Dear users,
I am trying to learn Sudanese Arabic. I appreciate that this dialect is not as common as others and therefore more challanging to learn. I’m having a lot of troubles in finding good resources for listening and to consume content. There are some online videos from youtube, I also have some podcast, but unluckily the dont come with any translation and I am not at the level of translating them on my own. When I import them into LingQ, the AI just gets it wrong. The arabic transcript is wrong and also the translation is not accurate. What can I do?
I am trying to find a sudanese person/ sudanese speaking person that would like to do a language exchange with me - I can teach you English, Italian or Spanish and help you with any content and maybe you can help me translate videos and learn from them.
Thanks a lot
I hope theres somebody out there to help me! Or anybody with some ideals or resources I still havent found - I have the books, I have some websites but I am going nowhere without consuming more content and improve listening skills.
I lived and worked in Sudan and can understand the dialect reasonably well. As you say there aren’t a lot of resources available and when you import them into LingQ often the translations are a bit weird, because it frames it within Fus7a.
I have had some success in using a webpage to turn YouTube videos into MP3 files and then importing them into LingQ. I do this with Arabic, as Whisper AI (the tool LingQ uses) is reasonably good at all dialects, not just Sudani. There are some great podcasts about life, society and politics in the Sudanese dialect you can access. I am happy to share some of them.
So I would advise you that this is the way to go, and it’s what I do when trying to learn a new dialect. You can also access the DLI Sudanese Arabic catalog which has many hours of Sudanese content spoken by native speakers. I’ve imported many of these into LingQ and created a collection, though again the translation quality is doubtful on some of them.
I haven’t had too much luck in finding language-sharing partners. I do know (and use) the services of a great Sudanese guy who is on Italki for the Sudani dialect. His prices are very reasonable and he’s very engaging and likeable.
Send me a DM if you want to know more, I am happy to share my experiences.