Links, links, links...

Proof I've been a terrible blogger this summer: I had links from July stored in a "to be blogged" file on my browser. D'oh. Anyway, I culled them, and these two were still worth posting:

( Cute children bloggers and depressing Palestinian politics )

And now, on to some actually contemporary links! Le sigh.

( Social media, post-conflict women's philanthropy, political pop music, and women and Park51 )

And, since watching the Shatha Hassoun video sent me down a rabbit hole of Arabic pop on YouTube, let me just close by linking to Ah W Nuss (Yes and a Half) and Ya Salam (...Oh peace, literally? but it's just an interjection? Translating song titles is hard) by Nancy Ajram, with English subtitles.

So You Want to Learn Arabic On Your iPhone/iPad

I wrote about my trouble getting Arabic learning software for my iTouch 2.0 in a previous post. However, I am very happy to say that the recent releases of the iOS do support Arabic. This has lead to a large number of apps that can help with Arabic learning...and I figured it behooved me to review them. You know. For the sake of the internet. Stop laughing.

Some caveats:

• I've been studying Arabic, off and on, for about a decade now. My major deficit is in vocabulary; I can go through, say, a newspaper article, and tell you what part of speech half the words are, and how to vowel them (Arabic, like Hebrew, doesn't write most of its vowels; most vowels are predictable by grammar), but I could only tell you what 5-10% of them are without a dictionary. That makes practicing with real texts a real pain in the butt, let me tell you. So I'm concentrating on vocabulary-building apps, rather than ones teaching grammar.
• This also means that I already know and am reasonably fluid at reading the Arabic alphabet. I looked at a few alphabet apps, but my judgement on them is that of someone very far out from the actual learning of the alphabet.
• I have an iTouch, and my wife has an iPad. I've tested most of these on the iPad, even the iPhone-only apps. Most apps that are made to run on the iPhone/iTouch can also run on the iPad, but they run smaller (you know, the size of an iPhone). But they can definitely still be used.
• I was doing this in the US; all prices in USD, all apps available in the US App Store. No idea what's available elsewhere.
• I've only tested the free versions of apps. Most of them have a pay-upgrade available, with access to more words. I indicate whether or not I would pay for the app.

( Apps for all! )