It’s a shame that this woman has so little intellectual curiosity. Arabic….colloquial, formal, beginner, are lessons very easy to find and teach yourself. It looks like it may be difficult, but it really isn’t…..at first, for beginners.
Once you know the basics. (Not too difficult. The letters follow patterns. The alphabet follows patterns. It is easy to learn to speak basic scentences.
Out in the wild (the only place you might find where they don’t white the vowels out….is more tricky, but if you learn by the book, with all vowels and develop an understanding of the function of the vowel symbols…..you shouldn’t have too much trouble.
Put some time into your basic lessons and you WILL learn how to read in the wild, inserting the correct vowels where you can see they should go.
I’m putting in some basic charts here, because I know that my best KFers are intellectually curious.
Here is where you start…..

Then you learn how they join up (our equivalent would be ‘cursive’. And how simple strings of words create sentences.
She wouldn’t even need good grammar. She’d be good if she just learned some basic reading skills and recognition of commonly used words.
I did 6 months of Arabic lessons a few years ago and found it fun. (But I also enjoyed Latin). It’s like playing a puzzle game….learning how the symbols go together to make words, and how those words fit together to make a basic sentence.
She’s not a high IQ person, but she’s also not completely stupid. I can guarantee that if she had motivation (maybe Salah refuses to order her food) she could learn so,e basic Arabic and she should feel a little accomplished.
Does Babbel have Arabic? Maybe that’s a good way to go.
If there’s one thing she needs, it’s a self esteem booster. Something that doesn’t involve food. (Ok, yes. I know she’d use her skills to order food) but she should feel accomplished by learning even some basic Arabic forms, patterns, shapes, words and sentences.
(If she could speak basic Arabic….she’d be worth even more camel!)
Salah doesn’t seem to want to teach her. I’m sure he’d rather have her under his control. Just think about that, Chantal.