Who would have thought it: Now I’m learning Arabic with fun – after I almost dropped out. But then Corona whirled everything upside down and gave me new ideas. For example, to look for an Arabic course one last time. And I found it! Read here what happened.
And the story was like this: On the partly rainy monotonous days in the Corona crisis there was only one thing for me: Binge Watching. One of the series was “Four Blocks”. The award-winning German drama series is about a criminal Arab family clan in Berlin Neukölln, whose leader is the Lebanese Ali „Toni“ Hamady (Kida Khodr Ramadan). Some “real” people from the criminal milieu as well as the German-Palestinian rapper Massif are also involved: the latter in a leading role as gangster Latif Hamady. The series isn’t for the faint hearted, but it’s super thrilling.
What I also liked a lot: The criminals often chat in Arabic (with German subtitles of course). Since I understood a bit here and there, I got in the mood for learning Arabic again. The rest is quickly told: When I googled Arabic language courses, I noticed the Aladin School in Munich and Augsburg. I sent a WhatsApp to the owner of the school, Hachem Chaabane, and when we chatted, I had the impression that I knew him from somewhere. As it turned out, I had once been with him in an Arabic trial lesson at the Munich Volkshochschule. Unfortunately I could not participate back then due to lack of time. In the meantime, Hachem offers Arabic courses in Augsburg and Munich as well as in Zoom because of the Corona crisis.
Hachem is a great teacher and the two hour Zoom lesson per week just flies by. Our group (about 8 people) has fun and we learn a lot in the varied lessons. We use the textbook „Salam! neu“, which I find more user-friendly than the highly praised Langenscheidt book. The course is complemented by exercises and information on the Moodle platform. I will definitely continue!
And now that the basic conditions are all right, I have set myself a new goal: I want to reach level B1 by July 2021. To make it even more fun and to speed up the learning process, I am supported now by artificial intelligence: Alexa (if she’s in a good mood …) will teach me Arabic vocabulary. Well, nothing can go wrong anymore…