Learn Arabic 201: The Man Who Killed My Father

April 19, 2010 · Filed under WTF · Tagged Books, Education, Learn Arabic, أكل الولد التفاحة

Imagine the scene:

You want to learn Arabic, you find an old teach yourself Arabic book, you open a random page, and the first example you read is “The man whom my father killed”

The man who killed my father – الرجل الذي قتل ابي

WFT? Talking about perpetuating stereotypes.

(A new category on this blog is added for the occasion)

Coincidence? Not really, the book is filled with examples about killing, and being killed.

Here are some examples quickly found:

Teach Yourself Arabic – A. S. Tritton

Your daughter has died – إن ابنتك قد ماتت

أنكهنيها ??

Zaid was killed – قتل زيد

The man who killed my father – الرجل الذي قتل ابي

Rasheed died – مات الرشيد

He had sworn, he will kill – قد حلف ليقتلن

The man who killed my father – الرجل الذي قتل ابي

Can someone provide an explanation? What happened to the famous the boy ate the apple? أكل الولد التفاحة ?

Here is the cover from the book (no date was found, 1943?)

Teach Yourself Arabic – A. S. Tritton

Here is a review from Arabic-Studio:

In short Tritton’s Teach Yourself Arabic is not the best book to start learning Arabic from.
Having said that, it is a wonderful supplement to use alongside another textbook (…).
The vocabulary and exercises are much more classical in tone (although unfortunately the grammar points covered in each chapter aren’t consistently tested in the exercises) and broken plurals are given right from the start.

Really? is that the major problem? broken plurals?

In the same spirit, enjoy that clip from Russel Peters: “The media f*** with your heads”

Update: Do you think of the “All non-human plurals take the singular feminine adjective” rule as sexist?