data", Beth Bryson (SIL International) "The Koran database", Mahmooud Elsayess (Read~Verse Company) "Human vision inspired Optical Character Recognition", Mandana Hamidi (Azad University of Qazvin), Ali Borji (Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) and Fariborz Mahmoudi (Azad University of Qazvin) "Pashto-English machine translation using TranSphere", Craig Kopris (AppTek Inc.) "Speech-Translation of languages with scarce resources", Hassan Sawaf and Craig Kopris (AppTek Inc.) "Extensible integrated Treebank annotation environment", Otakar Smr? (Charles University in Prague) ---------------------------------- Alternates ---------------------------------- "Algorithm for subject zero pronoun detection and restoration in Urdu discourse", Abid Khan, Aamir Khan, and Naveed Ali (University of Peshawar) "A Persian morphological parser using POS tagging", Ali Azimizadeh (Center of Speech Technology Research, SimAva Co), Mohamad Mehdi Arab (Center of Speech Technology Research, SimAva Co), and Aarvin Farahmand (Ryerson University) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Discussion Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First Discussion 2) Subject:Colloquial First Discussion -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial First Discussion But to do any serious study of subjects related to 'Orientalism' the traffic is, as it is with massive emigration, ONE WAY: from THERE to HERE. miish heek? ms ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"John Joseph Colangelo" Subject:Colloquial First Discussion I wanted to ask Jeremy if those of us who do not base their comments on "empirical research" could base them on personal experience instead. In relation to Prof. Gim?nez?s comment on the nineteenth century orientalists, if Caspari and Wright could be considered representative of their 19th century colleagues then it would be fair to say that they were much more prepared than late 20th and 21st century Spanish orientalists who I have observed in situ. Again, from personal experience late twentieth century orientalists, generally, are what you would call those people that claim classical Arabic is like Latin or ancient Greek. These are the people that cannot speak MSA nor "aamiyya" of any kind. Those students who learned how to speak Arabic (and then a dialect) while studying in the classrooms of Filolog?a Sem?tica were the nerds who invested more than triple the class time after class hours studying Arabic: reviewing grammar, conducting an exchange with Arab students (My very good friend Naser from ِAl-Khaleel used to come to my house every Sunday morning where we would sit down speaking in English for an hour and a half and then in Arabic for another hour and a half. By the way, one of the advantages of living in Granada), reading Arabic newspapers, listening to the BBC in Arabic everyday. Of course, not everyone has the buena suerte to live in Granada which is really a blessing for a very applied student of Arabic where it isn?t difficult to find an Arabic tutor. But before I go off topic here, let me propose a few questions here. What if we were to radically change the Arabic program? What if we we could teach 2 hours a day, five days a week? Wouldn?t 2 hours a day, five days a week, from September to May using MSA and a dialect (or October to June if you study in Europe) for the first two years of university study give the student the foundations he or she needs so they may benefit from their year abroad in the Arab world hence returning with a solid command of the language for the 3rd and 4th year of university study? Please excuse this foolish proposal but it seems that one of the greatest problems we are facing (besides the non-native teachers who cannot speak Arabic and native Arab teachers who prefer not to speak Arabic in the classroom) is of a bureaucratic nature: university syllabi that do not take into consideration the nature of different languages. Let me illustrate the latter with a real life example: At the Translation & Interpreting Faculty of the University of Granada, all C languages (languages we only translate or interpret from and not to) are taught the same number of hours. This means that all C languages whether they be Chinese, Arabic, French, German, Italian or English are taught the same number of hours per week. Is this problem common in US universities as well? John Joseph Colangelo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:35 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:35 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From: Subject:Non-natives for one hour recording for $40 update Hello, Dr. Parkinson. The response to my original announcement for T-MINDS data collection has been great, thanks in very large part to your publicizing it via your list. We plan to keep the data collect tool running for a few more weeks now. I noticed that the long URL to my presentation about T-MINDS tends to get cut in half, making it impossible to access the file by clicking. Can you please send out this alternative URL so people who are interested can see the presentation? http://tinyurl.com/ytwwee Thanks very much again. -- Dave [moderator's note: here was the original message:] Hello. My name is Dave Domingo. If you are a non-native speaker of Arabic, you can earn $40 for approximately 1 hour of work, helping my company develop a DLI-funded language learning tool. (You must have completed at least one college- level course in Arabic as a *second* language to qualify for this opportunity.) My company, Fluential, is creating a computer-based language learning system called T-MINDS, which is being developed under a contract with the Defense Language Institute. (Click here to view a presentation about T-MINDS.) At this stage of development, we are collecting speech data from non-native Arabic speakers. This enables us to model correct and incorrect speech so the system will correct and give feedback at the right level. Your total time on task is about 1 hour, but you can break your session up into shorter chunks ? see below. If you would like to help with this project and earn $40, just call this toll-free number to begin: 1-877-358-3684 The system begins by assigning you a unique PIN so you can hang up at any time and continue your session when it is convenient for you. When you finish your session, e-mail me at ddomingo at fluentialinc.com . Include your full name, your mailing address, your phone number and the PIN you were assigned. Without these four items of information, we will not be able to process your payment. This data collection project will end on or about July 15. Please feel free to call me at (925) 895-2294 if you have any problems or suggestions. Thanks very much for your help. -- Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Mon Jul 16 16:24:37 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:24:37 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Needs online source for Arabic business terms Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Mon 16 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Needs online source for Arabic business terms -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 16 Jul 2007 From:"oxyi i" Subject:Needs online source for Arabic business terms hello I' m from turkey.I am deaLing with trading and ? need to learn some trade terms in arabic.such as:shipment,freight,letter of credit,advising bank,bill of lading,bill of exchange.....etc.could you recommend me an online source or ,website to learn arabic equivelant of these? thanks and regards......... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 16 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New Dissertation Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Dissertation -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:New Dissertation Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:40:13 From: Muhammet Gunaydin < gunaydin at alumni.upenn.edu > Subject: Al-Sirafi's theory of 'lingua-logical' grammar: An analytical study of the grammatical work of al-Sirafi... Institution: University of Pennsylvania Program: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2006 Author: Muhammet gunaydin Dissertation Title: Al-Sirafi's theory of 'lingua-logical' grammar: An analytical study of the grammatical work of al-Sirafi (Sharh Kitab Sibawayhi) within the context of a discussion on language and logic in medieval Islam Dissertation URL: http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3211077/ Linguistic Field(s): History of Linguistics Ling & Literature Philosophy of Language Dissertation Director(s): Roger M. A. Allen Joseph E Lowry Barbara von Schlegel Dissertation Abstract: This is a study of the problematic relationship between language, grammar, and logic in the linguistic thought of Abu Said al-Sirafi (d. 979), the judge and grammarian. It offers an analytical study of the first seven chapters of his famous work on grammar, Sharh Kitab Sibawayhi within the context of the famous debate over Arabic grammar and Aristotelian logic that took place in Baghdad, in 932 C.E. between him and Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus (d. 940), the philosopher and logician. In the debate, against Matta's thesis that logic is an instrument by which we differentiate correct speech from incorrect and sound meaning from unsound, al-Sirafi argues that correct speech can only be distinguished from incorrect by grammatical investigation, and sound meaning from unsound by reason. Al-Sirafi further argues that grammar includes logic, and thus there is no need to study logic separately. This study examines al-Sirafi's Sharh to investigate whether these ideas are based on a verifiable linguistic theory found in his Sharh, or stated only for the sake of discussion during the debate. At the end of the study it is concluded that al-Sirafi's approaches to linguistic issues are consistent and complementary to each other in both the debate and the Sharh. However, there is no evidence found in the Sharh to support his criticism of logic put forward in the debate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:50 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:50 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First (Intermediate Approach) 2) Subject:Colloquial First (Integrated Program) 3) Subject:Colloquial First (Research and Experience) -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Waheed Samy Subject:Colloquial First (Intermediate Approach) I think it is important to consider that there is an intermediate approach (thus mirroring the language situation itself). For example, in an MSA curriculum, there is plenty of room to introduce 'non-MSA'. In linguistic terms one could introduce simple phonological contrasts between the MSA dipthongs /ai/ and /aw/ and show their corresponding equivalents /ee/ and /oo/ in 'non-MSA'. Similarly one would take aspects from morphological, syntactic, and lexical, features, including mixtures thereof, and introduce these during the course of instruction. For example, it would be useful for learners to know the MSA definite article 'al as well as the 'non- MSA' one 'il, and that the many relative pronouns in MSA are all equivalent to 'illi, and so on. Waheed ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial First (Integrated Program) For the past 16 years, we have been following an "integrated" approach to teaching Arabic at Cornell University. According to this approach, classroom teaching and the textbooks used reflect the sociolinguistic realities of Arabic. MSA is introduced for reading and writing purposes, while colloquial Levantine is used for informal conversation and discussion of all kinds, including discussion of MSA materials. The instructors of the program find this approach quite effective, natural, and easy to follow, since they converse in a variety of the language that is actually used for conversation and they read and write the variety of Arabic that is used for those functions. My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. I, as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma ssabti"? A lot of teachers are horrified at the idea of "contaminating" Fusha, the language of literature, culture, and Arab glory and unity, with the despised dialect in the classroom. Not much can be done about this attitude (although much can be said about it). Other teachers are worried about the confusion that might result from introducing the two varieties simultaneously. Our experience at Cornell demonstrates that most of this worry is the result of teacher biases, misinformed and untested assumptions. The goal of the majority of our students is to understand, speak, read, and write Arabic the way the language is used in real life. We betray them when we insist on teaching it the way we think it should be used, which is the result of a poor understanding of the way human languages really work. Arabs dream of seeing Fusha as the only language variety that is used by Arabs everywhere and all the time, and they wish that the dialects would simply vanish. We as teachers should be able to dream and wish as much as we want, but our wishes and dreams should not determine the approach we take in our efforts to serve our students to the best of our abilities. If anyone is interested in learning more about our integrated program, I'll be happy to share more of our experiences. Munther Younes Director of the Arabic Program Cornell University ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:M"Jeremy Palmer" Subject:Colloquial First (Research and Experience) Yes, John Joseph Colangelo can base his comments on personal experience. Personal experience is wonderful. It leads to ideas and questions. My simple hope is that the field of Arabic SLA will publish (including reduplicated studies) a large body of research regarding the positives and negatives of learning and teaching colloquial Arabic. Everyone has personal experience that is valuable and important for this issue. Perhaps when there is a large body of research about this topic we will be able to identify trends and practices that will allow us to make wise decisions in our curricula? Such is my hope. Good luck to all. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:48 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:48 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:New Version of Lesson-Designer Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Version of Lesson-Designer 2) Subject:Quran Database presentation at Stanford Conference -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:melsayess at socal.rr.com Subject:New Version of Lesson-Designer Greetings and Peace from California, USA Read~Verse would like to bring to your attention the new release of Lesson~Designer which is free of charge for instructors and students Lesson~Designer is a component of the Read~Verse suite of teaching software brought to you by the Read~Verse American Company, specialists in advanced education delivery tools for worldwide learning. What language are you teaching today? Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Korean, Urdu, Spanish, Japanese, English, French, Hebrew, Portuguese...?? Read~Verse's Lesson~Designer can deliver any digital language course to students worldwide. This is a list of the new features: Dictation: Lesson~Designer includes a voice messaging feature that lets a teacher to test students remotely by stating phrases and words, and requiring them to type what they have heard. Recording: Another Lesson~Designer feature that lets students read and record a text, and send the recording to the instructor for review. Attachments: Lesson~Designer now permits students and teachers to append objects including a word document, text, video and zipped files to a lesson. Print security: While both students and teachers can print lessons and questions, only teachers can print answers. Chat room: Instructors and students can participate in a synchronized dialog via a chat session. Such real time, personal exchanges will both enhance the effectiveness of teachers and enrich the learning experience of students. Questions & Answers: Since active participation is crucial in the learning process, Lesson~Designer will include a Q & A facility to enrich the learning process. When students post questions related to a specific lesson, teachers can post their replies. Please visit: http://www.lessondesigner.com/ Professor Mahmoud Elsayess, president of Read~Verse, was a guest presenter at WordCom ?07, on June 26, 2007; in Las Vegas conference sponsored by several renowned organizations including Intel, MIT and Harvard. He will again be a guest presenter at the Stanford Linguistic Scientists? Conference on July 21, 2007. Your feedback and acknowledgment of this email are highly appreciated. Thank you. Read~Verse Company Westminster, CA, USA Mahmoud Elsayess, president mahmoud.elsayess at readverse.com Cell (714) 376-4862 Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:melsayess at socal.rr.com Subject:Quran Database presentation at Stanford Conference I am sure you have noticed that I will be presenting our product at Stanford as seen below. "The Koran database", Mahmooud Elsayess (Read~Verse Company) And very soon, we will release Lesson Designer upgraded software that is really good and free. I am sure you would like the new lesson Designer! Thank you. Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:49 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:49 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Mustafa Mughazy Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Dear Colleagues, Does anyone know what al-Dajira means? There is an anthology of Andalusian Arabic literature from the end of the eleventh century by Ibn Bassam (d. 1147), from Santarem (Portugal), titled Al-Dajira. I would appreciate any help. Mustafa Mughazy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Wed Jul 18 18:06:52 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:06:52 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Online business terminology sources Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Wed 18 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Online terminology source 2) Subject:Business Arabic textbook -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:Martine P?trod Subject:Online terminology source Hi, Your might find this site useful - it is an on-line multilingual terminology base covering many domains. http://basm.kacst.edu.sa/Default.aspx Martine P?trod ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 18 Jul 2007 From:"raram" Subject:Business Arabic textbook Hello: I have developed two textbooks for Business Arabic: Business Arabic (Intermediate Level) accompanied by DVD and Interactive Multimedia Computer Program, Business Arabic (Advanced Level) Both textbooks can be ordered from the University of Michigan Distribution Center at this address: Client Distribution Services 1094 Flex Drive Jackson, TN 38301 Telephone: (800)343-4499 Fax: (800) 351-5073 Email : orderentry at cdbooks.com Raji Rammuny Professor of Arabic University of Michigan Department of Near Eastern Studies Ann Arbor, Mi 48104 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 18 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:36 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:36 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial First 2) Subject:Colloquial First -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"J" Subject:Colloquial First Dear Colleagues: I studied colloquial first at Georgetown U. in the late 60s: 2 semesters, 8 credits per semester. This was required of all Arabic majors. Then we did MSA and only MSA for the rest of the undergraduate program. My only regret is that there was not a second year of colloquial and that so much of the focus of so much of the MSA study (I eventually got a Ph.D.) was on i'raab, parsing sentences, and defending one's choice of case endings and mood markers -- and not on useful vocabulary and expressions and such. If I had it to do all over again I'd love to try the integrated approach used by Munther or the approach that Mustafa is planning. I especially like the idea of conversing in colloquial but reading and writing MSA. It irks me to be able to completely vowel an Arabic text more accurately than most Arabic native speakers but not to know how to say some simple thing in colloquial. And I might add, familiarity with colloquial is very helpful in MSA reading comprehension and for translation, which is my field, because regardless of what some people would like, real Arabs use regionalisms and colloquialisms all the time in their supposedly MSA texts. Glad I did colloquial first, -- Jackie Murgida ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"John Joseph Colangelo" Subject:Colloquial First I really have to apologize to Dil as well as the others for insisting on this question but my next question is for Prof. Munther Younes who I quote: "My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. I,as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma ssabti"? Then wouldn't it also be hilarious to watch the news on any Arabic television channel where fusha is used and not dialect? Thanks again, John Joseph Colangelo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:38 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:38 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New article and review Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New article and review -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:forwarded by Uri Horesh from LINGUIST Subject:New article and review Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:47:33 From: Matt Glidden < blackwellnews at bos.blackwellpublishing.net > Subject: Journal of Sociolinguistics Vol 11/ No 1 (2007) Publisher: Blackwell Publishing http://www.blackwellpublishing.com Journal Title: Journal of Sociolinguistics Volume Number: 11 Issue Number: 1 Issue Date: 2007 [...] BOOK REVIEWS [...] The Arabic Language and National Identity, Edited by Yasir Suleiman Lauren Wagner [...] Dialects Across Borders: Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002, Edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttil? Patricia Poussa [...] All available for free at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/josl/11/1 [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:40 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:40 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Suffolk Community College Job Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Suffolk Community College Job -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:barneta at sunysuffolk.edu Subject:Suffolk Community College Job We have extended the search for candidates for the Arabic position we announced in the Spring. Would you mind posting the position through ARABIC-L, please? Thank you very much. The text follows: Instructor/Assistant Professor of Modern Standard Arabic The Michael J. Grant Campus of Suffolk County Community College, located in Brentwood, Long Island, New York, seeks experienced Arabic language instructor for a full-time tenure track appointment beginning Fall 2007. Rank will be determined by qualifications and teaching experience. Masters degree in Arabic, Applied Linguistics or a related field required; doctorate preferred. Initial responsibilities will include course and curriculum development as well as participation in the development of the Institute for the Study of Critical Languages and Cultures. Subsequently, the successful candidate will be expected to teach two courses each semester in elementary and/or intermediate Arabic. Familiarity with a broad range of instructional materials and methodologies, including multimedia and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) resources is desirable. Native or near native competency in Arabic and excellent command of English are required. The exact salary will be determined by prior teaching experience and placement on the salary scale negotiated by the Faculty Association of SCCC. Applicants may apply online to Human Resources at www.sunysuffolk.edu (SCCC Reference 07-39). SCCC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educator. Andrew Barnette, Ph.D. College Associate Dean for ESL/Transitional Programs Suffolk County Community College Michael J. Grant Campus Crooked Hill Road Sagtikos Building Room S101B Brentwood, New York 11717-1092 Phone: (631) 851-6231 Fax: (631) 851-6347 Email: barneta at sunysuffolk.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:forwarded by "raram" Subject:Arabic Program Manager Job (Praxis Language Ltd.) From: steve.f.williams at gmail.com [mailto:steve.f.williams at gmail.com] Dear Dr. Rammuny, My name is Steve Williams and I am a language teacher by profession, as well as being a founder of Praxis Language Ltd. We are leaders in the innovation of language training, and run the successful ChinesePod.com and SpanishSense.com services. I am contacting you because I think we may be able to offer an opportunity to University of Michigan Middle Eastern Studies graduates. We are expanding, and will add Arabic to our portfolio, and so need to recruit an Arabic Program Manager. They should be a fluent Arabic-speaker with teaching experience, a strong understanding of Arabic linguistics, and a passion for teaching the language and for innovation in general. The successful candidate will lead all aspects of the service, and it will be a really exciting role. Do you think any of your recent Masters degree graduates would be suitable/interested in this position? I would greatly appreciate it if you forwarded my mail to anyone you think may be interested. Alternatively, could you introduce me to whoever is responsible for campus recruitment? Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Best Regards -- Steve Williams Co-Founder Praxis Language Ltd. 3rd Floor, Building 4 751 Huangpi Nan Road Shanghai, China 200025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:29:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:29:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 20 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira 2) Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira 2) Subject:Meaning of Al-Darija -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:"Katia Zakharia" Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Good evening. Dajira is merely dhakhiira written the way it may be pronounced in spanish and referring to Ibn Bassam's anthology al-Dhakhiira fii mahaasin ahl al-djaziira. KZ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:Farouk Mustafa Subject:Meaning of Al-Dajira Maybe you should think of it as al-Dhakhira. Hope this helps, Farouk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 20 Jul 2007 From:Zouheir Khalsi Subject:Meaning of Al-Darija Meaning of Al-Darija? Since I am Tunisian, here in Tunisia, the local variety of Arabic is often refered to as Darija. So Darija, as it is used in Tunisia, is the usual term for Tunisian Arabic. Zouheir khalsi ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 20 Jul 2007 From ruth_faris at HARVARD.EDU Fri Jul 20 22:48:03 2007 From: ruth_faris at HARVARD.EDU (Ruth Faris) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:48:03 -0400 Subject: Arabic-L:TRANS:Meaning of Al-Dajira Message-ID: I will be out of the office on Friday July 20th. Ruth Rashed Faris Human Resource Manager From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:46 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:46 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Books on Islam Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Books on Islam -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Global Media Pblications" Subject:Books on Islam **Shop online at our secure online bookstore: www.gmpublications.com. 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ISBN: 8126127368, Publisher:Anmol Publishers No. of Volumes: 30, 11896 pages Year of Publication: 2007 *http://www.gmpublications.com/product_info.php?products_id=18944 * * * * * * **To unsubscribe please send an e-mail to unsubscribe at gmpublications.com Please contact Global Media Publications J-51-A, 1st Floor, AFE, Jamia Nagar, Okhla, New Delhi-110025 India Tel: 91-11-55666830, 9818327757 E-mail: info at gmpublications.com Or shop online at our secure online bookshop www.gmpublications.com * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:55 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:55 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From: Subject:22nd Annual ALS Symposium at U of Maryland CFP Call for Papers The Arabic Linguistics Society and the University of Maryland announce the Twenty-Second Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics to be held at the University of Maryland, College Park. March 8-9, 2008 Papers are invited on topics that deal with theoretic and applied issues of Arabic Linguistics. Research in the following areas of Arabic linguistics is encouraged: grammatical analysis (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), applied linguistics, socio- linguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, etc. Persons interested in presenting papers are requested to submit a one- page abstract giving the title of the paper, a brief statement of the topic, and a summary clearly stating how the topic will be developed (the reasoning, data, or experimental results to be presented). Authors are requested to be as specific as possible in describing their topics. Print your name, affiliation and return e-mail address at the top of the e-mail. It will be removed before being forwarded to the review committee. Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail to Saleh Al-Nusairat at: nfli-arabic at umd.edu 2007 ALS membership dues of $25 and conference fees of $50 (total $75) are to be submitted with all abstracts and must be received by the abstract deadline. Membership dues are non-refundable; conference fees are refundable, if requested, only to those whose papers are not accepted. Deadline for Receipt of Abstracts: November 15, 2007 Abstracts questions to: Saleh Al-Nusairat E-Mail: nfli-arabic at umd.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:49 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:49 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Language Policy in Israel Conference Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Language Policy in Israel Conference -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:Language Policy in Israel Conference Full Title: Language Policy Research Center Short Title: LPRC Date: 30-Apr-2008 - 30-Apr-2008 Location: Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Contact Person: Miriam Shlesinger Meeting Email: shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il Web Site: http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics Call Deadline: 10-Feb-2008 Meeting Description: The Language Policy Research Center (Bar Ilan University, Israel) is holding a conference on research into language policy in Israel. Date: April 30 2008. Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 400 words): February 10 2008. For further details: Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il The Language Policy Research Center Faculty of Humanities Bar Ilan University Call for Papers Language Policy Research in Israel: the state of the art The Language Policy Research Center was established at Bar-Ilan University in order to conduct research in all aspects of language policy and related fields relevant to the development of language policy, including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, translation, interpreting, language planning and language teaching and assessment. Its areas of concern comprise both those aspects of language policy that are determined by official rulings and those that evolve over time, gaining ground as social norms. In particular, the Center aims at studying issues in language policy in Israel and promoting research in these areas. Towards this end, the LPRC will hold a conference dedicated to examining current directions in language policy in Israel. Date: April 30, 2008 Venue: Feldman Auditorium, Bar Ilan University Abstracts (maximum of 400 words) should be sent by February 10, 2008 to: Prof. Miriam Shlesinger Language Policy Research Center Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies Bar Ilan University Kort Building (1004), room 206 Ramat Gan, Israel 52900 shlesm at mail.biu.ac.il Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 25, 2008. The Scientific Committee: Dr. David Doron, Department of Arabic Prof. Joel Walters, Department of English Prof. Emeritus Bernard Spolsky, Department of English Prof. Roselyne Koren, Department of French Dr. Dovid Rier, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Prof. Ora R. Schwarzwald, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Tue Jul 24 14:40:43 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:40:43 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial in the Curriculum Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Tue 24 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 2) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 3) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 4) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 5) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 6) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:Karin Ryding Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum First of all, thanks to all for the wide-ranging discussion on colloquial Arabic in the curriculum. It has been very interesting and timely, and I would just like to add my two cents. As we all know, written and spoken Arabic are closely interwoven components of any Arabic speech community. In order to progress to teaching advanced communicative competence in Arabic, Arabic teachers and scholars need to come to terms with authentic forms of Arabic primary discourse and acknowledge that for teaching non-native speakers of Arabic, we need the training and the scholarly resources to help students learn everyday spoken Arabic as well as academic/ written Arabic. There is a vital need to develop a range of testable curricular models (formulas, templates, paradigms, schemata) to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each, to provide data and feedback for analysis, and to judge effectiveness in all four skills. Right now there are only a few curriculum models that incorporate significant amounts of spoken Arabic (such as the programs at BYU, Cornell, and Western Michigan), but these provide significant options to the MSA-only curriculum. Programs such as those that use Educated Spoken Arabic/Formal Spoken Arabic for teaching communicative skills are also important experiments whose materials, methods, and results need to be much more visible to the field in general. There is not one single answer to the issue of effective language programs, methods, and materials. The Arabic field is enriched by those who undertake careful, closely-monitored, and documented experimentation with the nature, amount, and calibration of authentic spoken and written Arabic in both educational and government training institutions. The most important thing for non-native Arabic learners is to introduce interactive spoken skills early on in any curriculum, and not to ignore them. Leaving crucial everyday communicative skills outside the curriculum unnecessarily handicaps and discourages our younger students who are learning Arabic in order live, study, and work in the Arab world and to be able to hold and understand sensible and creative conversations with Arab friends, acquaintances and everyday contacts in a wide range of situations. From what I have seen in the discussion on Arabic-L, there is some sense that spoken Arabic vernaculars are ?simpler? or ?less complex? than fusha. And I know that some individuals believe that teaching spoken Arabic is neither a challenging nor stimulating intellectual task because its structure and vocabulary are more elementary. But I think the opposite. Although it may be true that the colloquials have fewer inflectional categories than fusha, they are by no means simple. Think of the complexities of the Egyptian negation system, for example. Also, and most importantly, when viewed from a sociolinguistic perspective, the interactional dynamics and the range of discourse norms, functions, formulas, options, strategies, and taboos is highly sophisticated and complex, even within a single speech community. I therefore think the earlier the exposure to spoken Arabic, the better. There is a great deal to learn, not so much in terms of traditional grammatical categories perhaps, but in terms of interactive strategies, creation of meaning, conversation protocols, and narrative skills. Our students are certainly up to the challenge, but are we prepared to venture into this discourse world? Thanks, Karin Ryding ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:Klaus Lagally Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Hello all, I have been following this discussion for some time, and as I have to admit, with no little consternation. Let me add some personal experience. In Germany, generally the 'higher classes' speak and write High German, the official language, which has a strict formal grammar and is taught at all schools, even in classes for foreigners, exclusively. They will also understand, and to some extent, also speak, the local dialect. There are several dialects, some of them rather different from High German and from each other, and they generally cannot be written except phonetically; that usually looks awkward and ridiculous. Contrary to common belief the dialects also have a strict grammar each, but it is generally only known to linguists. People from the rural areas, and also members of the 'lower classes' (there is no strict separation!) will generally use the local dialect, even at school, except in formal language classes, or whenever something has to be written down. The teachers are supposed to use High German only, but will tolerate the students using colloquial language whenever sufficient for the purpose. I was born and brought up in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, in the south of Germany. My parents spoke High German exclusively, and so as I got into Primary school, in a rural area, I had some problems at the outset as nearly all the other students spoke only colloquial which additionally was somewhat different from the dialect used in Munich. I could not understand everything, and my language was considered funny, but the problem went away after a few weeks when I found out a few simple empirical rules how to translate a term in High German into colloquial, and vice versa. At that stage, when just entering school, the differences in grammar just did not matter. Later on my command of High German and of the dialect improved in parallel, and it was easy to use both, even after switching to other schools in different regions of Germany where the local dialect was quite different. There never was a problem of confusing the language levels, and I only mix them up sometimes for fun, or when conversing privately with my wife :-) As to Arabic: when I went to an evening class on Arabic (this was the only possibility at that time within reach, except travelling weekly to the next available university, one hour away), the class was designed for tourists who wanted to go to Egypt, and thus concentrated only on Colloquial. However, myself and a few other participants were also interested in Fusha, and the teacher gladly complied, and taught both language levels in parallel; it seems that he liked that, and it was definitely fun! As to the informal translation rules: these are not taught formally anywhere as far as I know, but I found them easy to find and easy to use, if you will tolerate occasional errors. As a surprising example: I studied Latin rather thoroughly at school, and this payed off: I am usually able, using some educated guesses and wild hypotheses, to read newspapers in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (I never tried Roumanian) without ever studying these languages in detail. They are all derived from (colloquial) Latin; and whereas some pronunciation has drastically changed, and the grammar has been changed and simplified, they are still fairly easy to manage, if you are content with getting the general idea. Of course the vocabulary has expanded greatly so you sometimes will need a dictionary if you insist on an exact translation; but most of the time you will guess the idea correctly. Of course, trying to speak the language in this experimental way might lead to surprises, and laughter. I am not quite sure if these observations are relevant to your problem; but judging from my own experience I definitely should, whenever I plan to teach two related languages (suchas Fusha and some Colloquial) or, e.g. Latin and Spanish), teach them in parallel, pointing out the common features and the differences. Of course this needs dedicated and willing students, at least at college level; but learning two languages need not take twice the effort if they are related, and may even be fun. But enough of speculation. Somehow this discussion reminds me of an old joke, about the difference between Pedagogics and Medicine: In Medicine there are three stages of a case: Anamnesis, Diagnosis, and Therapy. In Pedagogics it is just the other way round. What about just trying out the ideas, and looking at the result? Peace Klaus -- Prof. Dr. Klaus Lagally | mailto:lagally at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Institut fuer Formale | http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ ... Methoden der Informatik| ... fmi/bs/people/lagally.htm Abteilung Betriebsoftware| Tel. +49-711-7816392 |Zeige mir deine Uhr, Universitaetsstrasse 38 | FAX +49-711-7816370 | und ich sage dir, 70569 Stuttgart, GERMANY | | wie spaet es ist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 3) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"khorshid" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Dear colleague, I have three observations on the colloquial-first discussion: FIRST OBSERVATION: I?m afraid that concentrating on the approach may distract our attention from another more important factor; namely, the shameful lack of teaching material. If you follow the "right" approach without the backing of suitable teaching material, the results will not be up to our aspiration. Look at the commonly used textbook and compare them to a basic check list of what a good textbook is!! By teaching material I don?t mean the main textbook only. Rather, there should be a wide range of other material. When I taught English, my problem was choosing from a wide variety of available good material. Now, can we take collective action to remedy this crippling shortage? SECOND OBSERVATION: If Mostafa wants to experiment with the colloquial-first approach again, what is the difference between this and previous experiments with the same approach elsewhere? How long will your experiment last? One semester? Four? If you have the courage to challengen the prevailing approaches, I recommend that your experiment be extended for as long as possible so that the results could be more conclusive. How much colloquial can you learn in one semester in the States anyway?! THIRD OBSERVATION: "al-qird fii aini ummihi ghazaal". Who is going to evaluate this and other existing programs? Certainly not the ones undertaking them. If you evaluate your own program positively, this doesn?t necessarily mean it?s good, or bad. It may just mean you are used to it, or you have been doing it for long. Can there be a collective effort to evaluate different programs by neutral people and report the findings to the whole profession? Who can lead this collective effort for the good of the profession? salaam wa tahiyya. Ahmad Khorshid Arabic Language Instructor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 4) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From: Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum In response to Mr. Colangelo's question (below), no, it wouldn't be "hilarious to watch the news on any Arabic television channel where fusha is used. The reason is that Fusha has been accepted by the Arabs as the language of news broadcasts (and scripted speech in general), but it has not been accepted as a means of ordinary conversation. On the other hand, most Arabs would find a formal news bulletin in the colloquial quite hilarious or at least very odd. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 5) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Tressy Arts" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum First of all, let me introduce myself: I am a Dutch Arabist currently finishing an MA at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, specialization linguistics. I have been a contributor to the first Dutch-Arabic/Arabic Dutch dictionaries, coordinated by Jan Hoogland and published by Bulaaq, Amsterdam; and lexicography is my passion. I am writing a thesis on the "matrice-?tymon-racine"-theories of Georges Bohas, under supervision of professor C. Versteegh, and work part-time as a teacher of Arabic and the Egyptian colloquial to adults. I am glad to be a part of this list, and have read many interesting posts already. The comment quoted here made me think: > > "My observations of instructors in other programs, where MSA is used > for conversation, is that teachers are more comfortable speaking > English than Arabic with their students. This is only natural, > because English is a naturally spoken language, while MSA is not. > I,as an Arab, find it silly and completely unnatural to ask my > students in Fusha about what they did over the weekend. I think > that my colleagues who are native speakers of Arabic would agree > with me that it is more natural to ask a student "ween ruHt yoom > issabt" and "Where did you go Saturday" than "?ayna dhahabta yawma > ssabti"? > Prof. Munther Younes states here that English and colloquial Arabic are "naturally spoken languages", and MSA is not, and therefore it feels unnatural to him to speak MSA with his students. I can see where you are coming from, I feel slightly odd when I teach my students to say "haat li burtuqaalatan min faDlika", but I wonder where this distinction originates: is it intrinsic in the languages, or is it caused by the fact that one never hears anyone speak MSA as a native language? If it is the second, could one not learn MSA as a "second language" the same way as I learned English, and become quite proficient in it, so that it becomes nearly natural to speak it? Or is it necessary to hear it spoken as a natural language for anyone to be comfortably using it in daily life? Would a group of children raised in standard Arabic feel and use it as a natural language, or are there elements in MSA that are foreign to natural languages? I hope I have expressed myself correctly, I think this an interesting question raised and would be delighted to read all your views on this. Sincere regards, Tressy Arts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 6) Date: 24 Jul 2007 From:"Schub, Michael B." Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum touche. m ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 24 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:02 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:02 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From: "Mahmoud Elsayess" Subject:Allowing Alternative Spellings for Input Greetings, Currently, visitor must type the search augment as it is written in the Koran, when I gave a demonstration at Stanford last week, a suggestion was made to allow visitors type a word the way they want and that may not be the same as in the Koran. However, the result will be the correct format. Norm1 Norm2 ???????????? ??????? With or without Hamza _ Norm1 Norm2 ?????? ???? With ? or ? Norm1 Norm2 ???? ???? With Mada And witout Mada From your experience, what are other common typing errors you experienced with your students? Your help is greatly appreciated. Peace, California, USA Mahmoud Elsayess ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:11 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:11 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New Articles Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New Articles -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:reposted from LINGUIST Subject:New Articles Journal Title: Language & Intercultural Communication Volume Number: 7 Issue Number: 2 Issue Date: 2007 Subtitle: Intercultural Approaches to the Integration of Migrating Minorities Recent History of the Maghreb: A Sociological Approach Ana Isabel Planet Contreras The Mudawwana and Koranic Law from a Gender Perspective. The Substantial Changes in the Moroccan Family Code of 2004 Yolanda Aixel? Cabr? East Meets West: Cultural Confrontation and Exchange after the First Crusade Dana Florean ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:09 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:09 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Desktop Suite Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Desktop Suite -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Dora Johnson" Subject:Arabic Desktop Suite This came from a newsletter that focuses on translation and interpretation. I have no idea how good it is. Perhaps more technologically oriented folk on this list could try it out and let us know! Basis Technology Corp., a provider of software solutions for multilingual text mining and information retrieval applications, has released Arabic Desktop Suite, a trio of productivity applications for Microsoft Windows. This suite enables translators, report writers and intelligence analysts to translate foreign names from Arabic and Persian into the Latin alphabet. It also includes applications for locating Middle Eastern place names against maps and for typing Arabic with an ordinary English keyboard. Basis Technology Corp., E-mail: info at basistech.com, Web: http://www.basistech.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:00 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:00 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:Question about ALS symposium Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Question about ALS symposium -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:Uri Horesh Subject:Question about ALS symposium Could one of the ALS organizers please inform us where dues are to be sent? The call for papers only mentions an e-mail address, but I presume a physical address is available for checks to be mailed to. Thanks, Uri -- Uri Horesh Lecturer of Arabic Department of Middle Eastern Studies The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, F9400 Austin, TX 78712-0527 Tel : 512-475-6644 Cell: 267-475-5594 Fax : 512-471-7834 urih at mail.utexas.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:20:58 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:20:58 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:AD:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:summersale at gerlach-books.de Subject:Gerlach Sale on single copies in stock Of these 19 Brill titles we have got one copy each left in our stock. Benefit from our Summer Offer and order your copy with 30% or more special discount today. If you order 3 or more books you will be granted an additional 10% discount. Please note the following conditions of this offer: - Offer valid until 3 August only - Prepayment by credit card is required - Prices include surface mail delivery (airmail on request) - European VAT added if applicable - Limited stock only, sold on first come first serve basis Looking forward to your order. Best regards from Berlin, Kai Gerlach (1) This title is out of print ! Arab Dress. A Short History by Stillman, Y. K.; Stillman, N. ISBN: 9004113738 Publication date: 2000 Price: EUR 120 (2) One copy in stock Women in the Ottoman Empire. Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era by Zilfi, M.C. (ed.) ISBN: 9004108041 Publication date: 1997 Regular: EUR 132 Now: EUR 92 (3) One copy in stock Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914. A Muslim Town in Transition by Yazbak, M. ISBN: 9004110518 Publication date: 1998 Regular: EUR 132 Now: EUR 92 (4) One copy in stock Civil Society in the Middle East - 2 volumes by Norton, A.R. (ed.) ISBN: 9004101756 Publication date: 1995 Regular: EUR 250 Now: EUR 170 (5) One copy in stock Legal Pluralism in the Arab World by Dupret, B.; Berger, M.; al-Zwaini, L. (eds.) ISBN: 9041111050 Publication date: 1999 Regular: EUR 134 Now: EUR 94 (6) One copy in stock The Sudan of the Three Niles. The Funj Chronicle 910-1288/1504-1871 by Holt, P.M. ISBN: 9004112561 Publication date: 1999 Regular: EUR 98 Now: EUR 65 (7) One copy in stock The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem by Cohen, Amnon ISBN: 9004119183 Publication date: 2001 Regular: EUR 106 Now: EUR 70 (8) One copy in stock Kordofan Invaded. Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa by Kevane, Michael; Stiansen, Endre ISBN: 9004110496 Publication date: 1998 Regular: EUR 119 Now: EUR 80 (9) One copy in stock Saladin in Egypt by Lev, Yaacov ISBN: 9004112219 Publication date: 1999 Regular: EUR 102 Now: EUR 70 (10) One copy in stock Taste of Modernity. Sufism and Salafiyya in Late Ottoman Damascus by Weismann, Itzchak ISBN: 9004119086 Publication date: 2000 Regular: EUR 134 Now: EUR 94 (11) One copy in stock Egypt and Its Laws by Bernard-Maugiron, N.; Dupret, B. ISBN: 9041116397 Publication date: 2002 Regular: EUR 156 Now: EUR 106 (12) One copy in stock Muslims in the Enlarged Europe. Religion and Society by Mar?chal, B.; Allievi, S. et al. (eds) ISBN: 9004132015 Publication date: 2003 Regular: EUR 164 Now: EUR 114 (13) One copy in stock Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire. Rival Paths to the Modern State by Salzmann, Ariel ISBN: 9004108874 Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 93 Now: EUR 63 (14) One copy in stock Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages by Gil, M. ISBN: 900413882X Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 228 Now: EUR 155 (15) One copy in stock Constructive Critics, Hadith Literature, and the Articulation of Sunni Islam by Lucas, Scott C. ISBN: 9004133194 Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 153 Now: EUR 100 (16) One copy in stock Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi. A Study of Neo-Mahdism in the Sudan, 1899-1956 by Ibrahim, Hassan A. ISBN: 9004138544 Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 99 Now: EUR 69 (17) One copy in stock Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies 1900-1950 by Gunter, Ann; Hauser, Stefan (eds.) ISBN: 9004141537 Publication date: 2005 Regular: EUR 109 Now: EUR 75 (18) One copy in stock Revolutionary Sudan. Hasan al-Turabi and the Islamist State 1989-2000 by Burr, J. Millard; Collins, Robert O. ISBN: 9004131965 Publication date: 2003 Regular: EUR 119 Now EUR 80 (19) One copy in stock Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul. Fluidity and Leverage by Yi, Eunjeong ISBN: 9004129448 Publication date: 2004 Regular: EUR 94 Now: EUR 64 ********************************************m* KAI-HENNING GERLACH - BOOKS & ONLINE Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies D-10711 Berlin, Germany Heilbronner Stra?e 10 Telefon +49 30 3249441 Telefax +49 30 3235667 e-mail khg at gerlach-books.de www.gerlach-books.de USt/VAT No. DE 185 061 373 Verkehrs-Nr. 24795 (BAG) EAN 4330931247950 ******************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:13 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:13 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:LING:New LDC resources Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:New LDC resources -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:ldc at ldc.upenn.edu Subject:New LDC resources (2) GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text - Part 1 is the first part of the three-part GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text, which, along with other corpora, was used as training data in year 1 (Phase 1) of the DARPA-funded GALE program. This corpus contains transcripts and English translations of 17 hours of Arabic broadcast news programming selected from a variety of sources. A manual selection procedure was used to choose data appropriate for the GALE program, namely, news and conversation programs focusing on current events. Stories on topics such as sports, entertainment news, and stock market reports were excluded from the data set. The selected audio snippets were then carefully transcribed by LDC annotators and professional transcription agencies following LDC's Quick Rich Transcription specification. Manual sentence units/ segments (SU) annotation was also performed as part of the transcription task. Three types of end of sentence SU are identified: statement SU question SU incomplete SU After transcription and SU annotation, the files were reformatted into a human-readable translation format and were then assigned to professional translators for careful translation. Translators followed LDC's GALE translation guidelines, which describe the makeup of the translation team, the source data format, the translation data format, best practices for translating certain linguistic features (such as names and speech disfluencies), and quality control procedures applied to completed translations. All final data are in Tab Delimited Format (TDF). TDF is compatible with other transcription formats, such as the Transcriber format and AG format, and it is easy to process. Each line of a TDF file corresponds to a speech segment and contains 13 tab delimited fields. The source TDF file and its translation are the same except that the transcript in the source TDF is replaced by its English translation. GALE Phase 1 Arabic Broadcast News Parallel Text - Part 1 is distributed via web download. 2007 Subscription Members will automatically receive two copies of this corpus. 2007 Standard Members may request a copy as part of their 16 free membership corpora. Nonmembers may license this data for US$1500. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:08 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:08 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:GEN:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Dora Johnson" Subject:Arabic Search Engine Workshop in Qatar CMU hosted workshop to motivate Arabic language technology Information technology researchers and executives from around the Middle East participated in an "Arabic Search Engine Workshop" hosted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Qatar, on June 17-18, 2007. The meeting mainly focused on ways Qatar could become a commercial and research center for the advancement of Arabic language technologies. CMU has expressed an interest in teaming with academic and business groups in the area to develop regional expertise in language technology. Its faculty and students would be made available to provide scientific and technological support for web search and Arabic<>English machine translation. Participating organizations in the workshop included CMU, Qatar University, ictQatar, iHorizons, Microsoft Egypt, Qatar Foundation, Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar Science & Technology Park and Qatar Capital Partners. Carnegie Mellon University, Web: http://www.cmu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007 From dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU Fri Jul 27 19:21:04 2007 From: dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU (Dilworth Parkinson) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:21:04 -0600 Subject: Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial in the Curriculum Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum 2) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:Munther Younes Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum Ms. Tressy Arts asks if one: "could not learn MSA as a "second language" the same way as I learned English, and become quite proficient in it, so that it becomes nearly natural to speak it? Or is it necessary to hear it spoken as a natural language for anyone to be comfortably using it in daily life? Would a group of children raised in standard Arabic feel and use it as a natural language, or are there elements in MSA that are foreign to natural languages?" These are interesting questions, and I am not sure they can be answered in a satisfactory manner. However, it seems to me that an essential characteristic of a natural language is that it is used for ordinary conversation by a speech community. An experiment in which children are raised speaking MSA would not be easy to complete for a variety of practical reasons, and stories of parents trying to raise their children speaking MSA suggest that the practice generally ends in failure. The evidence available strongly suggests that MSA (or Classical Arabic or Fusha) as we know it now and as we know it from the old books (with cases and moods and other features which are unique to it) was never the language of daily conversation for any speech community in the history of the Arabic language. In spite of this, attempts at imposing this variety of the language on Arabic speakers continue unabated amid accusations that it is lack of patriotism or intelligence or both that are responsible for their failure to master it. Munther Younes Cornell University ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- 2) Date: 27 Jul 2007 From:"Ola Moshref" Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum salaam I remember one day some colleagues at one of the institutions I worked at argued fiercely about whether this word or that would be classified as colloquial or fusha. Even with an indisputable word like /haadha/, how many times do natives use it in ordinary speech? There is no clear cut answer. It depends on the speaker and the context. Whole standard sentences can suddenly be uttered by a native Arab amid the flow of colloquial speech. How are you going to teach that? How will the learner who spends years learning colloquial alone or fusha alone follow up this very "natural" native Arabic discourse? Regarding the "unnaturalness" of speaking MSA in class, I think I disagree. As an instructor, I do not feel unnatural, because the purpose is to sow a foreign language into the learner's soil, and speaking, even if it is not "natural" is highly necessary for internalizing a foreign language and learning how to read and write it. When you plant, you do not only rely on natural watering and sunlight, you manipulate all sorts of man made illumination, irrigation and fertilizers! Why not think along the "third language" notion advocated by late Tawfiq al-Hakim raHimahu Allah? It is said that art is not to mimic real life, but is a reformulation of it. Why should language instruction and learning mimic first language acquisition? Learners are not natives who heard all varieties of the target language while they were still embryos! The players are different and the setting is different. And language learning is one of the creative "arts". Ola Moshref TA- Linguistics UIUC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 2007