Buying books

Originally Posted by Benjamin R. Shedlock

ISBN for Muhammad=0-19-287605-8
I'm assuming that's the Michael Cook one, yes?
Just make sure that's the right edition (I think there's only one). Good class, btw. I took it last year and really enjoyed it. Great professor, too. Just make sure you write very detailed papers. Are you thinking of minoring or majoring in middle eastern studies?

Yes! Thanks.

Nope, it's to fill the religion requirement. (Then again, who knows, because I don't have a clue about majors anymore.) I thought it sounded really interesting, and it'll make me one less "ignorant American", haha.

What kind of details? As in, no sweeping generalizations or statements that aren't backed up?

Originally Posted by Jackie DiLorenzo

What kind of details? As in, no sweeping generalizations or statements that aren't backed up?

To some extent, you'll have to feel that out for yourself. But for what it's worth, if you feel like you're half-assing one of his papers, you'll get a grade that reflects that. THis class was my first foray into college writing, and a paper that would have gotten me an A in high school got me a B-...... Don't worry about it, just don't finish the paper at 5 AM like I did, having only started it that night ;-)

Does anyone have any idea what this means? PSYCHOLOGY W/PSYCHXL & SG PK

I found Psychology, by Ciccarelli, but what is "W/PSYCHXL & SG PK"? I don't want to buy the book elsewhere if it turns out I needed some kind of full package...

Yeah, you'll love him. He's an excellent professor and a genuinely nice person. Are you going to take arabic or hebrew for the lang. requirement?

arabic arabic! take arabic!!

*goes back into her linguistic hole*

same thing happened to me with greek [learned enough to read signs while in athens, but i'll be damned it i remember much now] and phonetics [which might as well be a different language]. trying to learn the alphabet just as an alphabet and not a part of the language itself is damn hard. when i started teaching myself sanskrit back in ninth grade, it took me WEEKS to even get a basic foothold on the letters. then when i started teaching myself hindi last year, i learned the alphabet AND the language together, and i was spelling with ease in four days. no joke. once you have sentences to spell out and grammar to learn, you will start to recognize what characters/strokes are used more often than others [much like someone learning to write in english realizes very quickly that "e" is used a LOT more often than, say, "x"] and they will start to imprint themselves in your mind. so keep trying, because it can only help, but just know that once you start actually delving into the meat of the language, you'll start to get it much more quickly

Don't even worry about the sounds. Things like ا ب ت ج م ل are pretty straightforward sounds, but you won't get ghayn (غ) or ayn (ع) until you've been practicing for a while, so don't bother. Even just knowing the letters and how to form them is a couple weeks' worth of a jump. Everything you do is extra, and it will get reinforced in class. It gets easier. It's an orderly language. And the letters are not as exact as the books make you think. A little bowl shape with a dot somewhere in the general vicinity is as accurate as you need to be.

And Dia, you just want more people to play with. You and your ulterior motives...

Originally Posted by Marnie Valdivia

wow thanks you guys are the best haha so after making it through the intermediate Arabic courses too will i actually be able to speak and understand Arabic? i plan on spending a lot of time in the Middle East in the future so it's going to be really important.. also i plan on continuing with Spanish in the spring (i'm just about fluent so i don't think it will screw me up) but should i start another language before i'm done with Arabic or is it easy to get confused?

Don't make any firm plans either way. See what works for you and do what you want to do.

As for ability to speak and understand, I"ve only taken one semester and other people have taken more, so I'm not the best person to know that. However, it really does return what you put into it, so the more you focus on it, the better you'll be.

Originally Posted by Marnie Valdivia

wow thanks you guys are the best haha so after making it through the intermediate Arabic courses too will i actually be able to speak and understand Arabic? i plan on spending a lot of time in the Middle East in the future so it's going to be really important.. also i plan on continuing with Spanish in the spring (i'm just about fluent so i don't think it will screw me up) but should i start another language before i'm done with Arabic or is it easy to get confused?

honestly? spanish and arabic will be no problem because they're so different [one's indo-european the other is semitic]. if you decide to take a third language, try something from another family, like chinese or japanese. if you decided to take, say, spanish and italian at the same time, while a lot of the grammar might be familiar, the vocabulary is SO similar that you'd probably be more confused than if you had taken something absurd like quechuan or whatever, haha. it really depends on you. i'm taking spanish and hindi now, and next semester will be taking telegu, and the semester after will start arabic. take it at your own pace.

but ben's right - you get what you put into it. if you want to be able to speak fluent arabic, get a tutor, put in the extra work, and do it yourself. just taking classes won't magically transform you into a fluent speaker