Sudanese, Lebanese, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Syrian, Moroccan…all the Arabic speaking people I’ve met speak great English. Of course, I wouldn’t expect otherwise since I’m in the U.S. So far only one has spoken another language fluently and هي تتكلم الفرنسية - hiya tatakallam al-faransiya.

By the way, did you notice the difference between how Mounia says al-enjleziya and how Danya and May say al-’ingliiziya? That’s a regional difference that I just noticed.

Geographically speaking, I wonder where the shift from the hard ‘g’ to soft ‘j’ happens for this word, since it doesn’t seem to follow the Egypt/everywhere-else model.

John, that’s a good observation.

Arabic verbs have slightly different forms depending on the grammatical mode (mood) of the verb. What you are seeing is the how the Arabic language has evolved differently over time with different groups of people. Some groups preferred to use the subjunctive form as the normal present tense form (as heard in the Newbie series) and other groups favored the indicative form (as heard in the Beginner Series).

I haven’t been able to figure out the regional variations, but I believe it may be a personal decision, highly influenced by region. I found this article on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

I think it suggests that my observations (and subsequent inability to define regional variations) is based on the patterns of settlement and re-settlement of groups of Arabs in the Levant (where most of my Arabic experience comes from).

So everyone, tell us which forms you hear the most. Have you noticed any patterns?