Accent marks seem to be something that trip a lot of people up in language. In high school Spanish class, the accent marks were one of the last things people caught onto. With Portuguese having even more accent marks than Spanish, they have taken time of their own. And now with Arabic, not only are there completely new letters, but also completely new accent marks to learn.
When researching them I learned to start searching for “diacritics” because when searching for “accent marks” all that came up were pronunciation videos for various Arabic accents.
So, this week was dedicated to the little markings with the big impacts. Modifying letters by adding sounds or providing emphasis, accent marks are a critical (or diacritical LOL) part of many writing systems, Arabic included.
This Week
This week I wasn’t able to squeeze in quite as much practice as I was hoping, but I did my best to continue reviewing what I have learned and incorporating the new lessons of this week as well.
I wanted to tackle diacritics because it feels like one of the last writing roadblocks that I might face, though I am sure I will constantly be finding new things to learn and explore once I get my feet off the ground and start using the language.
Practice
Most of this week’s practice was made up of taking notes while watching the video attached in the materials section and then repeating things like the alphabet, spelling out random words, etc.
I have been preparing for a big trip, so that has consumed a lot of what would have been Arabic practice time, but that is the way it goes with language learning. Some weeks are a breeze, and others mope along a bit slower.
Materials
This video was a great breakdown of the different diacritics and how they act on words when written out. It seems like at a certain level of Arabic the accent marks are no longer needed, but that learning them can greatly help Arabic learners in correctly pronouncing words they encounter for the first time.
So, this will certainly be a resource we return to time and time again.
Conclusion
Now that we have covered the alphabet, how each letter connects to the others depending on its position in the word, and diacritics, we should have a solid foundation to start using our literacy to build our Arabic fluency.
I look forward to continuing this journey alongside all of you, and I will see you next week!
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