Without a doubt she is a wonder girl Ma Shaa’ Allah. At such young age she is able to converse and understand the language that every Muslim should have learned to understand The Holy Quran. Asia Arif, a six-year-old Pakistani girl living in Doha, Qatar is well-known in the Arab world for her knowledge of classical Arabic language.
Arabic is amongst the top 10 most difficult languages of the world in terms of learning especially if you are a non Arab.
Asia has distinguished herself by attaining the ability to converse in classical Arabic language despite the fact that her mother tongue is Urdu. Her father Arif Siddiq is a well-known Pakistani writer, educationist and journalist who possesses vast experience of teaching Arabic language to the non- Arabs. He is the head of Arabic department in an educational institute of Doha for the past 13 years. His articles in Arabic language have been published in the leading Qatari newspapers.
Image from Jang Sunday Mag.
Inspired by the Syrian Dr Abdullah Dannan’s theory of “nature and exercise”, Asia’s father started to talk to her in Arabic language since she was one. After a year he was surprised to see that Asia learned around 350 classical Arabic words over this short span of time in such young age. So he continued training her and in turn she memorized over 800 classical Arabic words at the age of three and could converse in Arabic language without any difficulty. She has also been able to present a large number of verses from the classical Arabic poetry which even most of the Arab child’s could not at 6 years of age. She can speak Urdu and English to an extent too.
Asia wants to be a professor of Arabic in future and she has started to memorize The Holy Quran as well.
All the best to her in future and hopefully she will inspire many others in Pakistan to learn and understand Arabic.
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