When learning a foreign language, learn the alphabet first

I am trying to learn Aribic. My room mate is Arabic and a mutual friend is Arabic as well. When we hang out, they will often switch to Arabic because it is faster and easier for them.

I'm using anki. The recordings for the alphabet were all computer voiced, but I can at least recognize the letters and have a rough idea of what they are supposed to sound like.

I'm using an anki deck for the top 100 core words. I tried a deck for most common words, but the fact that it starts with preopsitions (to, from, about, for, etc) makes remembering individual words difficult due to overlap. This an actual person speaking. I'm using a good pair of headphones, so I can hear the subtleties.

The Problem

I get to the word "go". The speaker is pronouncing it with an L (I'm guessing the recording started a fraction of a second too late or the L is regional). They wrote the English pronunciation as starting with a D, but the Arabic lettering is a "th" sound.

I confirmed it with my room mate, it's "th" sound.

My one friend suggested I try to learn from YouTube, but I much prefer being able to only repeat a single word. This allows me to repeat and try different variations of vowels until I find the right sound. Learning the alphabet and reading would still help with YouTube learning to better understand ambiguities.

TL:DR When learning a foreign language, learn the alphabet first!

submitted by /u/pyro226
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