Learning Algerian Arabic

[Edo]

This is my first post - I wanted to add things from the point of view of a native English-speaker who speaks Arabic.

I studied Arabic at university for years (ans sweated blood and tears with standard Arabic grammar). Learning Arabic opens unimaginable doors - it's worth wrestling with weak verbs and the hamza rules just to see a face light up when you come out with something in Arabic. Hardly anyone bothers... so the fact that someone is interested enough to make the effort is refreshing to say the least.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), as "formal Arabic" known in English, is difficult. It's amazingly beautiful, but as a language that's not spoken on a day to day basis, I find it a bit cumbersome for communication. A joke in MSA just doesn't have the same oomph, and buying a bread at the baker's in MSA would be kind of wierd. No one would bat and eyelid, but it kind of feels heavy.

The advantages of learning darija (dialect) is that gramatically it's much easier. The problem is learning Maghribi dialects in an English-speaking country. Almost impossible. As someone said, there are few resources in French - the Norbert Tapiero book is a bit old school style, but with Algerian dialect there's so little choice, you can't afford to be fussy...

Even though immersion is the best technique, I always needed some kind of resource on paper to check things --- there are SO many things that native speakers can't explain (think of how you'd explain how to use the present perfect tense in English to someone learning English ....)

As the French sources cited earlier are pretty much all there is on Algerian darija - I'd go for a basis in Moroccan darija, which has a lot more learning resources. The two dialects are quite different, but definately fully mutually understandable. So you could start with Moroccan, then do the necessary tweaking tio convert it into Algerian once you have a base. I recommend the Moroccan Arabic series (grammar and dictionary) published by Georgetown University. If you speak Spanish, there are loads of resources in Spanish for Moroccan Arabic - let me know if you're interested.

Lastly, if you're interested in a course, I know of really, really good Moroccan courses in Spain (Casa Árabe) and Fez (ALIF).

Bear in mind that practicing Arabic for foreigners in Algeria is hard, people tend to respond to you in French, for a variety of reasons. You really have to insist with people to get them to respond in Arabic...

Good luck!!

[Nawelka]

Hi all,
I do agree with pretty much of what Edo said, and I relate to a little experience I had with native English-speakers. In fact, I had the chance to teach Arabic in the USA, last year. Actually, I'm to be an English teacher; they recruited me because I have some experience in teaching, I speak English, I am a native speaker of Arabic and because I am Algerian.
I had one class of first-year students, and it was about MSA, and a second class that dealt with the Algerian dialect. It was called Spoken Algerian Arabic. As its name indicates, it was mainly conversational. My supervisor had requested that I just make them speak in Arabic with an emphasis on the Algerian dialect. So, of course, they had to have studied MSA so that I explain everything in Arabic and avoid translation.
Back to what Edo said, Moroccan Arabic helps quite a lot in learning the Algerian one, mainly because of the teaching/learning material and resources. Most learners, if not all, need "some kind of resource on paper" to refer to, and that's what made my task harder. The only textbook we used had an inappropriate content (read: complex texts with no choice of everyday life conversations and activities). You can find it here: Spoken Algerian Arabic.
Even the Internet didn't offer any simplified material that I could adjust to their needs. I had to come up with simple topics and design some basic tasks or just teach them how to formulate questions and answer them. The only website I was lucky to find, and which contained basic stuff, was: Darja Projects. It is still active, but it seems that nobody added content to it. I, personally, planned on helping improve the content but still can’t focus on that for the moment.
Now, I would say: Yes, native English speakers can successfully learn Algerian Arabic, but…they need some other background. This means that, the one student who talked to me with ease using the Maghrebi dialect was the one who lived in Morocco for a while! There are loads of similarities in both dialects, and because he already got emerged into the Moroccan one, he was able to understand quite a lot of what I said. Writing was used only to explain some grammatical aspects on the board. Moreover, this same student masters transliteration, and it helped him learning (in distant communications) when there was no fixed code in Arabic!
As for the other students, they already spoke MSA (at least). They had some difficulties (mainly with the speed), but I just had to slow down and be patient with them. They succeeded in formulating sentences and exchange ideas, but needed some MSA to support their thoughts.
To cut a long story short, there’s not a huge deal of grammar to learn in order to communicate in the Algerian dialect. What one needs most of is vocab’. So, collecting some phrases and expressions at first and practicing their pronunciation is what I recommend to get used to the rhythm and intonation that Algerian speakers use.
I hope this helps a bit. Note that this is a summary of my experience. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Best,
Nawel