What are the most effective ways for a beginner to learn Arabic for reading the Qur'an?

Question

I converted to Islam about 7 months back and I've been informed that in order to better understand the Qur'an (Islam's holy book), I should learn Arabic. (I'm aware it's not essential, but it wouldn't hurt; and I should at least think about it.)

However, I don't know where to start.

It's a pretty big ask, but I have to learn at least some spoken Arabic for prayer and greeting people anyway. I hear that learning enough Arabic to read and understand the Qur'an is simpler than learning Arabic in its entirety, although I'm not sure how accurate this claim is.

Thus, what are some Arabic learning resources that can help a beginner understand the Qur'an?

Answer 1

If you have an Android device, you might want to use the App Learn Quran Tajwid, which has very positive reviews. It claims to start from the basics of beginning Arabic to more advanced concepts to help you better read and understand the Qur'an. You can download it here from the App Store.

Quran Teacher Online is a web-based application that starts from the alphabet and develops into complex sentence structure. It's designed to be meant for reading the Qur'an.

Answer 2

I am a non Arabic speaking person from India and have learned Quranic Arabic around 20 year ago. I will tell you from my personal experience.

I took around 2 years for learning complete Quran. I had gone through some basic Arabic lessons before I started learning Quran. Back then I didn't have computers or Internet to help me. I used Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation and commentary along with an Arabic dictionary to learn. As you may know it is little difficult for a beginner to find the root of Arabic words to lookup in dictionary. Whenever I encountered new words I would note it down. As soon as I learned any part with meaning, I would repeatedly hear it in audio player and try to follow it with the meaning. Initially it was very time consuming but after completing some juz, I was able to speed up because number of new words encountered became less and less.

Nowadays these are number of resources to learn Quran, so it would be more easy for you. Now looking up roots, finding meaning are very easy. You may find http://corpus.quran.com/ very useful in finding root and also to find different place where same root is used. If you are Windows user you can download QuranReciter, which has complete word by word meaning and also Abdullah yusuf Ali commentary.