History Lessons for Intermediate and Advanced Arabic Learners
In order to be truly fluent in a language, we have to be fluent in the culture as well. At Fi Kalam, we spend a lot of time talking about shows, music, and other pop culture subjects. One thing we probably don’t spend enough time talking about is history. Culture and history are two sides of the same coin - the people and events that make it into the history books are the ones that have shaped that particular place and region.
If you spent your schooling years outside of the MENA/SWANA region, you probably didn’t learn a lot about the region’s history. While you could struggle your way through a dense history textbook, we present you with an easier - and more fun - option in this post.
We’re kicking this post off with the YouTube channel, Jordanian Tells History with Arabic, and will be adding more resources to the list as we find them.
Jordanian Tells History with Arabic
Each video on this channel is 3-10 minutes long and tells the story of a historically significant event or concept. Most of the topics covered so far focus on the MENA/SWANA region, plus a few about events in Europe and the Americas too. For most intermediate to advanced Arabic learners, these videos will have a few new terms and phrases specific to the video topic but will be generally understandable on the first or second listen.
Pros:
The channel was created specifically for intermediate to advanced Levantine Arabic learners
All videos have on-screen, Jordanian Arabic captions and a full transcript in the video description
Videos provide historical context and lots of cultural learning along with the language learning
Cons:
Most images in the videos are AI-generated, which can be distracting and uncanny
English subtitles on the videos can’t be turned off
There seems to be a formatting error with a number of the transcripts in the video descriptions
