The Levantini Podcast
The Levantini Podcast is a show about the ancient Near East with a focus on biblical archaeology, Judaism and Islam.
The Levantini Podcast
Playaling
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Playaling is a language learning platform founded by Jordan Gerstler-Holton, a former Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellow and long-time student of Arabic. Playaling is composed of a dedicated team of language professionals making engaging real-world Arabic content available to teachers and students across the globe with a heavy focus on Arabic dialect instruction. Lena Krause, an Arabic teacher at Beacon Academy in Evanston, Illinois, has done a tremendous job creating the North African Darija content on the site. You can access all of Playaling’s Arabic learning materials for free on their website Playaling.com
I'm your host Alex and welcome to the Levantini Podcast, a show about Near Eastern history, language, and culture. To learn more about the show and get in touch, you can visit our website at LeventiniPod.com. Playling is a language learning platform founded by Jordan Gersler Holton, a former Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellow and a longtime student of Arabic. PlayLing is composed of a dedicated team of language professionals making engaging real-world Arabic content available to teachers and students across the globe with a heavy focus on Arabic dialect instruction. Lena Krauss, an Arabic teacher at Beacon Academy in Evanston, Illinois, has done a tremendous job creating the North African Data content on the site. You can access all of Playolink's Arabic learning materials for free on their website, playoling.com. Had a great time talking to Jordan. I hope you enjoy the show. Okay, we're live. Thanks for coming on. You're welcome. Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. So tell me a little bit about your path to Arabic.
SPEAKER_00I started actually, I didn't study Arabic in college. I studied Hebrew. And I spent a year in Israel, uh semester at Tel V University, a semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And once I finished college, I worked briefly and I realized I just I really wanted to do something that was more in line with the Middle East. I was working for the American Jewish Committee briefly before that. And so I started learning Arabic kind of on my own. I just found a textbook. I think having Hebrew gave me, it's just from the same family of languages. So it gave me a step up in the beginning, especially. I found a private tutor. He was a guy, an Iraqi guy. I just met him in Starbucks in Manhattan somewhere. And then I went to Morocco for a few months. I was in the wet went to the West Bank. For a few months, I got a scholarship, then a fellowship to continue studying Arabic in Egypt. So I ended up going to Egypt. I was planning to stay there just for uh a year, but had a relationship there and I found a job there. And then I also found another Arabic fellowship at the end with Casa. So I ended up staying in Egypt for four years in total.
SPEAKER_02And during that time, were you were you focusing on modern standard Arabic Fossa or were you mixing in dialects as well?
SPEAKER_00Well, so in Morocco, it was just Fosha. I wasn't particularly interested in learning Moroccan at the time because I didn't see I was really drawn to the Levant and Egypt and sort of the broader Arab culture, but I just didn't see myself spending a lot of time in Morocco in particular. So there I was just learning Fosha. And then when I went to the West Bank, I was speaking in Fosha, but also their dialect is much closer to Fosha than than Moroccan. So I was uh slowly basically learning dialect just by living there. Actually, I enrolled in Berzeid University for a week and then I dropped out. I didn't like the program. Meantime, I found a student there. I said, can I just live with you and your family in your village and pay you money to do that? And he said, sure, why not? So I moved into there. I was the only foreigner in this tiny village that no one's ever heard of near Ramallah. And that sort of is how I started learning dialect. But I also continued my Fosha studies. Uh I also had friends in Tel Aviv. So I would on the weekends sometimes I would go to Tel Aviv. That's when I started learning dialect. And then when I went to Egypt, by the time I got to Egypt, a year a well, a year later, yeah, let's say, I was speaking kind of a cross between Fosha and Chamoe. And then I slowly started converting over to Egyptian. Also, I just think just from listening, you know, you kind of naturally start to mimic what you hear. So by the end of four years, you know, I was speaking mostly Egyptian, I would say. But then now in Luxembourg, I work with Shammi speakers. So slowly, I've been here for five years now. My speech has become more shamfied, although it's still heavily influenced by Egyptians just because when I was in Egypt, I was speaking so much all the time. Now it's sort of a cross, I think, between shammy, you know, Levantine, Egyptian, and Fosha.
SPEAKER_02And for people who aren't familiar with Arabic, Shammi is the Syrian dialect of Arabic that you're referring to, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, Syrian, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Lebanese.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I want to hear more about your experience living with the Palestinian family from a linguistic perspective as somebody who was studying Fusa primarily and then being thrown into that scenario. What do you remember about that experience just from your first day there and hearing things that you didn't recognize and really getting a different perspective on how Arabic is spoken?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, you know, I would I would go there, I was speaking fotha, and people would understand me, and then they would respond to me invariably. Well, in it was different than Morocco in this sense, because in Morocco, people would respond to me actually in well, first they would respond to me in French. At the time I didn't really speak. I studied French in high school, but I didn't really speak it. So they were kind of forced to speak in Fosha, which they did. And I was people a lot of people were able to do in Morocco. I think maybe because Fosha is so different from their own dialect, that they're able in their own brains, it's like they're two separate languages, and they're more easily able to differentiate the two. At least that's just my analysis. In the West Bank, on the other hand, I found that actually people didn't have that ability really to speak with me in Fosha, like in Morocco, and that they would they would typically respond to me in dialect. At first it was very difficult for me to understand, but then I, you know, I started to pick up more and more. There were some textbooks, I think, about Palestinian dialect, but very, very poor material at the time. And so slowly but surely I just kind of started picking more and more up. And one thing I about this living in a village with no other foreigners, it was so much more valuable than in any academic learning, trying to learn a dialect, at least in any academic setting. I mean, here I was, I was forced to really just communicate in Arabic all the time. Little children in the village, people would invite me into their homes all the time. I was kind of like a local celebrity for a while. The the children would run after me in the street. Everybody wanted my attention. And it was for practicing a language. I mean, what is better than that?
SPEAKER_02Do you remember what things like I mean, I remember when when I first started learning dialect and just the lack of vocabulary that you have coming from a FUSHA background? Even if you study three or four years of FUSA, you can be thrown into a real world basic situation. And I remember just not having the tools to say the things I I needed to say. Did any of those situations like that pop out to you? Like, man, why can't I say, like, where do you keep the salt or is it this cabinet or that cabinet? Things like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that happened to me all the time. I mean, now it's already this is 2009. I'm trying to remember exactly what my approach was. In Morocco, I mean it was before smartphones, basically, or maybe they were just starting. But yeah, actually, no, 2008 it was in Morocco. Yeah, so I had an electronic dictionary. I bought an electronic dictionary, and then, you know, occasionally they would break. So I went through actually a few electronic dictionaries. And whenever I wanted to say something, I would kind of I would use that as a, and this is I think a good tip for anybody learning languages. I would just pause, I would take out my dictionary and try to figure out how to say it with my dictionary, and then go and actually perform the task. And that kind of in my in my own brain, I was able to, I think, learn faster that way. So if I'm if I'm not mistaken, I think I must have done the same thing in the West Bank, except there's no there was no electronic dictionary for for Palestinian dialect. I mean, now you have, I think a great tool for a dictionary is of course Lohatuna, Living Arabic, which I if I at the time, if I had that, that would have been a major help, especially as an app and a smartphone. But at the time, what I think I did is what I would do is I I would ask, I would say it in Fosha, right? I would find it in Fosha. And then because I surrounded myself with people who just love to interact with me, you know, as the local celebrity, if you will. I could I just ask them. I kind of would just ask people around me, okay, how do you this is what I want to say, but how would you say it in Palestinian?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And so that's how that's kind of how I navigated the environment. I also noticed that certain people around me that I would interact with most, friends or whatnot, over time, they improved their fosha because they realized because I was better with fosha, they sort of started to speak with me more and more fosha. So there's this kind of leveling, if you will, right? Where they would they would adjust their dialects in a way that was more easily understandable for me.
SPEAKER_02Right. I had a dialect teacher one time who had a really great method of just pulling up pictures and asking me to describe literally everything I saw down to every detail. So if there was a guy sitting there with his legs crossed, she would say, like, how do you, what's he doing? You know, and you would say, like, I have I have no idea how to say his legs are crossed. Like, why don't I know how to how to say that? But I found that was a great method, just describing what what you're seeing down to the tiniest details.
SPEAKER_00You're forcing yourself to start thinking in in the language too.
SPEAKER_02Right. Exactly. And for for whatever reason, all those things kind of get overlooked in even in dialect textbooks. I think we'll get to this, but I think there's still an extreme lack of resources when it comes to to Arabic dialects, which which you guys are are helping to fill that void with your website play a link. But you know, there's just a a lot of stuff that's missing when when you're starting to get it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And I and it's it's it's tricky because there's so much variety too. I mean, Arabic is not despite the fact that Arabic is, I think, the fifth most spoken language in the world, I believe, something like that. In terms of languages that are being actively learned, it's a lot lower. I mean, Italy, for example, is only spoke spoken by many fewer people, but it's more studied.
SPEAKER_02It's a more studied language, for example. I think a lot of that comes to accessibility, comes down to accessibility. I mean, let's let's talk about that. So you've seen instruction in both languages in both dialect and and FOSSA. And for people who aren't familiar with it, FOSTA is the dominant language that's instructed, modern standard Arabic, classical Arabic is the dominant language that's taught in universities in higher education, as opposed to dialect, which is still I've heard I've heard it's changing, but it's still primarily approached as an elective. You know, you can't get a BA or an MA in an Arabic dialect, which I think you should be. But one, why do you do you think that's a problem? And two, how do you see that changing in the future?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's a it's a problem, but it's also it's also tricky because you know there are so many dialects. I mean, once you get into the once you start accepting dialects, it really gets extremely narrow in terms of, I mean, you have the major dialects, right? Egyptian and shami, sure, and maybe uh Darijah and Moroccan. It's difficult. There I think it's good that there is a movement that I've noticed toward among teachers and among curricula to incorporate more and more dialects. And I think that's good, even combining the different dialects together in a way, because even I've noticed this, even how Arabs, Arabs speak who are Arabs who are who have been in different Arab countries, who have lived different parts of their lives in different Arab countries or have interacted with different groups of people, often tend to even themselves speak in a certain way, what they call the one word for laig al-beda, which is basically like this kind of white dialect or Arabic. And and that's you know, that is an approach, kind of like a leveling of the dialects and fosha, but that that has yet to be codified, right? Nobody has yet to come up with like a an official white Arabic, right, that can be spoken by any Arabs and understood. Although to some degree, that is something that actually happens and exists in the real world. So that's one thing. Another thing is there is also, I I noticed sometimes the trouble is when you combine fosha and dialect just in a random way, it could also sound extremely unnatural because even though Arabs combine the two, they combine the two in in sort of restricted ways, right? I know one thing is that is used, for example, like the use of of the, you know, b, which is the progressive habitual prefix, basically marker. I've seen sort of attempts, for example, to combine Fosha and dialect, but if that part is dropped, and then it could it could appear to a native speaker as just being wrong or being very strange, even though you could just say, oh, we're dropping it because we're combining Fosha and Amin. You know, and in some in some instances you can drop it to, and it sounds more intellectual or cultured, but in other instances it just sounds like you're clearly a student, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02What I've seen a lot from from dialect speakers is they'll use fosha, not the way that like Al-Kitab teaches it, where it's it's uh they mash together dialect and and fusa, but dialect speakers will use fusa when they don't have a word in dialect for for what they need to say. And it's usually something more formal or or official. But they could also, I'm also noticing is they'll substitute. I mean, it depends what country you're in. So if you're in Lebanon, they'll substitute a French word rather than rather than the Arabic Fusa word or but in English. Right. In Jordan, a lot of a lot of times I've I've I've seen it be in English, they'll throw in an English word. Right.
SPEAKER_00Or Arabized an English verb. Right. And Egypt too. I mean, there's a kind of and I think this goes unfortunately throughout the the Middle East. There is, I think among sort of educated elites, there is this sense that speaking in Fotshai is prestigious, but it's could be in in many contexts, maybe even most contexts, it's even more prestigious to speak in English or to speak in French. So you even have a phenomenon in Egypt where some people who don't really speak English, what they'll do is that they will insert English, they'll scatter their language with English words inappropriately that don't make any sense, but it's part of their effort to to sound higher class, basically. Right. And sometimes people joke about this phenomenon or what.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I and I'm not trying to trash Fusa either, because for people who don't come from an Arabic language learning background, there's FUSA does have its place, MSA does have its place, and that's for reading and watching the news. If you're if you want to work professionally in the language in a where you're not working with people, where you're working with media or text, and that can be any investigative research type job, intelligence job, government job, you do need to have that foundation of FOSA. And I also think FOSA creates the the basic you don't think you have to have it to start studying dialect, but I think it it certainly helps create the basis for it and the feel for for the language before you go you dive into FOSA. What what are your thoughts on that on studying FOSA first and then moving to dialect or just starting with dialect and sticking to that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I I started learning FOSA first, but then I very quickly kind of I mean, just for I would say I mean I did start with Fosha first and then I moved in first for almost a year almost. And then before I moved into dialects, you know, it's a good question. I'm not sure which which is the better approach. I mean, I think it certainly there was for a student, there wasn't it when I was just solely concentrated on Fotza, there was an advantage. I had clarity of how to say certain things, of what was the correct way, even if I couldn't necessarily do it because my Fotza was never that great, but that I could, you know, that there was sort of like a clear right and wrong. And I with with the dialects, on the other hand, especially since I the first dialect I started learning or or merging and assimilating with in some way was chamois, right? And then or Levantine, and then I moved to Egyptian, and then I kind of moved back to Shamis. So I found even now I find myself, I also don't speak as much now on a on a daily basis, even though I work with refugees, I still don't speak as much as I spoke when I was living in Egypt. So I mean, it could be very confusing for a student, there's no question, to try to learn multiple ways of speaking at the same time. But on the other hand, it's also if you really want to acquire proficiency in the language that allows you to communicate with Arabs at large and understand what they're saying, and then there's really no way around it. I mean, if your ambition is just to go to Egypt, I suppose, to speak on the street with people, okay, then you just speak Egyptian. But even people on even if you watch, for example, uh Egyptian movies or or even speaking with people, there is fosha that comes out. I mean, if you're speaking with a more educated person, they might throw in some sentences in fosha because it's for certain contexts, it it makes sense. It's you know, they're trying to stress a certain point, or there are also lots of proverbs, for example, usually those are in fosha. There are uh religious references that tend to also be in fosha. So so yeah, I mean it's a I think that's probably the biggest challenge of Arabic, is just that there is no one language. It's like trying to learn French, Spanish, and Italian all at once.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, I think it I think it has to be codified, like you were saying at some point. I don't know which university would would end up doing that, but I've never been exposed to the military way of teaching it or the intelligence way of of teaching the language, but I think it's there do have to be different dialect tracks that that you would specialize in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or maybe specialize like keeping, you know, trying to speak in one, like just have your your goal being that you want to speak in one, but to accept exposure to to different ways of speaking. Because I mean, also when Arabs get together, there's no such thing as, for example, uh, I've never seen it happen where an Egyptian met a Syrian or a Syrian met an Egyptian and they just couldn't understand each other. I mean, they they they can understand each other because they're familiar enough with each other's dialects and they're familiar enough with what the other person knows. So they could kind of level the way they speak. So so again, if the idea is to, I mean, ultimately, when we're looking for fluency, the the we're looking to get as close as possible to how native speakers speak, right? Or and understand at that level. Of course, getting there is is very difficult. Almost none of us do, but that's sort of the goal, right? So if but if that is the goal, and then we need to, there's no way around at least getting to the point where you can understand different dialects, uh, at least at a an intermediate level.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Uh and full off, because that's how native speakers use the language and function in the language.
SPEAKER_02Right. There's so much diversity in in all the dialects, like you were saying, even down to, I mean, it's pretty nuts, even down to the how you pronounce just very, very small things. I'm trying to think of an example like the word for bottle, like so in in Palestinian dialect, they would say like anine, and maybe in Lebanon or Syria, they would say like anina. It would just be a subtle, a subtle change like that. When you're depending on where you are, so say like when you were in Egypt or when you were in the West Bank, how important is acting ability to blending in and and speaking dialects more fluently?
SPEAKER_00Acting, what do you mean by exactly by that?
SPEAKER_02By acting, I mean being attentive to the small nuances like that and really doing your best to have the best accent possible, to have the best intonations, the best hand gestures, imitating, I guess imitation is is a better better word than acting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, that's part of I guess what learning any language is, yeah, for sure. But of course, I mean, when when you're when I was there, there was plenty of stuff. I mean, especially when Palestinians at the time were speaking with each other, there's oftentimes very little that I would understand, you know, depending on context. You know, and it took a while to kind of I think you, I mean, as you as you progress in the language, I suppose it's easier to have more attention to to nuance or to pick up on nuance because you already have uh a solid foundation, right? But if you're but in your if you're sort of in the beginning and and you're you're lucky if you understand half of what the person in front of you is saying, and then you know, I don't nuance is not gonna be like the thing that you're focused on. You're focused on the big, the general picture.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess like when you get to to your level now or when you really advance in in dialect and in in your language proficiency, if you really want to be as fluent as possible for a non-native speaker, you know, just yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Immutation, but it also happens over time, yeah, slowly. Um maybe some some people are faster than others. I'm sort of, you know, I might be slightly, I don't know. Yeah, I think some people are very good at at putting a lot of effort into sounding like the person in front of them. I'm I'm more my my approach has always been a little bit more just to make myself understood, which is not necessarily the best thing if you want to just say want to prove your accent. Because there are many ways, of course, in Arabic to make yourself understood, but without sounding like the speaker in front of you just because there's so much variety, there's so many ways to say something. Yeah, I mean it depends. Look, we only have we only have we all we all have a limited amount of time and a little limited amount of attention. And if if the idea, if we think we're just going to like sound like native speakers even after years of practice in multiple dialects and in falsa, I mean, forget it. I think even the native speakers themselves, an Egyptian going to Syria or a Syria, a Syrian going to Egypt, even after years, they're not going to sound. I mean, maybe they could fool the person in front of them for a few minutes, but beyond that, they're not going to be able to fool the person that they are not who they really are, or they're not who not where they come from. Right. But and in in of course, the same in English, right? We wouldn't expect a British person to start sound like an American after even after live. In the US for a couple decades, right?
SPEAKER_02But I think they can get what we're getting to is and something that I want to ask you about is getting to the the good enough point. So there is very little substitute for actually spending time abroad and living abroad because you're, I think naturally your body and your mind just adjust to where you are and what you're hearing, and naturally you'll start imitating what you're seeing. And you know, you'll sound more natural and you'll pick up things, you'll pick up on things that you wouldn't pick up on otherwise. But I think it's I think there's a misconception that you can't become fluent unless you're actually living full-time abroad in an Arab country. And I think a lot of teachers will tell you, well, you can't do it. But I don't really believe that. I think there's a good enough point for fluency. You know, how what what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I think it depends on two things. First of all, it's how you define fluency. Some people have a very low bar of what they call fluency. If they can like navigate a restaurant and ask for directions and express, talk about their favorite colors, you know, for some people that's almost like they're fluent. I don't know. But others, you know, others' fluency is really having a very advanced level where you could basically understand everything and be totally understood, regardless of what you want to say. So I don't know what the answer is there, but and yeah, the other the other factor is that I think the advantage of actually living in a place, again, in some ways I feel like I'm less fluent now than I was seven years ago when I left Egypt. Just because even though I work with with ref I I speak I'm speaking Arabic almost every day, but I don't actually even I don't speak it that much, not nearly as much as I spoke it. And you're probably limited to certain contexts. Yeah, and I'm limited to certain contexts, yeah. I mean, we also a lot of the with a lot of the refugees I meet, we talk about lots of different things, but but yeah. But I think it's probably more than anything, it's just in terms of hours speaking. It's just less than when I was, you know, going back to the best was when I was in that village in the West Bank, because there I was just all day long, it was just Arabic. So in terms of just hours with the language, I mean, at the end of the day, I think that's probably the most important thing, irrespective of what it is, whether it's on playlink or whether it is in person, whatever it is, or in the classroom, it's total amount of hours devoted to that language. And when you're not living in a place, it's hard to achieve similar hours that you can when you are. Now, that being said, there are people who I know there are lots of my colleagues in Egypt. They I was living, I had in a relationship with an Egyptian. I was living with another, uh, another Egyptian was living with me, and basically we only spoke in Arabic. Even actually, when I first got to Egypt, I would even uh and this isn't uh so great, but I would basically lie to people and say that I was from France and that I didn't speak English, I only spoke French. And that way I got them to only speak in Arabic with me. And uh in order to basically basically just have more hours speaking Arabic, because that is really key in my view.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think I I think fluency is like fitness. It really is. I mean, when people ask, ask me or ask you at any given time, you know, well, how fluent are you? What's your fluency level? It depends on, you know, or people say, like, oh, I'm fluent in this, or like, are you fluent in that? And it's like, well, I mean, three months ago, yeah, I was fluent in it because I was quote unquote working out. I was I was keeping my fitness levels of Arabic up. Give me another two months to get back in shape, and yeah, I'll be back back to where I was. But that's really how it is. If if you're not a native speaker, and even for native speakers, I know people who are from Lebanon, but they've been living in Texas for the last 30 years, and it takes them a moment to to get going again, to start speaking Arabic again, and they'll they'll forget very basic words.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I would say, especially for speaking. I think it's less, I mean, I notice that myself too. When I when I don't speak you know Arabic for a month or something, and then it's like I have to kind of get the gears back in shape. It takes, it takes a little bit. But with listening, I feel it doesn't actually go away that quickly. Listening somehow, my my net my impression is never that my listening is getting worse. My impression many times that my speaking is getting worse, but I've never had that distinct impression of, oh, I'm actually not understanding at the level I used to understand.
SPEAKER_02And that's a good indicator of if of when you're out of shape, when you're out of shape in the language, right? Because that, you know, it's kind of a paralyzing feeling. It's like I understand everything you're saying. I don't have the muscle memory to respond to you right now. Right, right, right. But that's a great it's it's a it's a horrible feeling, but it's also a great feeling to know, like to really get that reality hit, to say, like, okay, I have to get back in shape, I have to start studying Arabic again and get into my method. So let's go into playlink a little bit. How do you and your team decide the content that you want to focus on, the topics that that you need covered?
SPEAKER_00Well, now we've gone to the point where since we have uh quite a few users and especially a lot of teachers who are engaged, they send us content that they would like to see on the site. And that's sort of what we spend a lot of time doing. There's also a lot of users, yeah, just regular users who send us content all the time. I personally sometimes I find stuff or I used to from the content people send me, YouTube has the YouTube algorithm has kind of kicked in for what the kind of content that I want to see. And so it kind of gives me stuff. Sometimes I I play around in there and I I find some new new clips. So I mean that's basically how it works essentially. And that yeah, that's kind of interesting too, because it's resulted in, I think there's a lot more stuff for whatever reason, uh left that's Levantine. And so we find we find that the content is becoming more and more Levantine, which is okay, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02I think there's a lot of interest in Levantine, maybe and culturally those people just might be putting more content online, you know, of individual contributors who are posting videos themselves doing stuff.
SPEAKER_00That's what I have the impression that there is a lot of like more independent kind of producers that are putting Levantine content online. With Egyptian, it tends to be more like major Egyptian media companies that are doing it, which also creates a problem for us because sometimes they block their content. Independent producers rarely do that. I think there's one Palestinian guy, actually, an artist who did that. We contacted him and he said, Oh, okay, no, he unblocked it for us. But others, with these Egyptian media companies, when they own content, sometimes they make it difficult to Yeah, on YouTube, they'll not allow it to be embedded. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we have you know, you No, I was just gonna say when I was running for instinct and now it's owned by Circle at the University of Arizona, but you know, that's the that's the one problem with using real world content is sometimes people will take their video down and and you lose all the work that you did creating materials to prepare people to watch that piece. But I think it's still I really think it's still the best way to to learn. And I I you probably feel the same way because you you found a playlink. How often are you discovering things that I mean, how often do you do you see things that you never saw before? If you're doing the video or if a member of your team where and you've been studying dialect for years where you see something and you're like, that's new. I haven't seen somebody use that before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a lot, there's lots of stuff. I mean, there's stuff that comes up all the time. You know, it also gets back to your question before of Fosha, because you see how also many words that I thought were just fosha, you know, you see I see them re-emerging in other dialects, right? Um, and that kind of cup that kind of reveals itself over time, I would say. And that's a lot also a lot of expressions that are actually shared, you know, among different dialects, but they're just worded slightly differently based on the dialect, but it's the same, the expression is still the same, you know. So the similarities are sometimes very striking among the different varieties of Arabic, I would say. And that's sort of what allows uh becomes more and more apparent. Also, we're continuously developing the site, but you know, right now there's a functionality where you click on the word and you can you can see the examples. And it's that's interesting for the user to actually compare. If you're using playlink on desktop, each basically we we we label the different captions by by dialect, although the captions come, we're actually labeling the videos attached to the captions, so sometimes it's a little off, but right, but generally you can get a sense of how the same word or the same expression could be could appear in different varieties of Arabic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's really helpful. And I mean, you guys really are, in my opinion, like the only real resource for learning dialect outside of private tutoring or or university context. There are other resources, but I think they they just don't meet the bar of what it takes, including the the amount of content you guys pump out. I mean, you guys come like you put out a ton of content, and it's it's really surprising too, because I mean to transcribe a video takes a long time. I mean, how are you guys how are you guys getting this done?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, well, I mean, over time we sort of refine the process, I would say. Basically, with the transcript, we have, I mean, it's there's a lot of human hours involved, a lot of human labor. In Egypt, the transcription is actually the easiest part in certain ways, just because it's something that I personally at least don't have to be that involved with. Fortunately, you know, we have a reliable team of freelancers that we've developed over time based in the Middle East. And so they're able to just transcribe what the video is. Um, and then the translation that's a little bit more complex because I mean, for that, that does require somebody with a very high level of English. And then, you know, for quality control, also we found that it's important to have a native English speaker as well. Just look over those translations in English to make sure that the translations sound as as native as possible. And so, and then after that, it's uploaded to the site, to the back end, and then that's when we annotate individual words. And that take also, I mean, that takes a lot of time. Uh, how do we because also we we we don't just annotate words, but we also annotate chunks, right? So the question of when to chunk certain certain things, when not to chunk them, there's different labels, there's different nuances, do nuanced meanings associated with different words. So the question is like, do we create a new entry in our sort of back-end dictionary database to accommodate a slightly nuanced meaning of the same word? Or do we do we create a new entry or do we just adjust the entry that already exists? Right, that's already in the system. So that's a that's a constant kind of negotiation. And that that part is actually tends to be maybe the most time intensive, especially for me personally, because I I review a lot of that stuff. Um but it's important because ultimately, I mean, we we'll probably talk about later in the conversation. We do want to develop the site further. And that sort of annotating of the transcriptions, of the words and chunks in the transcription is critical for really the next stages of this project, which would be more interactive ways for the user to engage with that content and new words and expressions that they learn.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, let's get into that now. I mean, the site is great the way it is, but I think it does need, and and you've talked about it and acknowledge it, does need some more interactive features like flashcards, the ability to download the vocabulary. You can copy and paste easily to if you have a preferred flashcard app, making it an actual app that you can take with you and listen to videos and stuff like that. What are in your mind, what are the most pressing developments that that you guys are working on to improve the site?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, right now we're really actually focused on organizing the data. Basically, we have this kind of back-end dictionary that's that's developing over time and to kind of organize it in a way that then, for example, users would be able to, if they're going to, for example, save a word to their flashcards, right? They're gonna maybe want to see that same word, but also the feminine version of that word if it's an if it's an adjective, right, or a noun or whatever. Maybe if it's a verb, if it's a a first person singular verb, they're not gonna just want that first person singular conjugation, but they're also gonna want to see how it's conjugated in the past tense, how's conjugated in second person, third person, plural. So that's why for right now we're we're kind of focused on organizing that, making those connections. And then from that, we hope to find a sort of a scalable way, if you will, to create games and exercises and activities that sort of draw on that powerful database that we're we're currently establishing. So I mean it's it's quite, it sounds kind of quite vague and abstract at the moment, but um, I mean, we're we're currently we are trying to find different ways of doing that. We've also been in contact with potential, because right now it's totally free, of course. We've been in contact with with potential partners that could support us. We're looking at different at different possibilities. I mean, we would ideally we would like to keep it free uh as much as possible for as long as possible. But of course, I mean, there's also the question of financial sustainability.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it's tough. I mean, we faced the same thing back when I was running forancy, is you want to keep something free, but you have to keep the lights on. And things do cost money to make and to create something. The question is like, how do you keep something? How do you if you do have to make it, if you do have to monetize it to keep it developing and keep the lights on, you know, how do you make that you just have to make sure you you keep it accessible to to your users, but also for users, you know, be understanding of what what you guys are going through and and the tool you're putting out there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we haven't really dis honestly, we haven't really decided yet how we're going to approach that issue. I mean, uh the I ideally it would be totally free. And that's that's what we hope to have. So you know, we have to see how things evolve.
SPEAKER_02Right. On the website, you mention the impact that one particular Arabic teacher had on you and and and your your method of studying Arabic going forward. And I think that's something that's very important for any language learner is at some point to have a mentor that that stands out to you. And for any teachers that are gonna listen to this episode, there's a range, just a spectrum of Arabic instructors that I've found through my years studying a language that range from really life-changing to like god-awful. What advice can you give teachers to really make the most impact on their on their students? That's a very good question. You could just describe what this teacher did for you. That may answer your question.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I as I explain, I think on the site, but I'll just say it here, you know, she she was really a great teacher in the sense that she was very dedicated to Fosha, of course, uh, not not so much the dialects, which isn't paradoxical, but at the same time, she was very much into having you speak at a level that made sense. I think I quote her on the site, don't try to be more royal than the king, basically, right? Which is that don't try to elevate because there's different levels of even fosha. Don't try to speak at a level that is even higher than what most Fosha speakers aspire to or speak. So that I mean, I kind of took it a step further, but I I kind of it's almost a little bit unfair to her in a way, because she's not somebody who supports dialects, right? But nevertheless, her her mentality, even her approach to speaking, speaking fosha sort of got me thinking, well, yeah, that's true. And and by the way, most Arabs actually can't really speak in a pure fosha. If they try to, they just they fail, they end up throwing in their dialects or making lots of mistakes. So, you know, why should we hold students to a standard that goes beyond the capacity of most native speakers of that language? That doesn't make any sense, right? And I mean you can analyze why that is. There's all kinds of reasons. One is because, I mean, it's very interesting, I think, the history of why that is. One is religion, right? Because a lot of Arabic teachers, not this Arabic teacher in particular, actually, she's she's Christian, but many Arabic teachers, some Arabic teachers, let's say, are religious, right? And for them, part of the importance of teaching Arabic comes from their love of Islam and the Quran and et cetera. And that's not necessarily the motivation for the student. They're not learn learning it necessarily because they want to be good Muslims, right? And many of them aren't Muslims at all, in fact. So they're learning it to communicate and to engage the Arab world as native speakers would engage the the Arab world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean that that kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier with just practicality of what you're learning. You can force your second-year Arabic student to learn how to read, you know, three pages on Ibn Battuta, or you can really get down into the details of sitting in the back of a taxicab. How do I say, can I put the window down? How do I say, can you roll the window up? How do I say turn the radio down or turn it up or just use the meter, don't use the meter? You know, things that are that are applicable to you to the real world. It's it's not the same thing that that you mentioned of learning Arabic at at the level of that it that it's spoken, but but practicality I think is is a key theme that that keeps coming up to me.
SPEAKER_00So when it yeah, when when it comes to practicality too, and no one's no one those those daily requests are not done in in fosha, right? So you can learn how to say it in fosha, which is what a lot of teachers, a lot of Arabic teachers might have you do. But in the real world, that has doesn't have any place because nobody ever says those things in fosha.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I I would love to see it get to a point where there really are programs that that specialize in in in dialect. I think f Fosha and dialect have to be treated separately the the way that they have been, and they each have their own their own place. But you know, it'd be great if one day somebody could say, I want to get a master's degree in Levantine dialect, and there really is a program to to get you there because it's it's not there yet for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean that that could be that could be very interesting.
SPEAKER_02Well, anyways, I I think this is a good place to to wrap up. I really appreciate you you coming on. Keep up the good work and keep me post-it of of any development you guys have. If you need help, yeah, pushing pushing the site out. We're happy to tweet it out and on Facebook also.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you for your support. And uh it was an enjoyable conversation for me. And uh I also admired the work that you've done with with forensic. I think it's a very I I I did use it a few times and found it quite helpful.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, I think you guys are are taking a similar approach, but doing stuff that never even occurred to me. And doing it well, I mean, when when I was running forinsey, like all the time, I would say, like, man, I kind of want to be doing this like for dialect. It just uh I didn't I didn't take the approach you guys did, but I love what you guys are doing. So keep it up. Thank you, thank you. All right, talk soon. Yeah, thank you. Bye bye.