Customer Reviews

Alif is for Asad: Discover the Arabic Alphabet [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am an American born Egyptian. So basically Arabic is my "second" language. I know the alphabet and how to speak fluent Arabic, and my children can speak it well too, but they are lacking in many aspects of the language.

I had it better, since my parents spoke primarily Arabic, but unfortunately for my children, I have a tendency to lapse into English, and I have passed that trait on to my Arab born husband.

So, to find a solution for my children's dilemma, I decided to buy some Arabic videos for them. I am sad to say, the quality of this video is totally lacking. The sound quality is definitely not stereo, the animation and context of the video is mediocre at best. Suffice to say, all the Arabic children's videos I have purchased have been severely lacking in QUALITY.

But, in a country where Arab Americans are such a minority, we must resort to these low standard publications. But, it does its job, my children have learned the alphabet from it. And the rest is up to us, their parents.

When i first got the movie for a present i thought it would would be babyish. But when i first saw it i thought it was very well done. It has great new ideas of how to make learning the alphabet in a little more than no time. Whoever Shaib Al-barzinji is, i'd say he did a pretty good job. The reason i didn't give it 5 stars is because of the last song. I'd give that one a 3 stars. But everything else is great!!!

Considering the lack of Arabic video options, this is not a bad start. I would like to see companies develop even more sophisticated videos for these languages of the Near and Middle east, many of which have no - NO - VHS representation (especially Hindi and Urdu which have a large # of U.S. speakers). My 3 1/2 year old likes the video and asks for it on occasion, although we have much more sophisticated videos of other languages that are more immersion-style which she requests more often. The 1 1/2 year old will also sit and watch for long periods (15 mins or more). International Baby 101 is the best in this category I have ever run across (Japanese/English).

Anyway, the producers of Alif is for Asad have tried really hard to copy the Sesame St. format,with mixed results. As one reviewer mentioned, it is NOT an immersion-style method but simply orientation to the alphabet. Some of the songs are okay, some are really lame... the best segment is really engaging funky-type number with animation sequences spelling all the letters. That was the only really clever segment in the 30 mins. of video. There is light emphasis on Islamic concepts - they prefer to stay away from that, only occasionally mentioning it. (My favorite one - the funky song says "Dal is for Deen the religion we need") There are no overt Islamic references - no hijabists, no skull caps, no Namaaz scenes etc., so it is very appropriate for use in a non-Muslim environment. Interestingly, there are also no women of adult age in the video. All narration and vocals by adults are male. I guess the producers never read the research that children respond better to adult female voices ;-) There must be some dialect differences because some of the letters like Saad are pronounced differently by different children in the different segments.

[...]

My daughter is two-and-a-half years old and she loves this video. Not only that, she is actually learning the arabic alphabet already. This is a wonderful video especially for parents who want their kids to get an early start on learning the Arabic alphabet. I have recommended it to all of my friends.

My two year old daughter loved it, she already learned the English & Spanish alphabet, with this tape she learned the Arabic Alphabet and some times she will only eat while watching the tape.Excellent introduction to Arabic Alphabet.

My high school students ask to watch this video and ask where they can buy it. They particularly like the alphabet song and they enjoy watching the children being formed into letters. At a time when more people should learn this world-wide language, this is a nice intro to the sound of its letters.

I bought this for my nephew(age 2). He loved it! He could not get enough and asked to watch it repeatedly. He was also able to learn the alphabet in just a short time. Several of my friends have had similar results. A year later he still watches it.

my 2 year old loves this video. The music gets their attention as it is catchy. We even ended up learning a lot of arabic words. My only complaint is that there is only one video of its kind. They really ought to release some more dealing with arabic numbers, and other themes to make it a more complete learning tool.

My dad bought me this movie and it was just terrific! With cool animations and fun songs I learned the Arabic alphabet in no time at all! My two younger brothers - who are six and four - also loved this video. For a time it was like, "Can we watch Alif is for Asad when we get home? Pleeease?!" I reccomend it for all young kids who want to learn the arabic alphabet!

I was hoping that this video would be a good way to expose my then 1-year-old daughter to Arabic while she was not in Egypt. Unfortunately, there is as much (or even more) English in this video than Arabic. I suppose this criticism might be seen as unfair, given that this video is for discovering the alphabet, not the entire language. But as a language teacher I think that it is far more useful to use the target language as much as possible, and the native language as little as possible.

Apart from the methodological criticism, I found that this video was on the corny side and not very visually interesting. My daughter NEVER asks for this video, and I can't get her to watch the whole thing even though I try to make it exciting by singing along and dancing, etc. And I've been trying for over a year!

Overall I found that the video didn't meet my needs, but I suppose for older kids who haven't had any exposure to Arabic this might be a good first video.