Script

Word Recognition

Here's an interesting fact: people read words as symbols. The brain doesn't sound out words by reading the individual letters; it reads the entire unit as a symbol that it has to recognize as having a particular meaning.

What does this mean for Arabic? Well, for now, it means that you don't actually need to be able to write a word in script to be able to recognize it. That doesn't mean that we want you to learn to read all of the vocabulary words in Arabic script. We just want to challenge you to choose one or two words in Arabic script that you can learn to recognize, and then look for those words throughout the lesson. What we want is for you to train yourself now to pay attention to Arabic script. Relying too much on transliteration will hurt you later.

So, let's see. You already know باب "door" and يا "O". Why not add something else simple to your reading repertoire, such as ما "what" or بيك "to you" or أنا "I" or اسمي "my name"?

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