Sunday

Learn Iraqi Dialect in 10 Minutes!

At least that's what this video promises. I actually learned a lot of words that I didn't know from this video and from asking some Iraqis all of these words are in common usage. I always like to make sure the words I'm learning are actually used. I used to flip through the Hans Wehr dictionary and memorize interesting words only to use them in conversation later and have the person I was talking to give me a blank stare. I stopped learning words from the dictionary after having this happen to me, say, a dozen times. Let's just say that the word مفلِّك doesn't seem to mean what good ole Hans Wher says it does.

As for the video, when I was watching it and I couldn't quite understand exactly what the meaning of a word was I just typed it into Google and looked at the images. For instance, I didn't know what a صنبور was so I typed it into Google and it gave me a bunch of pictures of water faucets. This method is really useful in learning a language, but sadly it's mostly only good for nouns and adjectives. If you search for abstract concepts the pictures aren't likely to help you with the meaning of the word.