<p>I want to become fluent in both Spanish and Levantine Arabic (spoken). I have already taken one Spanish class and I'm currently teaching it to myself. Should I take another Spanish class and get an Arabic tutor or should I continue teaching it to myself and take an Arabic class instead (which is in Modern Standard Arabic)? </p>
<p>Or should I learn Spanish in undergraduate school and arabic in graduate school?</p>
<p>I am aware that classes alone won't make me fluent and plan to study abroad in countries that speak the languages.</p>
<p>does your school have a study abroad program if you do arabic? where would you go?
my school is starting a study abroad program in jordan this year, but there doesn’t seem to be any language requirement.</p>
<p>i took a year of arabic, it was modern standard as well. there were two girls in my class, one was lebanese, the other palestinian. they both spoke, but couldn’t read or write. there are some differences between the dialects and modern standard. occasionally, when our professor would ask questions in class they would answer with words from their dialects. also, another thing is that some of the dialects are also written differently. </p>
<p>all that aside, i would take arabic, just because the barrier for entry is going to be much higher, since you have to learn how to read and write. the more time you spend learning it, the better.</p>
<p>Was arabic hard for you? Did you learn a lot in that one year?
I read somewhere online that it can take 5-7 yrs to learn it (MSA & a dialect) and I don’t want to spend that much time on it since I only want to learn how to speak and don’t really have an interest in reading and writing it.</p>
<p>I want to study abroad in either Syria or Palestine, and my school doesn’t offer it so I would have to use an outside program and see if my financial aid would transfer over.</p>
<p>i’m not so sure if you could take a class in school if all you wanted to do is learn how to speak. We spent the whole first semester learning how to read and write the alphabet. your best bet is probably just to find a study abroad program without a language requirement in the country that speaks the dialect you want to learn. you wouldn’t be forced to learn how to read or write, and could learn the language by just being in the country and going out and talking to people. </p>
<p>the first semester wasn’t hard, since it was only learning the alphabet and stringing letters together to form words. the second semester was much harder. we started putting words together to make sentences. there were a lot of grammar rules.</p>