I read this in an online book shop
Based on the cumulative experience of three leading teachers of Arabic as a foreign language, Kalaam Gamiil builds and develops communicative skills in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, along parallel tracks of vocabulary and grammar. It is designed for students who have reached the lower intermediate level of Modern Standard Arabic
Ah, but to be able to listen to Fauda without using any subtitles would be very nice.
Well, all I can say is: you guys have completely $%&§_ed up my plans for the next 10 years!
I had packed up all of my language resources for Arabic (and a ton of other languages) and put them in an attic room. I had literally done that! I was planning to put languages aside and to maybe focus only on Romance and Germanic languages at some point in the future. Thanks to Steve , I just had to take the Arabic right back out again…yeah…and get stuck back into it!
Nice one Steve! :-0
you can look at this guy he is one of the better arabic teachers i have learned the arabic caligraphy and alfabet from watching him
Lesson 1 Arabic from the Beginning - YouTube is
Hi Steve. I was really excited when you started Hebrew and visited Israel. That’s what I’m learning now. Now I feel disappointed that you “never really got into it”. Why did you drop Hebrew without getting into it at all?
I think Steve kind of answers this in his video? I think he sees Arabic (perhaps particularly the Arabic script) as a first step from which he can eventually go on to learn languages like Farsi, Urdu, etc. Of course, learning Hebrew would - in a similar way - potentially lead him on to Jiddisch. But he seems to have chosen the Arabic route.
For my part, I also want to read Hebrew (Ancient Hebrew especially) but there is something tremendously compelling about Arabic. Of all the languages that I have dabbled with over the last decade, it was the one that really gripped me…for some reason…
EDIT
What I mean: it’s exotic, complex, hard, challenging, yet one senses that it could be mastered with the right approach and the right investment of time. In the case of Slavic languages (for example) there are things like aspectual usage and numerous irregularities of case inflection pattern which seem to present layer upon layer of difficulty - and for a pig-headed perfectionist like me that just saps motivation eventually. (It’s just my personal take on it, of course.)
The random assignment of agreement of gender agreement/non-agreement for adjectives and nouns used with numbers may not be to your liking. At least Russian has a system, with exceptions.
There are lots of videos on youtube from people that speak Arabic and Hebrew demonstrating how similar they are. I don’t know Arabic, but I can say that the Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) is really not difficult at all. So I think it would be easier to learn Hebrew first. (But I’m no expert.)
By the way, if you’re interested in ancient Hebrew, here is a great website that has all the writings of the Jewish Bible in text and very good audio with great pronunciation.
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/index.htm
Hi Steve, you had at least two previous posts saying that your journey into Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages will include Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and Turkish. But you offhandedly said that you dropped Hebrew without really getting into it at all. Can you please explain why you suddenly dropped Hebrew and even removed it as a goal?
Thanks for the link.
Well, if a high degree of regularity is a thing, I guess one should go for Turkish 
Seriously though, there are without doubt some hard points to Arabic - these broken plural thingies don’t fill me with much of a warm glow either. But…I dunno…I always found, and still find, that whole chunks of Arabic (from Linguaphone MSA at the moment) stick surprisingly easily in my mind. I can just recall them at random times of the day. Maybe it’s just something about me? Maybe I find it easier to tune into Arabic than, say, Russian - just for some weird personal reason? I dunno…
NEW YOUTUBE FROM STEVE:
@Steve
I see you’re using Assimil Arabic as well as LingQ. I would urge you to consider getting Linguaphone Arabic too https://www.linguaphone.co.uk/language/arabic.html (i.e. the one with 10 CDs)
It’s considerably better than Assimil for this language. That’s not just my opinion, BTW, Prof Arguelles says: “…this particular course was my passport to this language, I consider it to be the best single approach for getting started in Arabic…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujRgmG0uAqE (see from 5:12 onwards)
The great thing with Linguaphone Arabic: although the main text is (of course) written in fully voweled Arabic script, there is a separate transliteration book which contains everything in Latinised form with a parallel English translation. This does allow one to make inroads into learning the language while still learning the script - something which, as you say, is a tough longterm job.
Also the speakers have nice diction, and it is spoken at (IMO) a nice pace - not too fast but not too slow for a beginner.
(When you think about it learning the script separately and at a slower pace is surely a no-brainer? Arab children don’t learn to read and write until they can already speak and understand. For that matter, neither do children learning any language.)
if you can read IPA i find this chart very helpful Arabic letters
and the comprehensive chart if anyone is interested Arabic letter reference chart by Mattias Persson
I have a fair number of books at home. I am heading back there tomorrow and will see what I have. I suspect it is already a lot. Linguaphone is a bit pricey, too.
Well, if the price is a thing, you do see them second hand on Ebay from time to time (although these are often on cassette rather than CD, so they have to be digitised.)
I dunno, I wouldn’t have thought you are a guy who is short of cash, Steve! 
Has anyone used jamalon.com for hard copy books in Arabic? I would really like both Yacoubian Building and Crime in Ramallah, rtf would be better of course… I just started reading the english translation of Yacoubian building, it really is very good.
You are a business man Mr.Kaufmann, I often see you making language decisions based on pricey, expensive, not cheap etc…
Don’t we all make decisions based on comparing prices? You don’t have to be a businessman to do that: it is common sense!
True. But if you simply want the best resources for autodidatic mastery of the elements in Arabic, and you are a relatively wealthy guy (like Steve) then price is likely going to be less of an issue - at least within reason.
Looks like Amazon is finally moving on self-publishing in Arabic http://www.arabnews.com/node/1212466/books