Frustrated with lack of Iraqi Arabic resources

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Hey folks,

I was wondering if anyone here has had success brute forcing a language using LingQ. By brute forcing, I mean jumping straight from beginner materials into the deep ocean of native-level content, without much in-between.

I’ve been committed to learning Iraqi Arabic for about six months now. My main goal is to connect with my partner’s family when I (hopefully) meet them next year. So far, I’ve made quite a bit of progress:

Practicing with my partner

Working through the old but extensive A Basic Course in Iraqi Arabic from the 60s (very dry and old school, but thorough)

Slogging through a massive Anki deck I found online (with difficulty and lots of mnemonics)

Using Mango Languages as a supplementary course

The biggest frustration I’m facing is the lack of material to bridge the gap between beginner content and native-level content. I’ve been importing transcripts from the DLI continuation course into LingQ and also pulling in YouTube videos from 1001TV (highly recommend—some videos actually have Iraqi Arabic subtitles, which is incredibly rare).

I’m slowly starting to get a feel for the language, but there are still so many unknown words. I can’t tell if I’m just being impatient, or if this is an inefficient approach.

I’ve also been tempted to switch to Egyptian Arabic because the resources are so much more plentiful. For example, there’s a great Glossika course (which I’ve successfully used for Italian and Russian). I even find Egyptian pronunciation way
easier. Part of me wonders if I could build proficiency in Egyptian and then gradually substitute in Iraqi-specific words when needed (I know—this is an unusual strategy).

Ultimately, my goal is to communicate effortlessly with my partner’s family, but I also have a genuine passion for Arabic language, culture, and history.

I’ve learned Italian and Russian before, and the process felt much more straightforward because those languages are so standardized. (Funnily enough, I ran into the same problem when I tried to learn Neapolitan—resources were basically nonexistent apart from one book from the 80s.)

Has anyone else here had success learning a language with very limited resources? Or used LingQ to brute force comprehension? I’d love to hear about your experiences or any advice you might have. Honestly, I could use a bit of motivation.

Thanks in advance!

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Yeah, I tried this with Hebrew.
For me, I need a lot of beginner level videos on YouTube so I can listen to it for hours a day.
The problem is, that doesn’t exist in Hebrew. I think it’s Piece of Hebrew that has some great beginner level stuff and a few others, Hebrew Pod 101, but realistically it was going to be listening to 5 videos non-stop and that was going to drive me nuts. There’s tons of intermediate to advanced for Hebrew, but getting there? Ouch.
Some I was only taking a tour of the language and not full on dedicated - I wanted to get a sense of how it was going to go: I stopped after a month and some.
If I were to do it again I would stick to mini-stories in LingQ, learn them backwards and forwards. There’s also the Greetings stories by LingQ and I would hammer on those until I could memorize them. Not saying it would be fun but doable.
Also, I would generate stories with ChatGPT, just tell is CEFR level A1 or whatever level you are aiming for. Also watch Steve’s video on Googles NotebookLM - I use that to output your Iraqi Arabic (hopefully it can!) and generate CEFR level appropriate stuff. People do that all that time and upload some of that to YouTube, no reason you can’t do it as well.
Anyways, just my two cents worth of suggestions, and good luck!
Arabic is on my target list - but it’s years off right now, hopefully things are better then.

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Hey Josh,

It’s not perfect, and there’s a lot of rubbish on there, but I’ve done my best to make an Iraqi dialect course. You can find it here: Login - LingQ .

I also collected many Defence Language Institute Iraqi Arabic resources here: Login - LingQ - unsurprisingly Iraqi Arabic is well represented in their catalogue…..

My wife is Iraqi, and I’ve learnt both Fus7a and Iraqi as my main ways of Arabic communication. It’s a great dialect that’s widely understood but also has it’s own amazing quirks and history.

Away from LingQ I would recommend the following YouTube Channels as good sources of Iraqi dialect materials: https://www.youtube.com/@IRAQIPodcast (the Iraqi podcast - short 10 ish minutes each episode on a variety of topics) and: https://www.youtube.com/@thealliraqipodcast6863 (The “All Iraqi Podcast” - a conversation between 2 friends mostly about politics, history and current affairs, it’s a bit more masculine and a bit more politically incorrect, but they’re speaking Baghdadi Arabic for an hour or 2 a time).

As you probably know, broadly speaking, Iraqi is split into 2 main sub dialects. One is Geltu and one is Qeltu (taken from the pronunciation of “I said” in each dialect). Again, broadly speaking, Geltu is a southern and central dialect (Basra, Baghdad etc.,) as well being the main dialect of rural areas. Qeltu is more northern (Mosul, Tel Afar etc.,).

Interestingly, the main theory behind the difference is when the Mongols killed pretty much everyone in Baghdad in the 1258 it had to be repopulated with Arabic speakers from rural areas, resulting in a mainly rural Geltu accent. Whereas the Qeltu accent was traditionally a more Jewish or Christian dialect, who were not killed by the Mongols in such great numbers - this spread to be the main dialect of Urban areas of the northern areas.

That being said, everyone can code switch to the Baghdadi accent when needed and it’s widely understood across the country - that’s the one you might want to go for in terms of ease of access.

Hope this can be useful to you.

Kind regards,

Tom

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Hey man. So sorry for the late response I only just saw your response. Thank you so much for your generosity and your insight!

I would love to pick your brain a bit around how you went about learning it. I have been going hard at it for close to a year now (with a few bumps along the way trying to find resources etc) I’m trying to learn Fusha and Iraqi simultaneously, I’m some ways one actually helps the other and it’s satisfying to be a able to dip my toes into literature but in other ways it’s an immense undertaking.

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Yes, I brute forced with Icelandic (before LingQ existed) and eventually got to C1 level after a few years. I had the same issue as you, there was almost no content whatsoever I could even practice or learn with – of course there is much more out there nowadays. So at the time, a lot of what I learned from was like 1920s newspaper articles I found for free online on archive sites. I also found a few recipes and knitting patterns I struggled to learn with. I learned using a method almost exactly the same as what LingQ uses.

It IS possible. But it takes a lot of time and is very frustrating, as you have found out.

Since your partner speaks it, I would see if they can even write some texts for you, or help you order something. Children’s books and materials for foreigners aren’t necessarily easier than standard materials meant for adults. In fact the former types of materials can even be harder to understand because they use less words and contain less context clues for the rest of the sentence.

The other method someone mentioned here also works well. If there is another dialect or language similar enough, but which is easier to understand or has more practice materials, learn that first and then switch back to the other dialect. For example I found that Faroese and Scandinavian were both easier for me to learn than Icelandic, so I switched to those for a bit and when I eventually returned to Icelandic I found my comprehension was much better.

Now I’m learning Ukrainian which is hard to find decent resources for despite being a huge language. So I have gotten chatgpt to write or rewrite texts for me, and have found children’s books for free to read online and I copy the words into LingQ, stuff like that. I also try to read about subjects I’m already familiar with which are using loanwords from English, such as computing or American news events.

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thats so true. i have been toying with the idea of just diving into levantine arabic which has WAY more learning resources out there, Anki decks, graded material even the ministories on linq. Levantine Arabic and Iraqi Arabic share about 85 percent of the same vocabulary, the huge difference is in pronunciation. so it’s comparable to maybe learning Spanish in place of Portuguese. The funny thing is my partner pretty much fully understands levantine Arabic.

My idea was to get to a solid level in Levantine (adapting the pronunciation almost ‘Iraqifying’ it before bridging to Iraqi material once i’m more comfortable in Arabic in general. In fact i already know a huge amount of common vocabulary in Iraqi especially the common terms and phrases that differ from Levantine. Not sure why i have never really done this i guess i have just been too hard on myself and would feel like i’m giving up lol.

In your experience have you found that you have deliberately had to ‘practice’ output in your target language to get better at speaking (reverse flash cards drills etc) or is it enough just get massive amounts of input and slowly your speaking ability will catch up.

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