Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Courses Sibawayh Arabic Program 2018 19 Whitethread Institute
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The Sagne course is a Arabic refresher course that covers topics like theology, writing, and translating from Arabic to English. It is meant to help people understand the rules and build a foundation for a better English language. The course is designed to teach students to read the Arabic text and understand the nuances of writing in the language, covering everything from writing in Arabic to writing in English. The course is six hours long and covers everything from writing in Arabic to writing in English.
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So, I want to move on to the last course. Now this last course has
come from our experience over the last year with the other courses.
And what this was is that remember this was primarily supposed to be
a postgraduate Institute,
which means that you would have studied your Arima, Arima course.
And now you're going to come and further yourself in one of these
areas. So if you talk to people, we can jurisprudence, you will do
that theology, you will do that. And you will you will do more. I
mean, you weren't expected to know all of these theology things that
are mothers or mothers that can never cover all of these things,
they can cover some of these things, right. But they can't
cover all of these things. That's just impossible. Right?
What we discovered is that we've had a number of students who a few
who are unable to get a grasp of the text. Because mashallah, we
had some students who had studied and graduated maybe 10 years ago,
right, eight years ago, maybe even more, right, because we don't know
all of them when they graduated. But they become very rusty. Right?
So
Arabic, the lubob, for example, the Zulu Fakebook, it was quite a
challenge, because when you've been, especially a language, when
you've neglected a language for a while, you're going to become
rusty in a language. I mean, a lot of people have done Spanish at
school or French at school, and you're told to tell them to speak
French right now. And they probably can't write even if they
got an A, in their GCSEs, for that matter. So the same thing happens
if you don't use the language, then you're going to lose it. So
we found that these students were finding it really tough to
understand the language of the book. And some of them may have
been more recent graduates, but maybe weren't able to work hard
enough, or whatever the case was.
So now we've launched another course, which will, which is
called the SIBO. A course SIBO is obviously the famous Nahai, the
grammarian. Right? So don't get put off by the name. It's just a
nice name. But really what it is, is an Arabic refresher course,
what we mean is, we're not going to take you back to Nakamura, or
Miley was sovereign gets you to memorize all the gardens, right?
That's not the idea of the course. Right? The idea is that it's going
to start off with a kind of an overview of the main rule rules of
now and stuff, which you need on a practical level to deal with
texts. Right. So think the subject stuff,
we only want to do that for a few weeks at the beginning, just to
get people into it. And those who know that very well, they can
proceed on to the text, then we're going to start with a series of
texts. This is only about six to seven hours a week, most likely
it's going to be on a Saturday or a Sunday, we're still trying to
decide because there's different people want to do it at different
times where I don't think we're going to be able to do this in the
weekdays anymore. Because we don't have space here we've got several
courses running at the same time. So we're not going to have space,
most likely this is going to be a weekend course. Right? So either a
Saturday morning to early afternoon or Sunday morning early
often the idea of this is that you will get your
overview and our answer. Then we're going to put you on to the
text starting with things like Nef Hakalau, Rob, and going on to
Mortara and other texts will take selections of fake texts or soul
texts, Hadith texts, eventually, so that you build up slowly. A lot
of the work you're going to have to do in terms of really trying to
you're going to be given work, you know, to work out for the whole
week, use a dictionary told how to use the dictionary lexicon. And
I've been compiling I've been because I've been teaching for the
last two years, or last several years, but I've been compiling a
list of what I think are the most common pitfalls in translating
from Arabic into English. The reason is that Arabic is a totally
different language, forget the fact that it's written right to
left and English is written left or right. That's the That's a
minimal problem. The bigger problem is the idiom idioms, and
people will know that the min Barnea doesn't exist in English.
And so many people get lost in min Barnea versus the simplest issue,
right?
There are people who still translate the wall is thick enough
here in English there is no well enough here you don't have to
start every sentence with the end and end right but yet when a lot
of people are translating they're so literal, right? That every time
it's one hola we're this we're that it's that's supposed to be a
silent Wow, really? Because in English it doesn't make sense at
all to keep saying and and you know, your your English teacher
will probably cross that off the Why do you keep saying and for at
the beginning of a fresh sentence. The word in Arabic is just to show
you that this is a new sentence. You don't translate it. Every time
they come to a far they say so. And it doesn't work in English
because sometimes the fat is used to represent something else. I
don't I don't want to bore you with all of the details. But I
think
After, you know, testing a number of students and listening to them,
I think I figured out where the a lot of the pitfalls are. So what
we want, what we're trying to do is to get them to do a very
refined translation. The reason is that in Arabic,
if you've got the word
horror, Roger, and Harada and ista how Roger, and Roger,
they it's all about either exiting or taking someone out, or evicting
someone, or wanting somebody to be evicted. But if
it says it's stuck Raja, then it means to want somebody to come
out. And a lot of students don't appreciate the colossal blob,
right, which are the special characteristics of the particular
verb form. There's a reason why the author is going to say, the
Harada as opposed to hot Raja. Because the horology is trying to
come out there's a pretense aspect they are, there's an effort,
because Bob, the first rule is to show the Caliph. And I think this
is where a lot of students, what they do is they see, it's hotter,
it means going out. So they just do a rough translation related to
going out. And
they get by, and that's not right. Arabic is such a refined text that
you almost feel like these people are doing a crime by not
understanding the nuance of that particular aspect. So I think I've
got about 10 to 15 particular pitfalls, which inshallah we're
going to try to go through and get people to master. So they avoid
these things. And then Inshallah, you will see that it'll be smooth
sailing, right, we're going to try to get you to,
to think in Arabic. Because what's happening is that if you studied
in Urdu, then you will translate, you'll read the Arabic, people
read about it, they read the text, they don't understand what they're
reading, they read it first, and hope they get it right. And if the
Arabs are written, then they'll probably get it right. And if it's
written wrong, they'll get it wrong, then what they'll do is
they'll try to then translate it into order in their mind, then
from order, they'll try to translate into English. And I've
seen students who have not studied or do they've studied directly in
English, they're just still reading the text first, as though
it's some kind of
empty text, then they're trying to make sense of it. What we're
trying to do through this course, is to get you to read the text.
And think in Arabic, right. So as soon as you read it, you know what
it's talking about. And you know, if you don't know the meaning of
something, so you will go and check it up before you actually
move on to the next part, or you will understand it from the
context. So I think this is what we're this is to empower a person
to really get the Arabic really understand it, because without
that you're going to struggle. In your Hadith, you're going to
struggle in your Aqeedah books you're going to struggle with
there are just some common themes. Right? For example, in newly VA,
right, there's a term I remember from when we read in our first
year, right where you'll see ru WASC Roma, almost Tammen and be
Moogerah the infy Salah he annual jsrv
This Moogerah word, I mean, if you look in the dictionary, like
denuded unclothed, what's that got to do with this here?
But the word Moogerah means just merely purely from just so that's
an idiom of the Arabic language. And that's what I tried to explain
to people
which is trying to convey the Arabic idioms. So for example, in
English, we say, Have you tried it out?
A person who's learning English afresh, he's going to look at
tried it out, okay. Try means to attempt, tried it out, like get
out? Exit? How does that make any sense? They're going to stumble
over out. The only the reason why we have no problem with this is
because this is how we think. So the idioms are part of our normal
understanding of language, right? Because we've mastered and when
you can't do that to Arabic, the way they speak, for example, Jabba
Cahaba, I remember when I was in Syria,
you know, in English, we say, Do you like this? Do you like this?
Whereas in Arabic, they say, does that fascinate you?
Right? Well, you could say hello to a Buddha like but generally
they sell a book, right? Has that fascinated you? Like do you like
it? Right? As though that thing is doing all the all the work? So
that's just ways of understanding Arabic And believe me, if you just
understand these small issues, you will be able to master the Arabic
language. So that's what we're trying to focus on in this course
Inshallah, it's only about six, about six hours a week, right?
But, you know, in sha Allah that will give you that confidence and
I hope in sha Allah, so that's that's basically called the SIBO a
program because in sha Allah after that, in a fourth
Coming here, we in, we then intend for those who really enjoy the
Arabic, we intend to do an advanced selections of Arabic
texts.
So for example, we're going to deal with the maklumat al Hariri
the submarine, more alacarte. The one hermosa, the one with an A, B,
and
mahkamah, hurry, sorry, and
Mozart, right, and really, really appreciate the literature, really
understand the Arabic and the nuances and why a certain word has
been used in a particular place. For a jurist that is so important
because the the jurists, the fucky, who's writing the reason is
used and chosen a certain word has a number of benefits. That's why
he's chosen that word and not something else, because most of
our books they've been refined over the centuries. These are not
like first drafts that had been written arbitrarily. They've
actually been written and then probably refined so much that we,
that's why you hardly see a mistake in them these days, right?
And then they've been commented on and so on and so forth. So anyway,
I hope that gives you an understanding of what we're trying
to achieve by this, but this will be very useful for those people
who feel weak, but want to work hard in trying to develop the
Arabic language because without a solid foundation Arabic language,
you'll struggle with all of the sources that are in Arabic.