How my journey began

العربية بين يديك (Arabic at your hands)

In september of 2024 I randomly started learning Arabic with a book called العربية بين يديك (transliterated 'Al Aarabiya Bayna Yadaik') in its PDF version. I thought this was such a crazy and funny thing at once and as it is or was considered quite a hard language I was itching to learn it. Also I had set myself the goal to achieve fluency without spending any money. I was very excited because I thought, as it was written in this book's instructions that in a certain amount of time you will be able to speak it and all the usual bla bla. So I sat myself dwon everyday and spent around 2-4 hours everyday learning Arabic with this book, having the PDF file opened up on my laptop, a GoogleTranslate tab open to the side and listeneing, reading, answering questions, speaking to myself. That went on for about 2,5 months, up until I was moving with my family to a new place where I didn't have the time to spend on learning Arabic, even though, to be true, I still had the motivation, so I did some lessons and chapters here and there. Also I had started watching videos in Arabic, of course I didn't understand anything but I just did. Sometimes it was frustrating but at least some words I recognised. Of course they weren't that much and I often felt kind of stuck. I would find myself thinking about what the most effective and efficient way of learning a new language, especially one that is as hard as Arabic (supposedly). I never really came to a conclusion. Some people were saying this, some other that, I still remember when I went to sleep one night, thinking as hard as I could, trying to connect the dots and figuring out what the ultimate solution was and I woke up the next morning and still had the words of someone in my mind saying "Just read and listen and you're going to acquire a certain language in the long run" as well as "Just learn vocabulary" or "You have to speak from the beginning on". The problem was just that it was made as a teaching book but I had no teacher nor had I interest in getting one and it was all in Arabic which made it kind of hard but still it was fun discovering all the translations and repeated translations (where I felt like I had learned tomething and I made at least some progress.) Also a problem of being a teaching book mainly intended for students of the Qur'an was that there were no explicit grammar explanations in text form whatsoever. Because in reality the teacher is probably meant to explain it all I always had to assume what the core point/pattern was that was meant to be taught by these examples. In general I would recommend that book as a starting measure and the slow start as it never really made me feel under pressure (which you never should, it should come from your motivation, from inside, not from the outside!) but to be transparent, there are first off better methods and faster methods to introduce you to Arabic or any foreign language.

Then, after roundabout 3 months or so (summed up learning time) the book came to and end. And when I was looking at the 2nd book I was negatively surprised how much the concept had changed and that the Islamic influence (which of course is to be expected to some extend in the world of the Arabic language) was really coming through. I mean, no wonder if the book was made by Saudi-Arabians but I just thought I could keep on going with the book the way it was in the first one. To be really honest, the book's influence is still seen and has played a major part in the creation of the lessons today but of course, it is not the books itself but rather the concept behind it.

Working with the visual dictionary

So when I saw the book coming to and end I was already thinking about how to continue.

My parents had gotten me a visual dictionary as a gift for St. Nicholas day (which is a smaller version of Christmas) and I had originally thought this was going to be just one of those 'look in there once and probably never really going to use it, maybe here and the but not really'-presents.

Well, to make it short, that wasn't going to happen. I simply wasn't going to alllow that.

Why?

Well, as you might have noticed I or as (I believe so) we humans tend to rely (sometimes too much) on promises I decided to rely upon that kind of promise that was written on the back of that visual dictionary.

There was written (exactly) 'Niveau A1-B2' which is the European standard language level measure.

So, what did I do?

As the vocabulary was seemingly all it needed to get to the B2 level (which is usually what most learners aim for - advanced and comfortable in the language) I decided that I wanted to implement that logically. So I thought if I somehow managed to acquire all of this vocabulary and maybe a bit more (if I was to acquire it in context) I would probably be very much good at this language and understanding at least quite a bit. Of course I had no real idea of what exactly B2 meant or any of the more conceptual expectations. Anyways, to shorten the story: what I did was that - as this was only vocabulary without any context and previously I myself had come to the conclusion that you learn/acquire words way faster in context and in different contexts with different degrees of importance/difficulty (what I mean by that is)- I sat myself down everyday (or rather did I keep on sitting myself down, to be honest) and

asked ChatGPT for texts conatining of all of this vocabulary
went ahead and read all of these texts (usually raound 10)
and occasionally asked for grammatical/word/phrase explanations when I didn't understand something (especially the words/sentence structures I didn't understand repetedly)
and I looked into the visual dictionary at the introduction of every word to try and condition my brain to think of the pictures associated with the words and I said them out loud sometimes

and all of that whilst trying to understand. I prioritised understanding. Then came the repetition of vocabulary & over time and then the quality of the content. Of course as ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence it didn't make everything make sense in the context (how could any human do so with 25 to 50 vocabs at hand and try to make one story out of it?) so maybe I overextended its powers sometimes a bit. But after a while I simply realised that splitting the vocabulary simply made more sense than trying to force ChatGPT to make it make sense and create some obsurd scene. So then I went for 3 and 5 stories and dialogues instead of one. Over time I arrived at 10 and for recipes and very short texts I even hit a high of up to 20 texts per vocabulary section. Also what this showed me was that in the end it might not necessarily matter too much the quality of the content (content-wise) as long as the language/the spelling is correct and you keep on consuming it. Same as much as when you see someone do a mistake somewhere. As long as you see other people doing it correctly you will most certainly also do it correctly in the long run and inhabit the right way. Also if you even notice that something is a mistake, that shows how great your understanding already is.

So I might have had headaches (not really) from ChatGPTs stories and dialogues but looking back all the conditioning and brainwashing (language-wise) was very effective.

All about what? - my conclusions

After all that journey of about 5 months, with the 'introductory phase' about 7-9 months, depending on how you want to see it, language learning to me is about

listening and reading a lot (getting much input - extensive)
translating it (understanding - which is the key to it all - intensive)
doing it a lot and repetedly (over a long period of time)
+ the extra point of motivation (which you could count to repetition) -> so the WHY.

Also my stance on language learning has completely changed. For example do I now look at seeing new words as something positive instead of something overwhelming because it means that I'll be even more far gone if I have encountered and understood them once. I know I cannot keep every word after seeing them for the first time but I now have the trust and confidence as well as patience and grace (of course not all the time, I ain't God) to understand that the 'pain' (even though I do not see it as such but rather mostly enjoy it except when I put myself under pressure) is what it takes to become what you want to be. Also the core of language learning for me is translation. Translation, translation, translation. But rather from the target language into yours than the other way around.

One point I still debate a lot of times about is the discussion point of either extensive input or intensive input.

By the way, a reason why you might understand a lot but can't speak (especially if you speak a similar language) is probably because you simply haven't consumed enough content. You might be able to assume the meaning but your brain has not been given enough material to be able to repeat the words in the matching patterns.

my shortcut (boring but very effective)

So all of this is just to say that in my opinion the fastest method to learn a new language (especially from scratch) is through massive understood input with a lot of repetition in different circumstances.

As what goes for the advanced section I would always recommend something based more on motivation and easiness because it's always better to keep on going and to feel like you are making progress. So something like stories, a book you like or articles (preferrably about the same topic to have some more short-term repetition) are just ideal.

Why I created this website

My mission

First of all I wanted this website to fit my standards and fulfill all the needs of language learning.

Also a deep belief is that everything should be free and accessible for everyone so I made it free for everyone. I always hate these premium limits or paywalls.

I wanted to create something that is free, easy to use and accessible for everyone and should, of course, also fit my standards.

Programming learning journey

Another reason I decided to create this website is because this was a way for me to learn how to program websites with JavaScript, HTML and CSS.