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Arabic for Teens · Module 5 of 8
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The Words of School and Scholarship

Almost every word about learning in Arabic is built from a small number of roots, so the whole field arrives as one connected set.

مدرسة madrasa · طالب ṭālib · معلم muʿallim · جامعة jāmiʿa
School, student, teacher, university. The م prefix on several of them marks a place or a person.

🎒 What you need

✋ Do this

  1. Listen to the six words and repeat each five times, watching your ع in جامعة and معلم.
  2. Notice the م at the front of مدرسة, معلم and مكتب. That prefix very often marks a place or the person who does something. Circle every م you see at the start of a word from now on.
  3. Write مدرسة by hand ten times, joined, right to left. Then جامعة ten times.
  4. Record yourself saying أنا طالب — anā ṭālib — 'I am a student'. Compare to the model.
  5. Write أدرس اللغة العربية — adrusu al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya — 'I study the Arabic language' — on cardboard, joined, and hang it up.
  6. Read that sentence aloud to one adult and tell them what it says.

💡 Why it works

Noticing the م prefix is your first look at Arabic's pattern system, and it arrives disguised as vocabulary. From here on, unfamiliar words start showing you clues about what kind of word they are before you know their meaning at all.

🔥 Challenge

Find three more Arabic words starting with م and guess whether each one is a place or a person. Then check.

📖 New words

مدرسة madrasaschool
جامعة jāmiʿauniversity
طالب ṭālibstudent
معلم muʿallimteacher
كتاب kitābbook
منحة minḥagrant; scholarship
📚
School Roots

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