[ASMR] Teaching You Arabic Colors

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hello there. Please come in. Have a seat. Uh yes, I'm going to be your tutor today. My name is Basil. Uh and this is a uh tutoring class for Arabic. This is the first like 101 class. So um you know, I I've heard a little bit about you. You know, I talked to you on the phone a little bit, but uh it's my first time seeing you. So hi. How are you doing? Good. Yeah. So uh you want to learn some Arabic. So I'm a little bit interested as to why you want to learn Arabic.

[00:00:30]Yeah, I asked that question mainly because uh Arabic is a language that is pretty complex. A lot of people are very daunted by it. Uh but to be honest, uh it's only complex on the surface. It's really um it's a kind of it's a very silly language. It's very uh poetic. A lot of um and it's very uh guttural.

[00:00:52]It's very throat. Uh there's a lot of throat uh in it. Uh so what I will say is that uh it's not for the faint of heart, but if you really like it and you're enjoying it, I think that uh it can be very rewarding.

[00:01:06]Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you are interested in this class, like we like we talked on the phone, I'm going to need you to sign uh in in here just because uh you know, if I end up t teaching you something that is incorrect uh or if I teach you a curse word, if I teach you to be bigoted in some way, uh or if I uh in some capacity uh teach you to uh be horrible to your fellow uh human beings, uh that is not on me.

[00:01:33]That's on you. You took that from my class and you took it outside, right?

[00:01:36]You shouldn't have taken it. Uh, and I trust you with these sort of things. So, uh, if you can go ahead and sign right here for me. Just right here.

[00:01:45]I do. Oh, you need a pen. Okay.

[00:01:50]Okay. Let me take a look. Okay. Perfect.

[00:01:54]Perfect. Okay. Yeah, it's just it's one of these waivers that we kind of need to have um, you know, government. Uh anyway, let's go ahead and uh discuss basics here first. So I don't need to know your name or anything like that. Uh what I need what I mean by basics is Arabic basics. So I am not going to teach you the alphabet today. I'm not going to teach you uh grammar or anything like that today. That is uh covered a little bit later in the class.

[00:02:24]uh it's going to be once a week and I I don't find it very helpful with the alphabet and start with those sort of things because if I'm being honest these those things are are um they're a bit too complicated you know like yes we teach the alphabet to like you know kindergarteners we teach them to but they like kids tend to have uh a higher capacity for learning languages than adults for one and then they also um they've been around language they've been some like they're surrounding ed by the language that they're learning and then they're they're adding structure to what they're already speaking or learning to speak.

[00:03:00]So, uh my method uh involves teaching you at the very least like some basic words, getting you familiar with the language uh and just uh you know uh getting you uh settled with that. Yeah.

[00:03:14]Okay. So uh so in Arabic or uh we there are a lot of dialects and I am going to teach you uh not the not any particular dialect. It is the standardized Arabic. So a little bit of a history lesson for you here. Uh Arabic as a language. Um really no one speaks the standardized Arabic sort of natively. uh all of the uh sort of Arabic countries tend to t you know they all agreed upon and like formed this uh standardized Arabic so that they can communicate with each other but uh you end up having uh a lot of variance between country to country and like even region to region within the same country because you know that's just how they speak uh their language right like it didn't really have it wasn't under the the the the umbrella of of Arabic.

[00:04:13]So, part of the reason why Arabic tends to be difficult for learners and tends to be difficult for people to actually get um or be rewarded from it at the beginning is because they're learning standardized Arabic. So, uh what you're learning is what you hear in the news, right? It's what you would read in a newspaper, but it's not something that someone would ever speak to you directly. uh instead what you would speak is very um uh I want to say slang, but it's just a different dialect, right? And here's an example uh that I'm going to give you before I get onto uh my diagrams and stuff. Um in my dialect, right? So like I uh I I know a couple of dialects but in the dialect that uh you know one of my parents uh uh speaks uh a cat is called a senur right so in Arabic cat is senur pretty simple senur but if you were to take my other parent and look at the dialect the dialect that uh they speak then cat would not be s it would be bisa right so sur and bisa are two completely different words but both mean cat uh then you also have standardized Arabic where it's not it's not it's [snorts] right so both like both people the person who would speak who would say and the person who would say sorry or would understand that means cat even if they might not necessarily [clears throat] know that sor means cat and bisa means cat uh and that's sort of like the bridge that's that's what I mean by dialects and why it can be a little confusing but we're not really going to get into too much of that we're going to you know we're just going to talk about standardized Arabic but it's just something to let you know okay so one thing I would like to give you in terms of understanding is how Arabic speaks with vowels. Okay.

[00:06:27]So let us here this is let's see here just writing something for you here.

[00:06:55]Okay. So, here we have the letter B.

[00:06:59]Okay. This is an English letter B. I'm not using area. I'm not writing in Arabic because I can find that can be very confusing for people. Um, so in Arabic, most of the alphabet is consonants. There are like vowels technically, but uh they're mostly consonants. and instead we indicate the vowel uh on the consonant themselves not connected to the word right so for example you would see this letter uh and it's a b right but in Arabic if we were to put this uh this indication on top it would be ba right it's it's a like you're going up ba but then if you put it below, then it would be B. It would be B instead of B. Or [snorts] if you instead have a symbol that kind of looks like this on top, it's bu, right? So, it's either A, E, or U, B, B, or B. It's not um it's not going to be uh any anything really different from that. Those are like our main vowels. Um it isn't. Of course, there's like some exceptions.

[00:08:24]There's some uh you know complexities to that, but that's sort of the basics. And uh when you get really really good at Arabic, you kind of can assume uh what vowels like you basically omit any of those indications in actual Arabic writing and instead it's just complete and just like the consonants and then you just kind of understand what the word is based off of your experience with the with the language.

[00:08:51]Okay. So, let's get on to the main uh the main thing as to why we're here, right? So, let us talk about colors.

[00:09:08]So, I'm going to teach you some colors today.

[00:09:12]I find this very very helpful for a firsttime uh learner to just sort of get a feel for the language, get a feel to how to say these words uh with no stakes, right? There's, you know, if you mess up the word, it's really not a big deal. Uh people understand what you're trying to say, even if your pronunciation's a little bit off. Uh and and really, you do not have to worry about pronunciation when it comes to uh Arabic. It might get a little confusing for the listener. Um, but you know, no one's going to get mad at you, right?

[00:09:42]All right, let's go ahead and start on this side. So, we have this whole page here. We're going to go through all these colors. Uh, but let's start here.

[00:09:50]All right. So, right here, we have red, which would be a is red. Now, you might notice that I'm pronouncing the H in a little weird, right? That's one of the letters that we have uh that you do not have in English. Uh so, it would be, you know, you can say Amar uh and it would, you know, that's sort of an English way to pronounce it, but it's not um particularly, you know, it it it's understandable, but it can be a little confusing. Ahar, you want to be very very um sharp with the way you're saying things.

[00:10:36]And you want to roll the R but only slightly. This is one of the things that as um as a language, Arabic, we do roll our Rs, but we roll our Rs very slightly. You know, we don't um it it's very um it's very small. It's a very small roll. So, Amar, you know, Amar, can you say it?

[00:10:59]That's a good that's a good attempt. So with the H English H's are very front of mouth, you know, like um Hammond or or hello, right? H it's like very front of mouth.

[00:11:16]This H which I I put as an H um because people will understand it even if you pronounce it as a normal H. Uh but this is a Ha, right? So it would be H. you're kind of going back into the throat and it's not you're not um creating any real sound. You're it's merely like air coming out. Ha, right? It's not h it's not it's not um you know these are different letters like and and are uh different letters and you're really um uh you're almost like grading against your uh like in your throat. Whereas this letter a ha ha. It's your your top of roof of your mouth, back of your throat.

[00:12:03]So aar.

[00:12:08]Okay. All righty. Next, let's go to orange. Okay. So, orange in Arabic is going to be bhal.

[00:12:19]Now in different dialects um there are not only different words but different ways to pronounce letters. So in a particular dialect this Q which I'm pronouncing as might be G. So Bugal right that's a different dialect. So but is the proper way to pronounce it. Um in the Bhu Bhu is completely fine. And you should be able to pronounce that as an English speaker. Um, if you can roll your eyes, right? It's ba, not berto call. Um, the Q you might pronounce like a K. Uh, and it will it's that's fine.

[00:13:01]Uh, but what you might want to do is think about the it's like a glo it's like a I forget what they call it, like a globular stop in your throat. like you're basically slamming your voice your uh your voice box. Uh so I saying right you're you're taking your u the back of your throat the uvula and you're [snorts] slamming it right. Uh if you don't have that control that's totally fine. That's something that a lot of kids actually end up uh learn because they grow up with the language.

[00:13:37]They end up knowing and learning this as they're growing up. So it takes some practice. Do not feel bad. But yes, this was right. B u r t u q a lal right. So like read a h m a ral.

[00:13:57]B u r t u q a ltoal.

[00:14:01]Okay. Can you say it for me one more time?

[00:14:05]Absolutely. Now for yellow. Let's move on. Yellow would bear.

[00:14:14]Now again, these are all introducing you to how uh these words are pronounced, right? So you can say as uh that's incorrect because you're using a different u letter s like s instead of saw. It sounds very similar. I completely understand.

[00:14:35]But this S is kind of a much um I'm just going to give you the vibe of it. It's a lot slower. It's a bit It's a bit more sleepy, right? It's it's not as ovar.

[00:14:50]Uh everything else should be in the English language. It's just this one S right here.

[00:14:57]As S F A R. That S is very uh it's different. It's a little different, right? [snorts] So asar as um if you would like two different Arabic words, one that uses an s, one that uses a which is what this uh what yellow as uses, uh the s in the Arabic language would be like say, you know, that means car say whereas uh a would be like saloon um you know s you It it it is still front of mouth, but it's up it's up your um at the upper half of your um of your mouth, whereas like like normal uh S tends to be at your teeth.

[00:15:48]Saw tends to be just a little further back, middle of mouth up. Okay. Can you try saying it? It's okay if you don't get it. I mean, it's it's really not a big deal. um people will still understand what you're saying and you know you might have to repeat it once or twice but it's really not a big deal at all. Absolutely. Okay, let's go to the next one. Okay. So we have [snorts] we have and we have next we have blue blue which is or [snorts] so the proper way to say it is.

[00:16:22]I'm used to saying it is because in my dialect sometimes we say it like that but let's just say [snorts] this this Q is the same as this Q over here. It's the globular stop. So, it's really not a not a big deal. Um, it's not something you haven't seen before.

[00:16:41]Red, orange, yellow, blue, a bal.

[00:16:48]That's just a normal Z. It's nothing crazy. Okay. Okay. Let's go to the other side.

[00:16:55]Scary, I know, scary, but you've got this. Okay. We've got this.

[00:17:02]So we have here a dark blue. Now I have not put a here. I've just put right just means deep uh or dark. Right?

[00:17:16]So to say this to say dark blue you'd say the deep after the actual word.

[00:17:27]That's something in Arabic that's a little different.

[00:17:29]um we tend to add the modifier or add the uh adjective after the actual noun.

[00:17:37]So uh you'd say like say ahar car red car you know say means car ahar means as you know from here means red but instead of saying you'd say car red instead of red car.

[00:17:58]So that applies here where we're adding a adjective to the word blue. So if we're using the word blue and we're doing it to a deep blue and when it comes to this gh over here, uh that is one of the letters that you don't really know have in in English and it's kind of hard to not describe but it's hard to write down, right? GH is not really a combination you see very often in Arabic. Sorry, in English. So, it's it is a sort of like a scratching of the throat.

[00:18:44]It is obviously towards the back of the throat, but it's not very very far back.

[00:18:48]It's kind of it's right in front of your um uvula. Is that what it's called? The thing in your mouth? I always forget, but I I'm just going to call it uvula.

[00:18:59]And if that's incorrect, then I am so sorry. Um the it's like right in front of it, you know. And this is just a G, but like a a hard G, not a soft G. AIG.

[00:19:14][clears throat] Uh if you say, you know, gig that someone might might be a little confused. That might be a little bit difficult. But if you say GI, someone would understand based off of context alone. They'd be able to understand that you mean deep blue.

[00:19:31]Now let's move on to green. Okay. So we have I am so sorry but he wanted some attention. He shall have attention. sour bisa or [snorts] so we have aaric and then we have aar.

[00:20:09]So, kh over here might be a little bit hard to see, but uh there are two letters here that are a little confusing for an English speaker.

[00:20:21]The kh is one letter over here. KH is one letter and then the D is actually a different letter. So, it's not or it's right. The is different than is uh if you I don't know if you can hear the difference but like versus right that's different here it's not it's sorry my uh saying it a bunch is a little bit uh interesting. So, uh the D is uh sort of a uh it is like D. It's like a normal D except that uh you're instead of just the tip of your tongue touching the top of your mouth, you're actually putting both the tip of your tongue and uh a little bit more right, you know, you're instead of soar then same as before. This is the same word for dark green.

[00:21:33]Can you repeat after me? Soaric.

[00:21:43]Okay. Lastly, we have brown, which I think it's a really good color to end on because it's very, very easy for an English speaker to say. It's just buni buni. It's like bunny bun.

[00:22:00]It's not that difficult to say. There are no letters in here that are not in the English language. It's just buni.

[00:22:08]So, let's go through all of it together.

[00:22:11]We have a we have we have asar. We have we have we have we have and we have bunni.

[00:22:30]Okay. Okay. So I'm going to leave this with you. It's the whole here. It is show it to you.

[00:22:39]So I am going to leave this here with you.

[00:22:43]uh and you can take it home and you know take a look at it and just get practicing on just the pronunciation of some of those letters. If you're not uh confident about it, that's totally fine.

[00:22:55]This is a space for you to um you know fail, not be able to say it, uh you know, mispronounce it and I will make fun of you just so that you have a little bit of an understanding uh of uh you know, what might happen in real life. Okay.

[00:23:15]Okay. Well, with that, that is going to be all for today. Uh, it's a very short session today because, you know, it's the first time uh, you know, we just want to get acquainted, that sort of thing. And then next time we're going to get into all of the heavyhitting stuff, right? Like how to say hello or like uh, you know, how to, you know, how to how to how to greet, how to talk to people, and and you know, the alphabet, that sort of thing. Okay. Okay then. Well, I will see you next time. Okay. Bye-bye.