Resource: The Arabic Student

Back when I first decided to study abroad and realized that my FusHa would soon be absolutely useless, I stumbled on www.thearabicstudent.com, a blog that dissected media from a solid cross-section of dialects. I loved the way the author pulled out helpful vocabulary words, provided pronunciation videos, and generally explained grammar, syntax, and idiomatic constructions in colloquial Arabic. It was one of the only such resources I could find at the time.

Unfortunately The Arabic Student seems to have stopped blogging now, but I recently recalled this post, which was one of my first introductions to Egyptian dialect. The author uses a clip from the Arabic version of Monsters Inc to provide a helpful introduction to Egyptian for beginning and intermediate students (while incidentally referencing the Father of Moustache construction we recently wrote about). Check out the rest of his posts, too–he was quite prolific (and skilled!) when it came to Lebanese & Levantine lessons.