Thank you!
Here's been my experience with Arabic so far:
Best parts
Verb conjugations: Having previously taken Spanish classes, I was so relieved at how easy conjugating verbs is. Conjugation is done by adding and removing suffixes/prefixes, with far fewer tenses than Spanish and virtually no exceptions.
Sentence structure: Lots of short helper words used in English (is, of, a, 's) are instead handled by an easy to understand indef/definite system. Arabic phrases are instead built by a combination of indefinite and definite words and suffixes to show possession.
So
the car is red - السيارة حمرة
the red car - السيارة الحمرة
Sami's red car is big - سيارة حمرة سامي كبيرة
Overall, the language feels nice and efficient.
Roots of words: It takes a while before you can see them, but once you do, roots so helpful in knowing what words mean. All words with a similar meaning have the same root -
كتان - Book
اكتب - I write
مكتب - Desk
مكتبة - Library
Once you know the root of a word, it's possible to turn it into a noun, adjective, verb, or profession!
Hardest Parts
مصدر maSdar, e.g. verbal nouns: This is the unfortunate part with learning verbs. While verbs are easy to conjugate, noun forms of verbs are not as simple - it always involves inserting vowels and consonants in the middle of words, and there's lots of exceptions and different structures. So far I've learned 5 different forms, and there are plenty of exceptions - memorizing is the only way to get around this unfortunately.
Plural forms: Frustrating for the same reasons as maSdar, but unlike maSdar there's no way to avoid it in a conversation. Just as an analogy, think of irregular plurals in English (goose - geese, mouse - mice), except that's the norm for every noun. Luckily, it's a little less complicated than maSdar, and feminine plurals are extremely regular.
Misc. pronunciation and spelling:
Firstly, Arabic has lots of back of the throat sounds ض ص ق غ ع خ ح ط ظ. Pronouncing ح and غ has been so difficult for me, with ع as a close third; I can hear how it's supposed to sound, but whenever I open my mouth it comes out completely flat. I think I'm finally pronouncing ض mostly right though, which is good news. The other sound that bothers me is رّ, the rolled r. I haven't been able to do it yet, sadly (it's been nagging me ever since Spanish).
Second, Arabic has short and long vowels. It isn't impossible differentiate between the two, but to untrained ears it is really easy to replace a short vowel with a long vowel when spelling. However, the worst part is in picking up new vocabulary. Arabic is technically a phonetic language, but to save time all short vowels are left out of spelling, so TiwAl (throughout in standard arabic) is spelled TOAl (depending on placement O can be pronounced like w), and you don't know if the short vowel should be an a, o, or i. Syllables can additionally start with long vowels, and consonants sometimes aren't followed by any vowels. As a result, it can be easy to accidentally add or remove syllables. Fortunately, there are patterns that help you know what vowels are being omitted, but when reading a word for the first time it can be hard to know how it's pronounced.
(Fun Fact: All short vowels are included in the Quran, which is an old form of Arabic. The reason being that pronunciation of words cannot be left to interpretation!)
Surprisingly not bad
Dialects: Going into Arabic this was my number one fear - that due to all the different dialects I would never fully pick up anything useful. Fortunately my class teaches both formal and Egyptian arabic, with all vocab also written in Levantine. It doesn't mean that someone who learned Egyptian arabic would know how to speak Levantine, but the two are much more similar than I thought. I think of it like how native speakers often know multiple synonyms for the same word, or speak completely differently based on who your talking to, region, slang etc. (Linguists might want to weigh in here, though). Formal isn't really spoken colloquially, but all complex words or technical terms are Formal Arabic, as are all newscasts, so it's not useless like some people say.
