Tuesday, 26 Sept 2023

Assalamualaikum. I just got the results from the poll, and it's not helpful at all. But thank you so much for voting. The result is 50-50. What should I do now? Learn it right after I finish with French? Since it's 50-50, it doesn't really help with my decision-making at all. But yeah, thank you so much, regardless, for voting.

I remember I had a similar poll a few years ago, maybe two years ago, asking the same question. That was during the pandemic, and it was also split, like it was tied between the two options if I'm not mistaken. But at the time, I went ahead with learning Arabic regardless. But for now, I think I'm leaning towards the second option (kinda), where I will probably take both options. In the sense that I will continue learning French, and I will start learning Arabic. But not in the conventional way, because I have learned Arabic in the conventional way before. I mean, it depends on the goal, because before this, my goal was to understand the Quran even more, blah, blah, blah. But, deep down, I really wanted to be able to speak the language, which, based on that metric, I have failed. But based on understanding more about the Quran, yes, I think I have successfully managed a little bit in this. There was an improvement compared to when I didn't know much about Arabic. I learned Arabic when I was in primary school, so I can't even think of a time when I didn't know anything about the Arabic language.

So at least for now, I think I will. I have told this to one of my language partners. I told him about this plan. Well, two of them, actually. Both are Arabic speakers. I've told them that I will pretty much just go ahead with learning Arabic. But not so that I can speak the language, I would just learn Quranic Arabic instead. I've kind of started that for a few months now. So, what does that entail? It means I would just learn words that come up in the Quran. I would say it's pretty much a Quranic study, not exactly Arabic, but it is technically Arabic, that's one.

So yeah, so in a sense, my Arabic language learning journey is going to be focused towards that area of study, and hopefully after I have become more comfortable with... Well, I don't think I would ever be comfortable with it, but maybe that would spark some sort of interest to further my... to nudge me into trying to speak the language, which is another problem because there are so many dialects. But I'm leaning towards either Egyptian because there are so many Egyptian-oriented entertainments like Egyptian Arabic-oriented entertainment, or I can learn the Levantine dialect used in Jordan, the Palestinian area, I would say that dialect specifically. I can safely say that I wouldn't pursue Moroccan or Algerian Arabic. Because why would I? It's like you wanting to learn Spanish and choosing the Chilean dialect as a way for you to speak Spanish, which is like... why? It's like pretty much like the Moroccan dialect in the Arabic language. Like nobody can understand that, sorry, Diego.

So yeah, so that's my focus for now. I don't know when I will start it. Hopefully soon because I think I have... No, because I have so many things to focus on, sorry, and... Yeah, this is longer than I expected. So anyway, thank you so much for voting. I appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully that helps, and I'm going to have a pain... In editing this video, so bye. Assalamualaikum.

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