Grammar vs Vocabulary

[faisal ahmad]

How important is each?

Is too much emphasis placed on grammar in Arabic courses?

Other languages appear to put a much greater emphasis on vocabulary...

[umaza]

Vocabulary is needed to understand and speak, but grammar is needed to fully understand.

Classical Arabic cannot be spoken correctly without knowing grammar, and Qur'an cannot be understood to it's maximum human understanding by vocabulary alone

Other languages don't need grammar because they lack a scripture or book of such magnificence

[godilali]

Have a look at the following site:
http://www.arabic-studio.com/how_to_learn_arabic.html

I have met one of the brothers who runs the site and his Arabic is phenomenal.

[faisal ahmad]

Part of an interesting article:

Pitfalls to Avoid

Unfortunately, many brothers find that they hit a brick wall in terms of learning Arabic in spite of having made some effort to learn. Often times, this is more a matter of how they tried to learn than of how hard they tried to learn. Many brothers will try and study some of the standard Arabic texts for learning grammar such as al-Ajrumiyyah . While al-Ajrumiyyah is a beneficial book without a doubt, studying and mastering al-Ajrumiyyah and other texts like it is not enough to be able to understand the Arabic language. Remember, all you really need to get started is an understanding of the basic workings of Arabic grammar. Much more important is gaining the vocabulary.

We must keep in mind that those who usually study these grammar texts are Arabs. They have spoken Arabic their whole lives. They are already capable of reading and understanding books in Arabic.

Once, I ran into a brother who was asking me for advice on learning Arabic. He had some understanding, but was unable to read books. When I asked him where exactly he was in terms of his Arabic, he began to explain to me how he had studied al-Ajrumiyyah twice with his “shaykh.” And now he was going to be studying some other grammar text with him, yet he could not even read books. Initially, when I tried to advise him that he should work on his vocabulary and not really worry anymore about grammar, he remonstrated, “No, you see, I'm studying it with my shaykh.” I kept telling him, “Yes, but I have never studied it at all and I read Qur'an, the books of Hadith, the books of the scholars such as ibn Taymiyyah and ibn ul-Qayyim,” but he would only respond with, “No, you see, I am studying it with a shaykh.” Finally, after a lengthy exchange filled with the refrain “but I am studying it with a shaykh,” he finally began to realize that his real deficiency was in vocabulary.

This is a dilemma that many brothers fall into. They will study different grammar texts in their quest to improve their Arabic. They will sometimes even know far more grammar than I could ever know or care to know even, yet they can hardly pick up a book and read. Remember, beyond a rudimentary understanding of the grammar, what you really need is to develop vocabulary. Read basic books with the assistance of the Hans Wehr dictionary and in time you will find that you have made tremendous progress, if Allah wills. This may seem a tedious way to learn the language; that is because it is. However, it is also the only way.

http://abdurrahman.org/arabic/learningarabic.html

[Sunni_Student786]

Have a look at the following site:
http://www.arabic-studio.com/how_to_learn_arabic.html

I have met one of the brothers who runs the site and his Arabic is phenomenal.

Would that brother happen to be Saqib Hussain?

[uber_mensch]

How important is each?

Is too much emphasis placed on grammar in Arabic courses?

Other languages appear to put a much greater emphasis on vocabulary...

I first learnt arabic conversationally. It made no sense because I didn't know why a thing was in the indefinite nasb state, or what damma means. It was more frustrating this way because you have no rules to explain something that is so foreign to a european language.

So learning grammar later, I considered that it would have been much better to learn grammar first, with the vocabulary that you learn as part of learning grammar, then later to focus on speech.

I found, in terms of reading and aquiring words, reading riyadh as saliheen is helpful. Since the sections are divided based on what the topic is, the words get repeated a lot and you eventually aquire words that way.

[Sunni_Student786]

..
I found, in terms of reading and aquiring words, reading riyadh as saliheen is helpful. Since the sections are divided based on what the topic is, the words get repeated a lot and you eventually aquire words that way.

Thank you for this wonderful insight.

Care to take a stab at my question in this thread? http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/show...d-ut-Taalibeen