I was looking at Rosetta Stone but not sure if they’d give me the Quranic references or backgrounds.
I was speaking to an aunt of mine who is also involved in this and she told me she got a learning set from IFT Chennai (Welcome to Islamic Foundation Trust - Chennai), by Dr. V. Abdur Rahim and they have pretty decent materials. She’s going to send me more info on what she has soon.
I’m sure there are many who has been thru this route. Can you give me a hint or 2 on venues that you may have taken or your experiences.
Rosetta Stone will probably teach you the current spoken Arabic. I doubt if you can really understand Quran by learning spoken arabic though it will be better than no knowing arabic at all.
Brother, you might want to try a local Islamic Center, if you are in the West. Usually there are elderly Arab speaking men who would be willing to give you lessons. I know that these lessons would be rather informal but you can learn based on the Quran.
Brother TLK is right. I think Rosetta Stone is modern standard arabic which might not be what you are looking for.
Quran has 1600 root words, repeated in many forms. about 1200 of them are used in Urdu in one form or the other.
For example , the word Rizq is used in Urdu , this word has been used in Quran at many places like Razaqoon , Razaqeen , rizqna , yarziqoo another example is word tazkia used in Urdu, this word is used in Quran in many of its forms.
I am telling you all that to encourage you to go for it . It is easy if you can read , write and speak Urdu fluently. You know most of the words already or you can recognize them pretty easily.
That being said the main thing to learn is the grammar of Arabic. For that you will have to memorize verb tables of Arabic.
Once you master those conjugations of Arabic Verbs it will become even easier for you to learn Quranic Arabic.
Visit this site for those tables, the site has audio for your ease. They sell the book and CD too. Sacred Learning - Traditional Islamic Learning
You can learn a lot of it by listening to Dr. Hashmi here. Taleem-al-Quran
Once you have mastered the grammar , pickup a copy of Quran which has word for word translation and read it frequently to broaden your vocabulary.
As you said , I have been through this route so I know.
Thanks guys. TLK, you are right in that learning any arabic can only help. Pak-One, that's the plan after learning starting arabic. To find a few people fluent in the language and chatter them up. Too bad I went for Spanish when I was younger and concentrated on spanish speaking people of the opposite gender :)
Mirch, thanks for the encouraging words. I do read/write Urdu so I'm hoping its going to be easier for me than my religious aunt, who doesn't.
The main question will be finding proper amount of time. Anyhow I hope I get enough patience to start and continue on this quest. Wish me luck.