These books are great for children, as well as for people trying to study and learn the Lebanese language.

Hopefully,  within two weeks you will see the first Lebanese children story available for purchase online. It will be available on studylebanese.com store as well as on Amazon.

Stay posted.

1: If you have multiple keyboards on your mac, this is what you usually see on the top right corner:

2: Go to: http://studylebanese.com/category/downloads/

3: You will need to download the keyboard file from there on your computer. Now, this is where people get confused. If you click on the link that is provided, mac will open the file. You don’t want to do that, you will need to press “ctrl” and click on the link. This will open the menu for you:

4- Select save link as and save the file on your desktop.

5- When you download it, you will see on your desktop a file called: lbkmac.keylayout. If, by any chance you get a file called lbkmac.keylayout.xml, rename it to lbkmac.keylayout

6- Open your Library folder on your hard drive

7- Open your keyboard layouts folder in the library

8- Move the file lbkmac.keylaout into that folder.

9- Restart your computer

10- You should now see the new keyboard in your keyboard list at the top right corner.

That’s it.

Here is a sample of 50 verbs. In the lessons, there are about a 1000 verbs for level 1.

Is Google’s translator bad in Arabian or do the Lebanese just have a special dialect which Google doesn’t understand?

The commentator was asking this question, because he/she apparently copied the Arabic text of the lyrics of the song, which is in Lebanese, and pasted it in “google translate“. This is the text:

عم بسمع صدى جاي من مدى بعد ما فليت ما عدت إهتم ما عدت إهتميت خليها ذكرى خليها ذكرى جاي عابالي سافر لحالي هاجر غير لون شعري ظبط مكياجي خبي باسبوري لحالي خليها ذكرى عم بشرب قهوة لازمني صحوة من كل هالقصة صار لازم إنسى أتعلم صيني أو أرجنتيني لغير جو لثانية ولو لشو بتسمعني واللا تحكيني خليها ذكرى خليها ذكرى

The result was utter gibberish  of course. See how google translates it:

With Basma echo Jay from over after the Fleet you no longer cared what promised Ahtmit Khalaha memory Khalaha memory of Jay Aabala traveled tocurrent Hagar is the color of my hair Setting make-Hebei Baspura the current Khalaha anniversary with drink coffee to ally always wake of all Hakash became necessary Forget learn Chinese or Argentine for non-air for a second, even XuBtzmni Tgana Khalaha and no memory of the memory Khalaha

In comparison, this is a regular Arabic text from Al Jazeera news website:

وقد استطاعت فنلندا الحصول على موافقة من أثينا على تقديمها أموالا مقابل الضمانات في الأسبوع الماضي، لكن الدول الأخرى التي تقدم بقية القروض طالبت أثينا بالمعاملة نفسها.

وقال محللون في قسم الأبحاث في بنك أف أميركا ميريل لينش إن الاتفاق بين اليونان وفنلندا يثير القلق إذ إنه يلغي بالفعل الكثير من مساهمات القروض التي قدمها صندوق الاستقرار المالي الأوروبي لليونان.

وتقدم دول منطقة اليورو القروض عن طريق الصندوق الذي يصدر سندات على أساس ضمانات تقدمها دول المنطقة التي تتمتع بجدارة ائتمانية

And this is its translation in google translate:

Finland has been able to obtain approval from Athens to provide money in return for guarantees in the past week, but other countries that offer the rest of the loan called Athens the same treatment.

Analysts said the research department at the Bank of America F Merrill Lynch said the agreement between Greece and Finland raises concern as it already eliminates many of the contributions of loans granted by the European Financial Stability Fund for Greece.

The euro-zone countries loans through the fund, which issues bonds on the basis of guarantees provided by the countries of the region that enjoys well-deserved credit

Pretty comprehensible.

This goes to show that the Arabic letters are only used as a means to try to capture what is being said in Lebanese. You can as well use the Hindi alphabet or the Finnish alphabet (which actually has some good phonetics for vowels that probably would suit the Lebanese more than the Arabic letters) to express the Lebanese language. In a nut shell, the Arabic alphabet is nothing more than a transliteration system for the Lebanese language, for those who are wondering.

Macrux Layla (Mashrou’ Leila)

Tania Saleh

Jean-Marie Riachi recycles music:

Some Lebanese Rap:

Latitude
Longitude

2- Fill in the following form. You can copy the latitude and longitude of your location from the table above.

3- Reload page to see Map of interested students:

The other meaning of the word parent to designate the “origin” of something can come in singular form, such as “aṡil”.

On the other hand, I have a riddle for the ones who know Lebanese. What is the plural form of:

Rġiif (loaf of bread)

Now, I am asking for the Lebanese plural, not the Arabic plural “Arġifa” “أرغفة”.

Duration: 3 Months, study at your own pace.
Tuition: $360
Instructor: Online Material
Study Material: Study Material will all be provided online as well as exercises and quizes.

Check the curriculum for Level 1 here.

Register for Level 1 course here.

The Lebanese keyboard for MAC is also simple and easy to use. You do not need to install any additional fonts. All you need to do is download the keyboard from the link provided below and put it in your “Keyboard Layouts” folder under the “Library” folder on the main disk.

How it works: It works the same as the English keyboard. Your use of your English will remain unaffected, and you can revert to it at any time. The Lebanese keyboard makes use of the Option key and CAPS button to allow typing in the 7 additional characters in Lebanese.

The additional letters to the regular keyboard are in upper and lowercase description: Ḋḋ, Ġġ, Ḣḣ, Ḱḱ, Ṫṫ, Ṡṡ and Żż.

“Option” plus d, g, h, k, t, s or z on your keyboard yields ḋ, ġ, ḣ, ḱ, ṫ, ṡ or ż respectively on your screen.

“Caps Lock” plus “Option” plus D, G, H, K, T, S or Z on your keyboard yields Ḋ, Ġ, Ḣ, Ḱ, Ṫ, Ṡ or Ż respectively on your screen.

Note: The Lebanese Letters are all Unicode 5.0 compatible, and the best font to use with the Lebanese letters is “Tahoma”.

Instructions:

1. Download the keyboard file ( right click and save as…)
2. Put the keyboard file in your “Library”>>”Keyboard Layouts” folder
3. Restart your computer

Make sure that your keyboard has the .keylayout extension. Sometimes it downloads as lbkmac.keylayout.xml instead of lbkmac.keylayout. Therefore, you have to remove the .xml ending and rename it.

You will see a language toolbar somewhere on your screen (top right), select “L.B.” to switch to Lebanese keyboard.

Have Fun.

Maroun Kassab