Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Courses Sibawayh Arabic Program 2018 19 Whitethread Institute

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.