Show HN: Learn Arabic with spaced repetition and comprehensible input

[adangit]

Sharing a friends first-ever Rails application, dedicated to Arabic learning, from 0 to 1. Pulls language learning methods from Anki, comprehensible input and more.

[gramie]

For a different method of learning Arabic (or several other languages), check out https://www.languagetransfer.org. It teaches Egyptian Arabic, explaining that the entire region knows this dialect because Egypt is the TV and movie hub of the Arabic world.

It's all audio (MP3s or streaming) and completely free, and (IMHO) the best language learning system out there. I have used it to learn Spanish, my sixth language and can't recommend it highly enough.

[eddythompson80]

> explaining that the entire region knows this dialect because Egypt is the TV and movie hub of the Arabic world.

I suspect this is actively changing and in another generation or so won’t be true. All major TV, movies and music production has migrated to the Arab oil states since the late 2000s and accelerated in the 2010s. Today all major media production companies are based in the Gulf states.

[tremarley]

Same here. Language Transfer helped me pick up so many languages in a short time easily.

Far better than every other tool I’ve tried from Duolingo, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone etc.

[sudo_cowsay]

You got me started on learning Spanish there. So far so good.

[confidantlake]

Kind of crazy that it has Swahili but not Portuguese.

[bloak]

I listened to the start of the Swahili course and it mentions that Swahili was the first one to be "commissioned", which I understand to mean that someone asked for it and paid for it specifically. It also said there was information about commissioning on the web site, but I couldn't find it. So it's a bit mysterious.

Commissioning a language course might be spare change for some government agency but I don't know whether they're allowed to spend money that way. They might be forced to put it out to tender and prefer domestic bidders or something like that.

[tremarley]

I remember that somebody made a Language Transfer Portuguese course, but it was heavily criticised and never relaunched

[george916a]

Not crazy at all. Swahili is the Lingua Franca of Africa.

[qarthandyc]

It doesn't make any sound when I click the speaker icon. What's wrong with this?

[AbjadPro]

Hi, I'm the developer of AbjadPro. Can you tell me what browser and OS you're using? Feel free to email me at [e-mail] with any other issues. Thank you!

[xeromal]

Arabic language learning resources are few and far between. Thank you for building this. Do you know which Arabic this teaches? Koranic? Modern Standard? Levantine? Gulf?

[AbjadPro]

It teaches all types of Arabic. The stories are written in Modern Standard Arabic, and videos are categorized by dialect.

[eddythompson80]

At least the videos sound Levantine

[xeromal]

I was unable to listen because I'm at the airport but I was really curious. Thank you!

[gnabgib]

This should just be a normal post, if you didn't make it, it can't be a Show HN

> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

[cess11]

Are the vocalisations of the letters synthetic?

Edit: If I wasn't acquainted with arabic script I'd probably not be able to make out the difference in vocalisation between some letters.

[AbjadPro]

I used Artlist/ElevenLabs for the audio. I'm hoping to replace the audio with recordings by native speakers later this year.

[Raed667]

Saw a couple of words that (as far as I know) aren't "modern standard Arabic" is there any bias towards a dialect or another?

[AbjadPro]

The stories are written in Standard Arabic and the videos are categorized by dialect. If you see any errors, please click on the "Report an error" button to send an email, or email me directly at [e-mail]. Thanks!

[junaid_97]

Nice work.

As others mentioned, I couldn't hear the sound.

There is a dire need for a good quality arabic learning app.

[AbjadPro]

Hi, can you tell me on which page you can't hear the sound, and which browser and OS you're using? I'll look into it. Feel free to email me about errors at [e-mail]. Thanks!

[AFF87]

Thoughts about a one time payment only? Shouldn't we move away from yet another subscription?

[AbjadPro]

Good idea. I'll definitely consider adding a one-time payment option once the website is more robust.

[lotusw0w]

Need more users to offset server cost