Learn Arabic tool ?

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

In recent browsing, I came across a tool which could help you learn other
languages called 'LaTrine'.

  http://www.godisch.de/debian/latrine

It has UTF-8 support and a GUI is being actively worked on as is noted on
the URL above (not sure the curses would work with Arabic due to shaping
requirements among other things, but its sure worth a try).  With our recent
release (and subsequent contact of freedict.de) about Arabic_Wordlist-0.5,

  http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Wordlist

latrine could really be useful for those looking to learn Arabic.  Its
certainly not your ideal learning tool (nothing a kid could use for
instance - no pictures, sound, etc) but it very much mimics a flash-card
system.  Alex, you had also mentioned that you have a similar working
module in emacs, right ?

Any takers in terms of testing the system out to generate some feedback ?
I'm wondering how much work is required to build a true learning medium
so that what is shown takes a form in which initial shown words are easy
(and common) which progressively get harder as opposed to a random showing
of a word.  In short, we need someone to dive into this and try it out.

Martin, any plans to 'ease' the learning process by including pictures,
hints, etc so that kids can be engaged (eg, show a picture of a ball and
have them type 'ball', etc) ?  Maybe include say 100-200 of the most common
words/phrases as a start or similar.

Are there other tools out there worth mentioning ?

Salam.

 - Nadim

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