Gouda's Cheesewheel

Hurray for Arabic!

Next semester I will be taking Modern Standard Arabic to supplement the bit I learned in Morocco. Granted, I'm not getting any credit for it since I can't actually enroll (I have a conflicting class twice a week) but this might be my last chance to take the class, so I decided to take advantage of it. In preparation I thought it might be nice to brush up with a "Learn Arabic" CD I found for a good price. It's made by the same company from which I am currently using the "Learn Russian" CD, and I like their method, so I went ahead and ordered it. I was so excited to see it in the mailbox that I popped it into my computer and did 2 or 3 exercises before realizing that it wasn't Modern Standard Arabic at all, but some kind of local dialect. The problem is that it didn't indicate anywhere on the packaging that it belonged to a particular region. I can only assume it is Egyptian, since the company also makes an Egyptian Arabic course; plus, some of the colloqialisms are close enough to Moroccan Arabic that it could conceivably be North African. In any case I emailed the manufacturer and asked them if there was a way ot exchange it. They were so nice about it that they're sending me a free copy of the Modern Standard discs, so now I will have both should I ever need to learn Egyptian. They say it was sent out yesterday (I think from England? I can't tell) so it should be here in a few weeks at the latest...I just hope it arrives before I leave the country.

posted by Greta @ 3:31 PM