Here are some of my latest thoughts… 
A Brisk Introduction to Karate
What are the basic forms of Karate? What is Karate?
“The ultimate aim of karate lies not in victory or defeat but in the perfection of the character of its participants … to subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill, know your enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles you will not be defeated” says Gichin Funakoshi —known as The Father of Modern Karate.
Karate means “empty hand” and was developed on the island of Okinawa —part of modern-day Japan. The major styles (“Ryu”) are Shotokan, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu —many other styles of Karate are derived from these four. I'm focusing on Goju-Ryu in this article: Goju-Ryu was founded by Chojun Miyagi; whose colleague, Gichin Funakosi, founded Shotokan-Ryu.
Occasionally one sees Karate-Do, which means “the way of the empty hand”. This usage is a reminder that Karate is not just about fighting, but is also a spiritual discipline.
The basic form of Goju-Ryu karate is Sanchin, “3 battles”: The battles of the mind, the body, and the spirit. However, this was considered a bit difficult for beginners, and so new forms were needed as a way of introducing fundamental karate forms to a wider audience. There are the “peaceful and safe” forms known as Pinan/Heian, the “first course” or Taikyoku forms, the “popularising forms” known as Fukyugata —the second of which was rebranded as “attack & smash”, Gekaisai— and, finally, there is the so-called Dachi-waza form. This last one is relatively new, and aims to be a smooth introduction to the world of forms/Kata.
In this article, I'd like to discuss the basic forms and their relationships.
A Brisk Introduction to the Fundamentals of Arabic Grammar, نحو
In short: In English sometimes we mess-up between “I/me/my”, likewise in Arabic we might mess up with “ابو / ابا / ابي”: These are just اب followed by one of ا/ي/و (which are the pronounced case endings!)
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How do Arabs say the English “a/an/the”, as in “an apple” or “the chair”? Easy! By default, all words are indefinite (“a/an”); and made definite (“the”) by adding الـ to the front of the word.
But… there's some subtleties, which first require us to discuss vowel markings… which also change if the feminine marker ة is used, so we also need to briefly discuss gender.
English relies on word order for meaning; for example, Jim hit Bob is a sentence where the person doing the action is Jim and we know it has to be Jim, and not Bob, since Jim is the word before the action hit. However, in Arabic words can be ordered in almost any way you like! Then how do we identifiy who does an action? We use case markings: We add small symbols to the end of words to indiciate the role they play in a sentence.
With vowel markings, we can finally flesh-out the nature of “a/an/the” in Arabic… but then something wild happens if we stick an (in)definite followed by a definite! We get the concepts of ownership and complete sentences that don't need a verb!
Finally, we conclude with an explanation of why in the world English Qurans use the single word muslim where's Arabic Qurans use both مسلمون and مسلمين.
Arabic Roots: The Power of Patterns
I want to quickly introduce the Arabic language, through its “root system” —i.e., most words have 3-letters at their core— and how these roots can be placed in “patterns” to obtain new words.
I'd like to take a glance at Arabic's Verb Forms: These give you 10 words for each root!
Some interesting concepts will also be mentioned, for those curious, but should be ignored on a first reading. These will be hidden away in clickable/foldable regions.
These are notes of things that I'm learning; there's likely errors.
Glossary of Arabic Linguistic Terms
Definitions, and discussions, of jargon relating to learning the Arabic language.
Dora, The Arab Explorer
A simple interface to watch the engaging children's show “Dora the Explorer” in Arabic
