Learning Arabic: A Lifelong Pursuit

Several years ago at university, I enrolled in Intro to Arabic and we spent a whole semester just learning the alphabet… It was then that I realized studying Arabic would likely be a lifelong process. 📚😂
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The opportunity to be immersed in Arabic was a huge motivator for our move, although it is a bit of a stretch to call Jeddah an immersive environment – we speak English at home, most errands can be completed in English, and the majority of people we meet want to practice their English. We just have to be intentional about practicing.
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Sidenote: We’ve met many local people who speak English really well and they claim their only teachers were American movies, pop musicians, and YouTube. Seriously. They astound me.
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In Jeddah we’ve participated in an intensive course through @icantalkarabic where we studied the foundations of grammar in a classroom-type setting. The course is focused on formal Arabic which isn’t particularly useful for casual conversation here so we also began a communication-skills-focused program that is conducted by tutors in the local dialect. We love the flexibility of the program because a tutor comes to our house depending on the schedule we arrange. It’s a 5-phase program that takes approximately 1500 hours to progress through. I just have about 1250 hours left. 😳
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Trying to fit language study into our busy lives is not easy but we consider it very valuable. And while I study with a tutor, Ezra plays with a babysitter who speaks only Arabic to him. I can’t wait until he’s fluent and we embarrass him in front of all his friends with our poor grammar and heavy accents. 🙃