Scriptorium Foreign Languages (Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese)

Alexander Arguelles demonstrates his technique of transcribing foreign languages. For a narrative description of this method, please refer to http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/index.html

Category:

Education

Tags:

• polyglottery
• polyglots
• foreign
• language
• learning

[chriswils45]

Very interesting that you have included Chinese in your regimen! Somewhere you mentioned Korean as being the one language you can speak better than you can read. I am interested in Korean myself, and so if this is still true for you, may I ask what makes this language unusual in this regard? If it is because of the great demands of the hanja, are you studying Chinese to deepen your knowledge of Korean?

[ProfASAr]

@chriswils45 There is nothing inherently unusual about Korean in this regard. It is the circumstances of my life that are unusual here. For the most part, I am an armchair scholar, and there are many languages that I have studied rather thoroughly without ever actually speaking them. As I lived in Korea for many years and ended up marrying a Korean woman, though, I have had great amounts of conversational practice in it. Much more so than reading practice. That's it.

[AmeRosexx]

What dialect of Arabic did you learn? Or is this just MSA? I'm Egyptian, and you don't sound Egyptian, but I don't think you necessarily sound "standard" either. Your accent is very interesting, I'm always fascinated to see how non-natives pick up the Arabic accent, even though MSA is not really a real accent :P That's pretty good, spelling in Arabic sucks - it's hard to transcribe for English speakers.

[ProfASAr]

It is trying to be MSA, but as I lived in Lebanon for two years and all of my teachers were from that region, I may have picked up more of a Levantine lilt than I know.

[ProfASAr]

"By what evil soul was this mouth of destruction told to you?"

Parsing:

The first block contains a compound noun "destruction-mouth" + a dem.adj. "this" both in the neut.nom.sing + a 2nd.sing dative pronoun.

The second block contains a masc.inter.pron. "what" in the instrumental + a neut.nom.sing past part. "told."

The final block is an adjectival noun "evil-self" in the masc.sing.instrumental.

Thus, the agent is in the instrumental and the subject appears as the object.

[y11971alex]

I'm sorry to say this, but your Chinese pronounciation could be improved. I as a native Chinese speaker of 14 years cannot understand your speech, but can identify your written words as "simplified Chinese."

[1616ho]

well, i am a native speaker of chinese and i have to say your pronunciation is not good. I could hardly understand you before you wrote it down....especially the wrong tones.

However, i am still impressed by your linguistic skills.

[happykatkat]

Thanks you, Professor! I will be using this method to learn Ecclesiastical Latin. Thank you very much!

[DYSHERNANDEZ]

Hello, teacher. Alexander Arguelles. That´s so awesome. You are so smart. May I ask you one question for you? How many languages can you speak?.

I am Donny Hernández from NIcaragua.

[africaRBG]

@Heriopasu hello! i have a dictionary that is arabic-english and it is called "al-mawrid" by Dr.Rohi baalbaki,,it is an excellent dictionary, i recommened it fully.

[Heriopasu]

Non-native Arabic speakers who have had experiences learning Arabic through the English language: Do you guys have any particular English-Arabic/Arabic-English dictionaries that you find good (in comparison to other dictionaries that you have used in the course of studying Arabic)? I am thinking of buying one.

PS: Prof. Arguelles, I am a big fan. Some day I will be like you!

[slothofastudent]

I love this exercise! Will come in handy when I ship out to DILFLC in the next few months.

[davidwelsh]

@ProfASAr There are audio files for Deshpande's Sanskrit Primer available to download from the website of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. I can't post the link in the comments section, but if you Google "umich sanskrit primer audio files" the relevant page should come up as the first result.

[LadyPLo12]

Wow :D

iam an arab and i wish i could speak and write chinese

[N8Magic315]

When you do this exercise, what is the standard length of the passage. That is, is it the same sentence repeated for several pages,the same paragraph repeated for pages, or is it several pages of the target language written down?

[VanXIInX]

this guy is very intelligent

[darkguyitsme]

nice vid. i have to say although ur arabic pronunciationis a bit off but u really know how to annunciate the words and its really clear and i could understand every word without u having to wright them down. also ur hand writhing is really beautiful.