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Today: consumption kills eco-systems; fraud, greed, grand larceny and theft bring down world's finances; deceit, infidelity and instant gratification destroy families; murders and wars have left us without peace or stability. On top we have droughts, earthquakes, floods, storms, tsunamis … has the world gone mad! Submit now to Allah before it is too late - to the One and Only God, the Creator, Lord and Sustainer of the universe, Unique in His Person and Actions, without any blemish, weakness or relatives. Follow the Sunnah of Muhammad (the last Messenger and Prophet - upon whom be the peace and blessings of Allah), and join those who will be the really successful ones.

see end of page for buttoned useful links

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

another site for Arabic

Try this site:

http://www.happychild.org.uk/freeway/arabic/index.htm

Monday, February 15, 2010

Arabic Verb Conjugators

When learning Arabic, verbs are considered the most difficult. There are two sites that allow one to create conjugation of Arabic verbs from the root letters:

The first site is: http://qutrub.arabeyes.org/index#options The free downloadable qutrub software is beta version. I have found some verbs that are in the Quran and textbooks of classical Arabic, but qutrub sometimes gives the message:


Strangely, sometimes it continues to provide the conjugation for the allegedly gheir-saleh verb, and sometimes it does not. However, in overwhelming cases, the qutrub software, is good.

This site does not require one to have a knowledge of the type of verb. One can type the root letters with or without the vowels. In the latter case, if there are are more possibilities of vowels, the program gives a drop down list of the allowed combinations.

If one enters an invalid combination of letters or vowels, the program informs that the verb being sought is incorrect. Sometimes this looks like a false alarm, which may be due to an incorrect copy-paste. A new typing from the keyboard of the verb removes the false alarm. The root letters are not limited to three, and one can enter 4-letter and 5-letter roots as well. One drawback is that the interface is entirely in Arabic. One can also download a beta version of qutrub 0.5 which is a stand-alone small program, making it possible to work off-line. I prefer the off-line version. Here is part of website page:


and now look at part of a tasreef view from the stand-alone qutrub program:


The second site is: http://acon.baykal.be/ 

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

kalamullah.com


Friday, February 05, 2010

UQ verb example from ppt

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Mesbahul Quran: مصباح القرأن

The organisation baitul Quran has more publications than the ones shown on its website: bait-ul-quran.org

These are for understanding the Quran without using terminology of Arabic Grammar. The language of teaching is Urdu. There are two main publications:

1. meftahul Quran, which describes the function of various indicators (alamaat) in a word, and how each indicator is used in the Quranic Arabic. The indicator (alamat) is shown in red.

  • Black is used for Quran words that are also used (in original or derived form) in Urdu, hence an Urdu user is familiar with these words. These comprise approximately 65% of the Quranic words.
  • Blue is used for those Arabic words that are not used in Urdu, but are very frequently used in the Quran. This frequency makes it possible to remember them with their meanings.
  • Red is used for those words that are quite new for Urdu users, and need to be learnt with some effort. These are about 15% of the words in the Quran.

2. mesbahul Quran, which is a series of Quran juzz (paras) in three colors. One the left page:

On the opposing page the words are broken up in boxes, using three colors:
  • Red for using one indicator (alamat)
  • Blue for a second indicator (alamat) if used in the same word
  • Black for the normal remaining portion of the word.
Thus composition of each word is clearly visible in different colors.  The translation follows the same colors.

After the understand Quran short course  (levels 1 and 2), I am now going for reading the Quran with the help of these publications. Classes will start on Feb 8th, inshalllah. Although I am still struggling with levels 1 and 2, this level 3 will inshallah allow me to make an effort for covering the previous levels as well.

Allah's Quran and tanzil.info

Allah's Quran



and tanzil.info are two sites that provide the Quran is various Arabic scripts/fonts, translations of the meanings, recitations, searches, etc. Admittedly these are also provided by many other sites, some with a greater variety than in these two sites. However, an attractive feature of these two is search by roots.

There is a database of roots on both these sites. By selecting a root and hitting the search button, one gets the ayahs containing words derived from these roots. These words are displayed in red. The tanzil.info site also has other refined search capabilities.

The Quran Corpus

The Quran Corpus is an annotated linguistic resource which shows the Arabic grammar, syntax and morphology for each word in the Holy Quran. Clicking on an Arabic word shows details of the word's grammar, or a correction may be suggested. One of the features is the Quranic Syntactic Treebank. An example is given below:





Another example is:

Friday, January 29, 2010

Understand Quran the easy way

understandquran.com claims to teach most of the Arabic of the Quran (more than 70% words) without using too much grammatical terms, in 52 lessons. Two supporting sites provide practice of the 80% words and are:

Previous claims were for more than 80% words, hence the names of these two supporting sites.
    understandquran.com uses modern methods of teaching: audio, video, powerpoint presentations and printed or pdf files for the lessons. The key is total physical interaction, and frequent revision until one has a fair grasp.

    The short course, comprises two participatory sessions of 10-12 hours each. Level-1 covers 25 lessons. Similar hours are needed in Level-2 for the remaining 27 lessons. These can be broken down into sessions of lesser durations (e.g. 20-30 minutes for one lesson), for those who find the intensity overwhelming. The level-1 course was initially conducted in Ramadan this way, and now has been offered in several places over weekends as intensive sessions.

    The Basic course contains 50 main lessons, of 25 minutes duration each. 10 revision lessons follow the main ones. It is the older course, which had a book and CDs with it containing wmv files featuring Dr AbdulAziz AbdurRaheem teaching the course. It formed the basis for division (with some modifications) into the level 1 and 2 short courses.

    Short course levels 1 and 2 also have books and powerpoint presentations and are much improved versions, but any wmv files they have are not to my liking. The short course level 1 is being taught on peacetv. In Pakistan it is currently being aired at 11:30 pm. Here is a mention of this on the peactv site:

    Aao Qur'an Samjhein
    IST 22:30 23:00
    KSA 20:00 20:30

    http://www.peacetvurdu.org/our_speakers.htm

    I haven't so far seen this on TV, but if you want to watch PEACE TV tune into anyone
    of the following :-

    INTELSAT 10 (PAS 10)

    Position: 68.5 East,
    Frequency: 4116,
    Symbol Rate: 8145,
    FEC: 3/4,
    Polarization - Vertical.
    Reach: Asia, Middle East,
    Australia and Africa

    If you possess a personal Private Dish then please tune into above new frequency, alternately request your cable operator or DTH provider to include 'Peace TV' and mention them they are absolutely free to air channels.

    Here is a page showing a verb conjugation template.

    Saturday, April 11, 2009

    Quranee Urdu, or Urdu words from the Quran

    The easier it is here, the more difficult it will be in the Hereafter

    we born Muslims did not have to struggle with having to search for the truth, except may be in a superficial way. Being brought up as Muslims we could always see the wrong in other aqeedas. There is a downside, for all will be asked what action they took on the knowledge they possessed.

    Some take it to mean we should not try to gain knowledge - if we do not know, we won't be asked about it, but that is wrong. We will be taken to task for not trying to learn.

    Those who understand Arabic will have a harder time. Those of us who have a language close to Arabic, will also have to explain why we did not try to learn it.

    Subhanallah. There is good news for those who can understand, read and write Urdu:

    Urdu is similar to Hindi. Both were indistinguishable, except for the script. Urdu became closer to Arabic because of incorporating the script, but retaining a few letters of the alphabet for sounds peculiar to its Indian origin.

    A book called "Quranee Urdu" has just come out by Col. Aashiq Hussain. He has spent his life in the education corps, with Urdu, Arabic and linguistics as his passion. He claims that 94% of the words in the Quran are in use in Urdu in some derived form or the other (sometimes the meanings are different from the Quranic ones).