
Most of the stuff I post is usually related to Levantine dialect or MSA, but last night I was looking for a podcast to listen to in some Arabic dialect while I went to sleep. I don't like listening to things in MSA. I know comparing MSA to Latin is cliche, but that's how I feel. I want something that has emotion, slang, etc. Something that people use in their every day lives. So eventually I found this podcast on video games called
Saudi Gamer. I haven't had much exposure to Saudi dialect and I'm not into Islam so that kind of limits the reasons I'd have to learn it, but knowing that there's this subculture of video games encourages me. After all, if you're going to learn a language there needs to be something that interests you about the culture of the people who speak that language in order to keep you motivated. When I was first learning MSA I gravitated toward the science news in order to keep me interested. There's a show called Al-Jazeera puts on called
عن كثب that I watched a lot. If you're interested in Islam then Arabic is a lot easier for you to learn, but if you're interests, like mine, include technology, science, futurism, then you're hard pressed to find resources that will keep your attention.I say all that to say that this Saudi Gamer podcast is a good resource for people like me who have trouble finding interesting topics to learn the Arabic language from. It's basically like having IGN or GiantBomb (both English video game websites) in Arabic. They review new games, talk about new platforms, etc, but it's all in Saudi Arabian dialect, something I never thought I'd see. There are 90 podcasts that are on average between 1 hour and 2 hours long and they are always adding new ones. I gather that this podcast is very popular because to my knowledge there's nothing else that covers this topic in the Arab world and they've done over 100 hours of the show so there has to be a decent fan base.
As someone with little exposure to Gulf dialects I don't understand everything that's said, but it's only a matter of time. 90 episodes is a lot of listening material to bridge the gap between the Levantine dialect that I know and the way Saudis speak.