One Thousand and One Nights: Introduction to Spoken Literary Arabic

Course Description

Course Description: Broken plurals, hollow verbs, absolute states, and... the source! What on earth do these things have to do with a language? Better yet, how can YOU use them? Here's an invitation to find out. The language of the One Thousand and One Nights, a form deriving from Classical Arabic, is a universe of its own: intricate yet elegant, polyphonic and harmonious. Just as Latin and Greek, Arabic, one of the major literary languages of the world, is sometimes considered grammatically complex and difficult to learn. For this reason, it is often taught in purely grammatical terms without the required amounts of proper spoken practice. Through the lens of the Arabian Nights, this course aims at offering a different approach, based on natural methods of language acquisition (TPR and storytelling) and the instructor's extensive experience teaching Greek and Latin as spoken languages. The goal of this introduction is to equip students with enough tools to grasp basic stories in Arabic about kings, thieves, genies and talking animals, through conversation. We will work our way through basic verb and noun morphology and syntax and core vocabulary. The texts used in class will be (very) abridged versions of longer stories found in the classic endless story cycle from the Middle Ages Level: This is an introductory course that will teach basic morphology, syntax and vocabulary Textbook: Instructor will provide materials.

Details

• Semester: Fall 2025
• Day: Sunday
• Time: 8:00 PM ET
• Duration: 60 minutes per session

Tuition

$0.01 per course

Availability

4 spots remaining out of 7

Cancellation Policy

Telepaideia tuition is non-refundable. However, if you need to cancel your enrollment or withdraw from your class, you may be eligible for a 50% credit to be used toward a future Telepaideia course. In order to be eligible for this credit, you must notify info@paideiainstitute.org of your withdrawal before the second class meeting has taken place.