السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته أنا هنا مع الشيخ الدكتور عبد الرحيم يمكي من يدع out of the Medina books مدينة بك that many of us have benefited from in his study To have a more dense introduction or biography about the Sheikh you guys can find it on the internet however I will give you guys a little summary يجب أن نقول that he has experienced Arabic language for 50 years, he's been teaching for over 30 years, he's been the director of the Medina University as well, of course authored the books, many other books, however the ones that we all know are the Medina books, he's currently the director as well of where they translated it, they translate basically the Qur'an here in Medina, the organization of King Fahd where they translate the Mas'a'if, and insha'Allah for you guys to know a little bit more about his books and the things he has accomplished and books he has authored, you guys can do a quick search on the internet because the biography is well known. So I'm honored يا شيخ وأشكركم كذلك على وقتكم واتزاكمنا خير على الجهد المبذول في هذه اللغة الجميل التي تتحفظ بها القرآن وفهم السنة. So insha'Allah I would let the Sheikh first of all, if he wills to perhaps introduce himself a little bit in terms of where you guys, where you studied from the beginning of your early age, how did it come about since you are originally from India and India is well known that they don't speak Arabic, how did originally perhaps the intention of learning Arabic and how you learn Arabic growing up. بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على شرف الانبياء والمرسلين نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين أما بعد. I'm very glad to be this morning with brother Muhammad Al-Andalusi who has been engaged in teaching Arabic. With regard to my interest in Arabic and my learning Arabic, of course in India we have two types of educational system. One is the regular educational system where every subject, all the subjects are taught in English and there is no place for Arabic. At the university level you can choose one of the subjects, one of the languages and that can be Arabic. But that is very little. The other system of education is the what we call Madrasa system. We have lots of Madrasas in different parts of India where they teach Arabic and Islamic sciences and it's completely a different system. Usually they teach Arabic grammar from classical texts and the main purpose of their learning Arabic is to understand the glorious Quran and the Hadith. And they are not very conversant with Arabic. Probably nowadays there is a change in the system but earlier they only studied grammar from the very beginning, very detailed study of grammar. I was associated with the regular system. I continued and so I had no chance to study Arabic. But I was interested and they were of course books available in English. I studied of course English. So I studied Arabic through these books and I was able to learn the language. Later on whenever there were Arab scholars coming to India all that I used to get in touch with them and try to speak Arabic with them. That is how I developed Arabic speech and all that. Later on I studied at the World Famous Azhar University in Egypt. That was in 1964. I studied the faculty of Arabic language and fortunately for us our dean of the faculty was the very famous Sheikh Abdul Hamid. Myrdeen Abdul Hamid who has edited lots and lots of grammar texts. He was our dean for some time. So I had to do first of all I had done English MA in the University of Madras. So I was allowed to do MFIL at the Azhar University in Arabic. I did MFIL and later on I did PhD. So masters and then PhD? Yes. They said PhD you can't directly do PhD. You have to do MA. It's called MFIL there. So I did both this. And of course there is a thesis also. Both in MFIL and PhD. The MFIL thesis was Arabic Persian words and Arabic. Unfortunately that book has not been published. In the PhD course my thesis was the academic editing of the famous Al-Mualab Al-Jawalikri. Every famous book dealing with foreign words and Arabic. Al-Mualab Al-Jawalikri. So I edited this book. And he mentions words you know. This is Greek. This is Persian. This is Indian. But he doesn't give details of this information. So I had to part of my work was to give the original word in these languages. In Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic. Most of these words from these languages. It has been published by Syrian publisher. It's out of stock now but long back it has published. So what is the name of the thesis you wrote? The thesis was Foreign Words in Arabic. Foreign Words in Arabic. With the editing of Al-Mualab Al-Jawalikri. So the main work was to edit the book. And there was a very thorough introduction about foreign words and how they were treated by the Arabs when they took them in the language. And the languages from which the Arabs took. So that was an introduction to the study. The Sheikh Al-Jawalikri. Al-Jawalikri. Al-Jawalikri is the 5th century scholar. Al-Jawalikri. He was a PhD. He was a PhD. There was a, in those days 1966. There was a new university established in Sudan. Umdurman. It was called the Islamic University of Umdurman. Jam'at Umdurman Islamiyah. So it was a completely new university and they didn't have faculty members. They took all the faculty members from Egypt. At the time I was in Egypt. So I also applied. They wanted a teacher of English. But teaching English through Arabic. So I was taken to teach English through Arabic. And I worked there for 3 years. From 1966 to 1969. In 1969 I had applied to the Islamic University of Medina. At the time the president of the university was Sheikh Ibn Bazallah. Yes. So I wrote a letter to him asking if I can come and teach Arabic to the foreign students. Non-Arab students to join the university. And he sent me a letter of acceptance. So in 1966 I joined the Islamic University. So my worker at university at that time was teaching the students. So there was no system of teaching at that time. There was a Sheikh from Syria. His name was Ahmad Al-Ahmad. He taught only students who had a little bit of Arabic with them. And they could understand his language. So there were a lot of students who had no teacher. And they were just sitting there doing nothing. Because there was no teacher and they didn't find a teacher who could teach them Arabic through English or through the languages. So when I applied the Sheikh immediately accepted me. And he began to teach these students. Of course there were different levels. There were students who did not know how to write. They did not know the letters. I taught them the letters. There were some who had a little bit of knowledge of Arabic. So I had different sections. I taught them. And then I began to write this book. There was a lot of it here. To teach these students. How long did it took you to put it? It was about 5-6 years. Everyday I used to write the lesson. And then with the help of the Cyclostyling. In those days you know they were. So we used to make copies of this lesson. So everyday I wrote a lesson. Everyday I wrote a lesson. That is how it took about 5-6 years to complete the book. 3 parts. And then the university authorities invited me one day. And they said we get lots of inquiries about a book that you teach. And we would like to have it published. And I said yes. I have no manuscript. I am teaching this book. And yes. So they said ok. So they published the first part. And of course we used it in the school Arabic program. And they also sent it to other countries. Where Arabic is taught. The second part later on. And the third part. All these 3 parts were published. And that is how the book became used. First of all in our Arabic program. Later on outside the program. And then many of the students learned from this program. They wanted to have the book published in their countries. So they asked me. It was my copyright. I was owned by me. So I gave them permission to publish in their countries. Without any monetary. So they published it in their countries. The first I think was published by Russia. Was a student. Russian student. And later on in India also it was published. And other countries also. So that is how the book spread. Later on I wrote a key in English. To deduce the subjects that I teach in each lesson. So I said the purpose of this lesson. Is to teach such and such thing. Kind of like rules for the teachers. No there was a separate book for teachers. Teacher's book. The key was grammatical analysis of the lessons. And the key and then teacher's book. And then. حلو تمرين. Answers to the exercises. That was also published. And then I wrote a book. Called glossary of words used in the book. With English translation. That was also published. So the glossary was the Arabic words that were a little complicated. Translated to English. Yes all the words that were used in my book. Three parts. All the words used in the book. I mentioned them alphabetically. And translated them into English. And with some grammatical notes also. For example if it is a word is. I pointed out that this word is. If it is a plural for example. I said it is on the measure of four rule. Like that. Later on. In Canada. There was a brother by name. اسف مهر عالي. He was an Indian of Pakistani origin. But he had settled down in Canada. And in Toronto. Once he visited me during the month of Ramadan. Before the breakfast. I got a telephone call. I did not know him. He said I am in the bus stop. And I would like to see you. Because after the Maghrib prayer. I have to go back to Mecca. I have no time. I came with a group of students. From Jordan. Jordan University. And I took some time to come to Medina. For a number or two. And I have to go back immediately after the Maghrib prayer. I want to see you just now. So I sent a call and he came. And he said. I was interested in learning Arabic. I tried. Later on. I was told that. The Jordan University offers a course. So I went to Jordan. When I went to Jordan. They were teaching the book. Prepared by. Um Al Qura University. The book. He said it's very very difficult. And in the class. There are students who want to learn Arabic. For purpose of business. Or. Christian missionaries. Use it for converting Muslims. And the book. Doesn't help us. It's very difficult. One of the students had a book. He said it's very useful. I took it from him. And then. What a copy of the book. It was. By one. We have the Rahim. I went to the Imam of the mosque. Where I was staying. And. I told him I want to learn from you. He was a teacher Arabic. He knew English. He was a Palestinian. And he was the Imam of the mosque also. He said okay. She gave me the books I will find out. So I gave him he says. He took the books. The book that is. Being used at the university. The book which I found. From the student. He took the books. Second day he came and he said. I have. I have read the books. The university book. Has been in a preferred by about 10. Scholars of Arabic. A very high standing. But unfortunately. I don't know how to teach Arabic. To non Arabs. The other book which is written by one. Single man. He knows how to teach Arabic. Non Arabs. I will teach you that book. So he. Taught him. All the three books. All the three parts. And. Later on he. He was not. To pay the fees. Because. He could not stay there without being a student. So he was a student. But he was learning at. Imam's. House. Later on he went back. When he went back. He started teaching Arabic. In a mosque. Went back to Pakistan. No no. To Canada. Toronto. And he took. The whole course took 2 years. And. At the end of the. Course. He invited me to. The convocation. I went there. And then I told him. As I told him. The. I think. That. Very short. Can. Toronto will become the mecca. Of Arabic learning in North America. And. It has. Become so. Now in every mosque. There is a. Class. Yes. In Islamic centers. And mosques and all. A lot of people are teaching Arabic. And using my book. So it is actually. It has become the center. Of Arabic learning in North America. So I have given you. The. History of how I. I learned Arabic. And how. I started teaching in. Islamic University of Medina. And. In Toronto. I have been there several times. And. Many of my lectures on grammar. Were. Prepared there. Okay. What was your longest stay in Toronto? About 2 months. Okay. Because. When I have holidays. University is too long. How did you find the weather there? Weather. I was not in there. In winter. Difficult. Because usually summer. And no problem. Just make sure. Is it being recorded? Yes. So in terms of. When they first. The problem that I have. And something that I always call. And emphasize a lot. On is. That many students. Well I actually see many institutions. Different books. Many teachers. They just start very heavily. With the students. Trying to make them understand. Grammar. Arabic grammar. Especially something. That I see a lot. Is trying to make them understand Arabic grammar. In English. So. First of all. What do you think about this approach. I said. In foreign languages. How do you see. That being. Effective or not effective. When teaching any language. Starting with grammar. Instead of. Whatever else should be started with. See. Languages. Are not taught. With the help of grammar. Only. Hebrew. But Hebrew has become a. Living language now. But. These languages. They are not spoken. And. Especially Latin. So they teach only grammar. But. Living languages like Arabic. Spanish and all that. They are taught. With. Applied grammar. You select. A particular subject. The easiest part of the language. And you teach them. Without giving the grammar. But behind. Sentences that you use. There is grammatical. Coherence. The teacher knows it. And. The man who wrote the book also. Yes. He has of course. The idea behind. These sentences. So that is how it is thought. You see in. Languages. What language are you learning? I am learning Spanish. I am learning French. I am learning Russian. Whereas we ask a man who is learning. Arabic. He doesn't say I am learning Arabic. He is learning Arabic grammar. There is a mindset. Which is wrong. You start from the beginning. Arabic has got. Three. Parts of speech. They start with. Details of these parts of speech. And all that. Not a sentence. One sentence is being taught. Living language of Arabic. They don't teach. So that is a very wrong approach. Wrong. Mindset. What we teach. The moment you teach Arabic. Sentences. This book. This book. The students feels. That he is learning something. He is learning a new language. And that gives him impetus. To. To learn more. Our. Brother. Mehra Ali. Who is teaching in Toronto. His famous saying is. We teach Arabic. With. Smiling faces. Not with long faces. You know. Sitting and thinking about. So that is how it should be taught. And. His method. Has. He has. Recorded all his lectures. Which are available. 48. Lectures. 48 DVDs. And. Students learning from this. He makes learning. You know. Pleasant. Exercise. So. You. You've said in. And from. From what I've heard. That you used to do when. When you used to teach. When. For example, you used to teach. English in Arabic for. For. Arab students. Me personally. I think. That Arabic could be taught in Arabic. To. Foreign students in the beginning. It might be a little. Complicated in the student might ask himself. How. I am I even going to. Be able to speak Arabic. If I don't understand the teacher. Explaining me. Things in Arabic. Would you think that is. Is possible to learn. To teach Arabic through. Arabic. Until we switch to. Completely Arabic. The language. Thought. Directly. Direct method. So the. For this. It requires that the. Celebrity should be. Prepared in such a way. That you don't need. Another language. So. The. It doesn't need any. Language. You can directly. In the same. When you come. To. I have. One of my. Principles. That I. Follow. To. To. In books. By the Arabs. You find. And they. Without. There is. Many. Egypt. And all these people. You can teach them. Without. And then. It doesn't work. The. The student. Learns. The whole thing. This. And. This. This. And then they say. It's not going to work. To. Completely. And. So. To. That means. You teach them. For example. Alامة العراب الأصلي. First. So many. Lessons. You teach only the. You don't. You know. This. They don't. They say. This. That is wrong. He is not going to learn. That is why Arabs are not. Very. That very. Strong in. Iraq. So. Because they learn you know with. The skin. You teach them. So. In my system. The first lesson. And then comes. And. I teach them. Very. There are. List. The first list. The list of masculine. The proper names. Other lists. Containing. Permanent. For example. Ali. أخر مجرد يوجد هذه القديدات ومجمع لا因 لها أن يكون هناك محاولة فاديو أم بامه ليست another problem ما تعتقد أنه كذلك so important in the very beginning when the student perhaps might not have even enough vocabulary to even use that particular rule Why would it be so important for him to know in the beginning لأنه جميل في العلم. في العربية جدًا جدًا جدًا جدًا جدًا وإذا كنت تتعلمهم هاذا محمد هاذا هاذي آمينة حسنًا، لذا لماذا يجب أن تكون أفضل؟ لأنني أفضل أي شيء من العلم الذي كنت أعلم. لذا كنت أعلم أولا، مثل طاولة وفارطمة. كنت أعلم بغنية. ولكن لماذا فارطمة تنوين؟ أعني فارطمة وطاولة. لذا كنت أفضل بغنية. لماذا فارطمت أعتقد أنه أعتقد أنه أفضل من الأمر الأن؟ هل أعتقد أنه أعلم بغنية. ماذا تعتقد شيخ أنه سيكون بانفشو maybe in the beginning to not distract them with like learning different meanings to just let them memorize those different words هذه تاويلة، هذه نافذة. And then later on explain to them that those أصول and you know تنوين، ممنوع من الصارف، you know فمنين is from the different types of ممنوع من الصارف, et cetera. Wouldn't that be perhaps beneficial as well? تاويلة تون عمينة تون. There are two different things. You say men have two damas, ladies have because ladies can't or weak they can't carry two damas. تاويلة تون is different. It's not a proper name. It's a men have two damas, ladies have one damas. No problem. Anybody can understand. You don't go into the details later on. I've got the third part. The last lesson is about ممنوع من الصارف. تاويلة تون عمينة تون. It's very difficult.   We give them only one. تاويلة تون. It's very simple. If you have a proper name list of names, masculine names, list of feminine names. تاويلة تون. If you say تاويلة تون and then مريا مو they are two. It's like oranges and two different things. تاويلة تون. So you say ويلليا مو. I use always proper names which are very simple for non Arabs to pronounce. ويلليا مو is very simple. ويلليا مو عمينة تون. You will understand that ويلليا is a proper name. ويلليا مو is a man's name. ويلليا مو is a lady's name. So you say ويلليا مو is a lady's name. تاويلة تون. Would you say something that I've heard you mention is that عرب which is something that I've realized as well. تاويلة تون. This is why most of the teachers that teach at Andrews Institute they mostly non-Arab. تاويلة تون. Because I feel like when you have gone through the process of learning the language you actually know what the student needs in order for him to learn the language. تاويلة تون. So would you say that to an extent non Arabs are more qualified most of the times than Arabs to teach the Arabic language especially in the very beginning stages basically. تاويلة تون. Because the non Arabs know the problems that that he faced when he learned the language and he will avoid that. تاويلة تون. So non Arabs are better suited to teach Arabic than the Arabs because the Arabs first of all most of them even if they're very very careful. تاويلة تون. They can't avoid using their dialect. تاويلة تون. At least in pronunciation even if the syntax is correct he won't pronounce it well and تاويلة تون. So she once sang Iqbal's poetry in classical Arabic. تاويلة تون. Then when let us like far and far she said I can't do this. This is Bedouin language I can't use it. تاويلة تون. She couldn't pronounce it. تاويلة تون. No, no, she didn't want to. تاويلة تون. She didn't want to be seen as a Bedouin. تاويلة تون. She didn't want to be seen as a Bedouin. شخ وديو. As well I wanted to ask you in terms of when teaching the Arabic language there are certain terms like for example تاويلة تون. They actually carry a meaning and there's a very specific reason why they were named after their names or تاويلة تون. I personally think that it's very hard many times to translate that into English. This is why I don't agree with teachers giving names to these particular terms and this is why I don't like either teaching Arabic grammar in English. not because only it's very hard but as well it makes it very confusing for the student because the translated name might not carry a meaning. So would you say when it comes to teaching Arabic grammar perhaps other things like how the Kitab when you can tell the student these is a book that's fine. Would you say that when it comes to grammar it's very hard to teach it in English and should it be taught in English? No, very small things and all the basic things can be taught in Arabic. Basic things can be taught in Arabic or in English? No, no, in Arabic. If there is any problem later on you can use the language only to make you understand that particular thing. But it's better to teach in Arabic because each language has its own system which is different from other languages. So it's better to teach grammar in Arabic. But most of the grammar things can be simplified. You need not teach exactly as it is taught in grammar books. You can simplify. So I've got one of the things here. It's fragmentation of the rule. This one? No, no, here. I'll give you later on. For example, there's a lot of details. You fragment, you teach first of all, the first thing that a student needs is a lady's name. You know what I mean? You say a lady's name is only one Dhamma. There's no problem. You know, everybody can understand. If there's no other English, you can have a list of masculine names. Another list of feminine names. It says we are alone. With signs? Yes, with signs. And the names that you select should be named well known to the students. You don't bring in letter names which are not known to them. So fragmentation. So you teach. Secondly, you come at word Williamu. You say Williamu. You will say Mohammedun. Adilun. Arabs. Williamu. No. No Arab. No more. So these things can be taught in a simple language. It doesn't need, you know, you go into the details of these things. The problem is I teach, I see on the internet. From the beginning how the Kitabun says, move to the ... That's nonsense. You teach them what it is. If you say how the Kitabun, the student will understand. And see in the language, the most important thing is repetition. And language is a habit. Language is a habit. It's not a skill. A skill like driving. It's not a skill, it's a habit. So the more you ... You know, when I was teaching how the Kitabun, how the Qaloun, I teach. Then later on the student, one student gets something he does as I did. Another student. So the moment they go out of the class one after one hour, they are able to speak this thing. Through practice. Yeah, practice. Yeah. I've got a rule. تقيد. Making rules. When you say شخ, in terms of, there's a lot of students, foreign students, western students. Who say ... Because they want to understand the Quran, the sunnah. Which is the reason why they learn Arabic language. لذلك يقولون أنني لا أحتاج إلى إعادة تكلمة لأنني فقط أريد أن أفهم القرآن لأنني لا أريد أن أتكلم. هل أنت تقول أنه لديك أفهم القرآن أو أن تكلم كثيراً مهمة عندما يأتي إلى أن أعلم للمتحدث؟ even if your main purpose is to understand the Qur'an؟ there are two things. The first thing is, there is what is called learning language for a special purpose. So there are students, Indian students and foreign students who go to London. They learn, he was a scientist, he learns only the language that concerns science. Another astronomy, he learns only the language concerned with the subject. So it's a special purpose. So if your man wants to learn Arabic for understanding Arabic, he can design a course where in only Arabic the Qur'anic words can be used. And grammar also, for example, it's not used in the Qur'an. Then it's not used in the Qur'an. So we teach them only the rules and the words that are used in the Qur'an. Then the second question, speaking is a bi-product. If you teach them properly, only the Qur'anic Arabic, he can be able to speak. If you ask him questions about him, so he'll be able to understand speaking, it's a bi-product. Yes, yes. If you teach him properly, we will direct method Qur'anic Arabic. He will learn Qur'anic Arabic plus speak. Because I think a lot of students, it's almost like an excuse. They almost see it as a waste of time. I don't want to spend time speaking or practicing my fluency when speaking. And I think it's just an excuse because they find it difficult. But me personally, I think that even, like for example, the word language, the word lua, the word lisan, the word lengua in Spanish, the tongue, the Arabic tongue, I think it's all related to the tongue, like to the speaking now. And even when it comes to the Arabic, one of the references is the wada. هل استعملوه العرب, did they even use it? Of course they didn't write much. So I think in my opinion, it's definitely important to speak as well. Yes, definitely. The language of the Prophet ﷺ and the language of the Sahabas, who spoke this language. So speaking Arabic is sunnah. The Prophet spoke it. So it should be looked at from this point of view that our forefathers, the Prophet ﷺ and the Sahabas, their languages Arabic, they spoke Arabic. So it is learning to speak sunnah. When it comes to when you authored all of your books, was it all based on experience and what you've gone through or was it based on someone else, one of your teachers, one of other books perhaps? No, no, my book is based on what I, you know, faced while learning Arabic. So the problems that I faced, I tried to avoid them in my book. So it's all, I did not use anything from other books. It was purely based on my own experience. So many people, they actually think they lose motivation because they look at all of these, you know, perhaps طلاب العلم and all of these students of knowledge and they all look like, they speak so well Arabic now that they think there was an influence. Perhaps their parents spoke Arabic or perhaps it's because they were in an Arab country or something like that. So I wanted to ask you personally, did your parents speak Arabic or was there any type of influence of you growing up perhaps even, I don't know, watching cartoons even if at that time I don't think there was TV that made you and helped you to learn Arabic faster or was it just purely based on your interactions with Arabs and travels? No, my parents did not speak Arabic and there was nobody in our locality who spoke Arabic. Even the Arabic scholars, as I told you, the madrasa, those who study in madrasas they don't speak Arabic. The system they follow doesn't help them to speak Arabic. So in the beginning when I learned the language from the books I did not speak Arabic when I interacted with Arabs who came from Arab countries and so that is how I learned and then the radio programs also helped me and personal efforts to learn to speak. My environment did not help me at all. Would you say when you went to Egypt for example do you benefit from the people outside in the streets speaking Arabic or was there dialect useless and you only benefited from your classmates and as you said your personal efforts? When you are in a country you are forced to learn the language of the people you have to interact with the people so unfortunately I also had to learn but I had in my mind I should preserve my character Arabic even if I learned the dialect I should preserve the character Arabic which I have learned so I was not completely I did not completely forget the character Arabic and was overwhelmed by the dialect and after I came back from Egypt I was able to completely shake off the dialect things that I had learned I am saying that because a lot of students they think if I want to learn Arabic I have to be in an Arab country I have to be in Egypt and they think they are going to benefit from the people in the streets speaking Arabic dialect but I told them that it is not the country or it is not the people in the street that is going to help you rather is your teacher and your classmates who speak Fosha because there is no country in the world that speaks Fosha really so this is why I told them even in Canada or America or France you can learn the Arabic language at the same level than someone who goes to Egypt because you can benefit the same way with your teacher online by you being in your western country or the student that goes to Egypt and learns there because he doesn't benefit from the surroundings of people speaking Amoea and dialects would you say that that is a correct approach yes my view is that the best place to learn Arabic is in an Arab country do you think it is better? it is better that is the best place to learn Arabic is a non-Arab country the moment you go to an Arab country because as you just mentioned Arabic is not a spoken language in any country nobody speaks Arabic they speak the dialect but classical Arabic you can read the newspapers but nobody speaks classical Arabic except in what should I call except in the news bulletin news bulletin yes bulletin news bulletin news papers also and the TV program news bulletin there is only place where Arabic classical Arabic is used even in conversation and dialogues they speak they don't speak classical Arabic but news bulletin they have to follow me even news bulletin the numbers are said not pronounced in the correct Arabic way so Arab countries and don't help you to learn the language but you can in your room in your class in your school you can create a classical Arabic atmosphere you know people speaking Arabic with recordings and uses you can create that is how we did here in Islamic university Arabic program we used to have programs recorded programs and notices classical Arabic yes and first of all we had the Egyptians but the Italian army we found that they spoke only the dialect teaching students and all that and that means sometimes all the students say something which is not Arabic classical Arabic I told him it is wrong he says how can it be wrong the teacher says this so a lot of students in the west they actually listen to a fatwa that sheikhun if they mean رحمة الله he was asked what books to start with when learning the Arabic language and he said الأجرمية and a lot of western students they hear this and they go straight to الأجرمية so of course you need to understand who the sheikh is talking to and there was mostly an Arab audience would you say that's correct they actually have to start through books like الأجرمية when I was teaching at the Salam University Americans came as students and when the first there was a student who sat in the class for one day and at the end of the day he came to me he said I have come here to learn Mutun yes this nonsense what you are teaching is not Mutun like أخي the Mutun no no no yeah you want to learn Mutun well this is nonsense the sheikh probably was speaking to the Arabs the Arabs you know they have to learn the system here to to get by heart in all certain grammar books Mutun like أجرمية all the in my book what is Mutun it's all there so learning أجرمية as I told you before nobody learns a language with the help of a grammar book yes what we learn is through applied grammar yes so the Europeans and Americans and all they have got a wrong notion of learning Mutun they have to learn the language first and then they learn Mutun if they want you can't go on you know if you live what does it understand from this and how learn the language so how my approach when it comes to to teach in Arabic language is I focus massively on memorization of vocabulary in the beginning I told the students as you said earlier that is very important to learn through the Arabic language to learn through repetition and habit so I told them that minimum you have to repeat at least 250 times until it's memorized until you memorize that I think that the students for example the Arab students the reason why I share with them would say to start learning Mutun is because they already know all of these words so would you say that that is a correct approach memorize a lot of vocabulary in the beginning with applied grammar as you said very simple things of grammar to help you build simple sentences and then later on go into the details of actual grammar and all the different fragments as you said from the different chapters of grammar see the smallest unit of a language is a sentence not words so the word should be learned in a sentence so just words the word can have different meanings but when it comes when it gets into the sentence the meaning is fixed based on the context context yes so always and I always say like as you said when a student learns a noun he must learn the plural but there are a lot of plural but he should be taught only but being used for example in my book I got مرضا one of the teachers there he he said مراضا so I said it's wrong مراضا means you know eyes which are sort of sleepy and all that kind of thing so that is a technical or literary word the word which is used in the Quran مرضا so we teach them the most used plural and with the verb he must learn the ماضي مضارة ماضي مضارة because most of the Arabic they say because they speak they don't know in the text books also Arabic text books they don't teach أبواب so we want to when we teach with the ماضي مضارة كتب كتب كتب كتب كتابة دخل دخول دخول جرس يجد سو so we don't teach them only the past present and the mustar with the noun we must learn the plural the most used plural only one also with regard to nouns it's better to say هادي نارون هادي يدون هادا راسم with هادا and هادي because he doesn't know the gender but it will be difficult for him so from the beginning when it's a noun it learns with هادا and هادي to differentiate because part of the system when it says هادي هنارون هادي عينون هادا كتابون هادا دفترون هادا بيتون I went to school in India they were teaching my book so the lady teacher she said هادا بيتون I also taught them how to draw I said draw the drawing is feminine if you know the things you know you teach otherwise what makes the Medina books what would you say makes them different to other books like other books that have been authored that many people use I think the most commonly used are أساسي أم القراء مالي كبنسعود أربع with the Medina books I would say those are the most common programs that western students go through what would you say that makes the Medina books different to those others that is I have followed so in Medina some books I forget the first sentence is أنا من باكستان this is wrong it violates my rule تقنيم الأسول على القرار they teach them with تسكين أنا من باكستان but if they do it with proper ending أنا من باكستان you teach the rule before teaching the primary rule it should be أنا من اليمن أنا من العراق in the second lesson you can say I am in Pakistan when it learns the other thing but the first sentence I have seen in the book أنا من باكستان you do not use the تحريق that is the source that is wrong أنا من روز I have mentioned here is تعليق in order to قاعدة الوقف we do not use قاعدة الوقف in the Quran when teaching Arabic when teaching Arabic the Arabs all of them they said this is wrong so would you say in the times of the Prophet and the times of Ta'ab would they use the whole Tanween نعم I have mentioned the rules but we have suspend the rule when teaching the language if you said هذا كتاب هذا محمد هذا آمينة you do not teach the basic thing that آمينة توجد but if you have a separate if you say هذه آمينة توجد something that does not come at the end so that will be okay yes but the rules grammar rules we do not teach them grammar rules separately it should be part of the teaching it becomes part of the language system so you do not teach I had a student I was his student was doing PhD in Arabic and I was his guide he said he wrote I said you are going to pass out PhD his question was more problematic than his writing he said why is that is because of the system because of the system because of the system because they do not teach that in the beginning yes it should be language as a whole be taught as a whole where do you listen because to me it was an honor I did put a lot of effort in putting together I spent a whole year by myself in my grandmother's apartment trying to figure out just as you said what I faced on how to put a program online to let students just like me to benefit and learn the Arabic language so where was the first time you've heard about under this institution what I was putting forth where was it and how did it happen recently by chance happened to watch your programs and there I saw you speaking I think with a student who was from you studied at the Islamic university no I didn't study so that's how first you said learning arrived from zero to it was I forgot first of all you wrote to me last year but I forgot your name but recently I saw one of your programs so I wanted to show you Sheikh the program and explain to you what you know how you know how approach basically and you perhaps can come in and say if you think that something could be different or better so first of all the student when he joins the program he has access to this portal so first of all there is something we call the guide to discipline because something that I have seen with a lot of students is that they don't know how to how to be students not even students of the Arabic language but how to be students how much to sleep how much to eat how much to speak who to be with companies you know all the different all the different efforts and sacrifices you need to give in order for you to be a successful and efficient student so we show them how to discipline themselves then on module number one we teach them how to how to read and write and all the videos and all the lessons are you know based in this manner for example so here so here we have so I teach them about EBT the same you know very common way on how to teach how to learn how to read this is the same way that I have used myself and again like all of this this program is based on my experience then I'll show you my system is with not letters letters Arabic letters with regard to the letters of the student or of three categories the fall into three categories one is completely identical Arabic words identical with this language that is of this language secondly similar but not identical thirdly completely different so in this system I use the first of all identical the student learns very easily because identical with this language secondly similar and at the end I put the totally different this is one principle second principle is letters without vowels are dead letters you teach them from the beginning you follow me you don't say meme and then yes so from the beginning and then third there were examples I give after two real living words when you teach the Arabic system they teach Hamza one third that you want to teach two thirds are not known to the student one third of the Hamza he is teaching Hamza but he uses the word seen it doesn't know he doesn't know but here the words which has already learned I teach him but he has learned meme in the previous lessons yes so these are the three principles giving them the three fourth division secondly secondly what I said with vowels third the example should be from the words already learned letters that he has already learned rules and letters that he has already learned there is a similar book which is called At-Tibian available in Amazon do you have author yes at-tibian so that's the first module and the second module which is the most important one is here is where I focus a lot on vocabulary the whole of this module on average the student learns 7000 to 10000 vocabulary words so I focus a lot on vocabulary however every single lesson there is 64 lessons and every single lesson has what I call an essential lesson so for example this essential lesson is and then for example if I go to lesson 35 he has he has another this is locked as well he didn't complete a lesson he doesn't allow him to go to the next one but for example in lesson 33 yes a test as well then he has for example in lesson 33 so little by little as you said the whole Medina books is pretty much all the content of Al-Ajaromiya so module number 2 is where you have content all the content of Al-Ajaromiya which is very simple grammar things from these on module number 2 every 5 lessons we test them on the vocabulary we ask them what does what does what is the plural of what is the plural and we ask them as well and then we ask them they say they say are you sure and then they say are you sure and then after lesson 6 he is able to attend what we call the weekly conversational sessions weekly conversational sessions are Zoom Zoom meeting calls with myself or with other structures and here we basically focus on only conversation with the vocabulary they have learned in the week it's 4 hours in the weekend so we tell them speak about this image what do you see in the image speak in Arabic and they make a lot of mistakes throughout the process then after they speak for 5 minutes we tell them you've said you don't say remember we spoke in this lesson you say and then little by little we correct all of their little mistakes to try and make them make less and less mistakes in their speaking so this is the weekly conversational sessions the student only can access this after lesson 6 so he can have a little bit of vocabulary in order for him to practice then after every lesson as well we have an assessment which is from exercise book that we've put together in the program which is these books right here is which is just questions based on those lessons now in the lesson they actually the book the book we use for vocabulary is in Arabic you don't use the actual exercises or anything just the vocabulary in order for us to give them اينا means where to صلي صلي صلي means these لماذا means these and we give them more and more until they are able to have a good a good amount of vocabulary so then every 5 lessons we test them شفنوين and every lesson كتابين so they get 2 different types of tests as well in every lesson there is an oral assessment شفنوين and they respond to certain questions with an audio and that audio is sent to my teacher who actually told me he is an Arabic he is a PhD holder he is Egyptian teacher and he he listens to the students say you respond to those questions and then he records himself listening to the audio and send him back the تصيحات of his pronunciation تمارين or whatever you might be or if he says for example then he might correct or get a sequence yes a sequence by D for etc so then this was the number 2 very simple you know on average the student in the middle of this module he is able already to converse and to speak and he is able to to have a good amount of vocabulary then the essential lessons is for Nakira and Ma'arifah lesson 17 so little by little we show them and all the lessons are for only in Arabic after lesson 6 I teach only in Arabic and I only use words that they already know so here I I will teach him about Nakira and Ma'arifah the Nakira and the Ma'arifah what about the Nakira and what about the Ma'arifah first I will show you what is the name what is the name or what is the name of the Nakira the name indicates something not specific not specific not specific so here if there is something it's hard to I know the student it's hard to explain to I might say in English it's as you say to point out and specific things so here they already know all of these words they already know معين I know they don't know so I might say in English so here these names are not specific they are not specific they don't have one they don't have one and they don't know one from what they hear from what they hear and from what they write and what about the Ma'arifah the name indicates something specific the name indicates something specific so what you are told is something specific something specific and the Ma'arifah is six degrees or six types so first we have معين so this is for the for the grammar lessons as for the vocabulary lessons so so here I know that they know they don't know but they know they know so here I know that they know they don't know they know they know so here is the text of and the words that are all of these words I know they don't know so we read everything and when we reach a word I explain to them I might do like this and then I explain them the whole lesson the mother prepared the fool الإجابة عكس السؤال أنا أسألك كيف حالك أنت تجيب الإجابة أنا بخير كيف حالك سؤال أنا بخير إجابة إجارات حتى يعرف معنى الإجابة لو يعرف السؤال أقول هو يعرف السؤال و يعرف معنى عكس فبذلك يعرف and then at the end I explain them one by one every single word يتعالى يهيه تهيئته مهيه مهيه هيئة الأم الطعامة للضيوف و أعدت الأم الطعامة للضيوف and I give them as more synonyms حتى so they have more سيد لغوي هيئة أعدة to prepare the food for example لهم this thing طيب let me find you an ayah الله سبحانه وتعالى فإن لم تفعلوا و لن تفعلوا فتقوا النار التي وقودها الناس والحجارة وعدت وعدت he was prepared وعدت للكافرين وعدت so here a lot of students they perhaps don't know through an ayah يفهم الكلمة and they are able to make a connection in the meaning so here is the verbs the verbs that I explained to them and then in the beginning I give them a noun حسب الشيء حسب الشيء I explained ما يكفيه كاملون كاملاتون و كاملون مصرفون ويعاء أوعية يعني إناء وعوان and like that I give them my main focus in this module is for them to learn a lot vocabulary and then lastly they learn we actually learn الأجرمية in module number 3 in module number 3 لأن الأجرمية علمات الفيلم إذا الأجرمية بل أحبت العلم والصلاة والسلام على الرسولي بطريقة يعني برحبا فإذا قلت قد قامت الصلاة يعني يعني أن لا الصلاة قد وهنا المعين المختلفة لقد قلت


Hey everybody, welcome to Linuxcast, I'm your host Matt. And I'm Josh. And I'm somebody, Steve. All right, anyways, welcome to Linuxcast. I know we haven't actually done this very much lately. We've been having a hard time getting everybody in the room. But three of us are here. Tyler is off doing something.  It's just three of us, but we're gonna talk about some Linux-y things. But first, as always, we're gonna talk about what we've been up to recently in the open source universe. So, Josh, why don't you take us off first? What's you've been doing? Well, I think I missed the last two episodes. I think so. I might be wrong on that. But, you know, one of them I went to, I had a Linux festival. I got to hang out with the open-source guys where they gave me not one, but two little stuffed geckos and a water bottle that leaks water. Got to hang out with the Trunas guys, which gave me this, this does not depend. This is a screwdriver, apparently.   So, oh yeah. And I also got an open-soosah flashlight. So, open-soosah had the best swag, yeah? They always have the best swag. If you're at a Linux conference and you're, and you see an open-soosah booth, go there and get everything that they will let you take. You know, I don't, Ohio has its own Linux festivals. Anybody know if Michigan has one? I've tried to look. I know they have, there's a Michigan lug that goes on every, every two weeks or so. I've thought about, I had that saved in a calendar, so I'm thinking about joining that. So that'd be, it sounds pretty cool. I don't know if there's actually a festival in Michigan and I've never actually- There might be one for Detroit, but that'd be about a- That's Detroit. It'd be like going to Cleveland. I know. Actually, your Detroit is my Toledo. We don't talk about Toledo. It reminds me of, you guys ever seen Scary Movie 4? It was like, Detroit, before the aliens? It shows everything on fire, then Detroit after the aliens? It just shows everything on fire, but with aliens? Those are good movies. As you can tell, I'm very much not, and you know, gonna be on topic today. It's gonna be fine. I'm sure it's gonna be fine. So other than going to the Linux conference, you're running Linux from scratch? I hear this. Yes, I am running Linux from scratch. I have spent two and a half weeks working on this. We have a super basic installation of minimum viable GUI plus terminal, and everything else on top is flat packet snaps.  So you're saving yourself from compiling everything post finishing by just using containers? Well yes, because you know, if I'm gonna make a distro, I'm gonna make the distro right, and I'm just gonna have minimum viable GUI plus terminal, everything else is on top as a container. Have you been able to, here's a question. Have you looked into getting distro box up and running? I was expecting that question. Turns out that building support for Docker and Podman is actually more of a pain in the butt than it is for Snap. Which Snap I had to, I had to apply 90 plus patches to the kernel just to be able to get the containerization working. And that's how it worked out of the box. I just saw a couple of libraries and it was good to go. I knew Matt was going to ask that question. Oh my God. I'm a fanboy, I can't help it, it's fantastic. I need to get on top of that. I need to get on top of that because I couldn't get it running on the Steam Deck, now the Steam Deck is gone. My most recent success on that is I wanted to try the Zoho mail client but there wasn't an RPM package for it so I downloaded it on my Arch container and just exported it, it works fine. I have a question regarding that. Is it true when people say if you're on Arch you don't need containers because Arch has everything? Is that true? No, Arch does not have everything. Almost everything. They have a lot of things but not everything. Also there's reasons why beyond just package availability that you'd want to use District Box, if you want things containerized with their own home directory or whatever, you can do it that way. Let's just say you wanted to have, this is just off top of my head, say you wanted to have Steam running but you didn't want it on your main machine for some reason, you wanted it in its own container and you didn't want to use Flat Pack for again whatever reason you could use District Box to do that and they're obviously more productivity, focused reasons to do that but yeah, there's many reasons to use District Box. Another reason is if an application is more stable on Debian than... Yeah, just be packaging reasons because you know Arch Linux is famous for hey, this feature quit working, we're just going to disable it in the package build and we're just going to push the binary out. Too bad you can't get Grubbin District Box, I'm just saying. Yep, too bad. All right, Steve, what have you been up to recently? Well, since I've been out of the country for the past two weeks, not much because, well, I didn't have a Linux machine. My brother was running Windows because my brother is not a Linux person. And... He's a model person. He's running Windows 11 and he was playing his game. But I did do a little bit. My brother gave me a Dell XPS 9360, a 13 inch laptop from 2017, a Core i7 7th gen with a 13 inch 4K touchscreen for whatever reason, who would run a 4K resolution on 13 inches? I don't know. But I installed zero G on Weyland using Weyland. So I do have, I'm starting to dip my toes into Weyland right now. So let me get this straight. Josh is using Snaps and you're using Weyland. It's like- And GNOME. And GNOME, and GNOME. It's like you're not even my friends anymore. What's wrong with you? You're betraying me. It's like stabbing me in the back. I've never really hated Snaps, to be honest with you. I just had some pain points with them.  Still slower than it needs to be, but it's definitely faster than it was. I'll just fix the annoyance a little bit. It's temporary. GNOME, Weyland is temporary. I want a full fledged Weyland session with Hyperland for now. I want to mess around with Hyperland. And then I want to mess with other Weyland, like KDE, Zero Linux KDE edition on Weyland on the laptop. It's an experimentation laptop device, basically. So I'm dipping my toes into Weyland like I promised everyone I would. I'm keeping my promise. Just not on my main rig. The GPU is still, I'm still gonna buy the GPU, but not right now. I'm waiting for the prices to go a little bit lower. But for the time being, I'm using that laptop to dip my toes into the whole Weyland situation. And for whatever reason, there's an issue currently with Arch. There's a VPN package. They decided to move to the AUR because for whatever reason, the maintainer is no longer maintaining it. And one of the dependencies is stuck with the old version. So I need to build new ISOs. So I'm working on that. And other than that, I'm enjoying some gaming on Linux. So first thanks to Nate for the Super Chat. I appreciate that. But for me, what I've been doing, so just one thing that I did is because I've been testing the awesomeness that is ButterFS. I uninstall, so I made a snapshot, a manual snapshot. I uninstalled Plasma completely for fun and installed GNOME. I was surrounded with GNOME, raced it and got all the extensions. Remembered why I hated GNOME and then did a rollback to the snapshot that I created before I installed GNOME and uninstalled Plasma. So that was fun. It worked flawlessly, by the way. There you go. You're right there, Steve. Your chair looks like it's both. It's my chair. It's doing some weird shit, but see, see, GNOME works. GNOME works. It worked. I got rid of it very fast. It was there for like just long enough for me to take a screenshot. Anyways, that's what I did. Other than that, mostly I've been just working, so. Anyways, that's it for that segment. Let's go ahead and move on to the main topic. And this week's main topic was brought to us by our friend Josh. So Josh will be taking over the hosting duties from here until the end. So Josh, take us away, please. Well, you see, Matt said that, hey, y'all need to help me pick topics because I don't know what topic we're gonna pick with this weekly podcast that we do here because a weekly schedule is really tough to maintain as I can personally vouch. But, you know, I've decided, you know what? Let's pick an interesting topic here. Is the Linux Cast Evil? Well, I don't think that he said that right. I don't think I did either. What, what, what, what just happened here? He just asked if the Linux Cast was evil. I don't think the Linux Cast was evil. Oh, okay, well, maybe the Linux Foundation. See, this is why I'm so glad I took over because if you've been practicing the sentence for a whole week and you still got this one wrong. No, actually, I was reading this Cryo Oxygen coming. That's where I got that from. Oh. Here's a million. Here's a million for that joke. Oh, I thanks, bud. Thanks. Then. So, is the Linux Foundation evil? Okay, so for those of you that don't know, the Linux Foundation is a foundation that was started back in the year 2000 by two, and it's a combination of these two different groups that were helping fund not just the development of the Linux kernel, but several other projects as well. And basically what they are is they're the foundation that currently handles the paychecks for Linus Torvalds, the guy that originally created Linux, and Greg Crow Hartman, which is the maintainer of the Linux LTS project, and several other developers that work on that, and they also help fund initiatives, and but they're basically just like the business people behind Linux. That's generally what they are. Now. When you mentioned LTS, sorry, I saw this today. Is it true that the LTS, switching from six-year schedule to a two-year schedule? Yeah, that's the way it used to be. Now it's two years. Yeah, it's back to two years, because it turns out that maintaining something for six years is kind of painful. Take it from somebody who's been maintaining something for three months. Because there's like four or not, whatever, like one of the four series, several of the four series is still in support, right? Yeah. Four dollars. It's been a long time ago. Okay, so. I just wanted to mention that. The support of the Linux foundation is what you would claim made it evil. What's your rationale behind thinking that it might be evil, Josh? Okay, so Matt, if you can take a moment. I think in, I think in like the topic proposal in the Git repository, I actually put an article link in there, or which is basically just a covering of the Linux foundation board. These are the people that control the Linux foundation. If you look at all the names, they also have all the company names that those people work for underneath. That's where you see Microsoft, VMware, Oracle, and a few other big names that you might recognize from the tech industry. Did you just mention Microsoft? Yes. Microsoft Linux. Oh. Yeah, Microsoft loves Linux, right? So we're gonna have a Microsoft Linux one day? Yeah, something like that. Here, I already found it. I'll post it in a YouTube chat for you. Microsoft Linux. Yeah, Board of Directors. Interesting. VMware, Sony. Two people listed in the Atmarder director. I think they're just the Linux foundation employees. We have Intel, hallway, Renaissance, Fujitsu, Tencent, Qualcomm Technologies, Meta, otherwise known as Facebook, Hitachi, Panasonic, Microsoft, Samsung, GitHub, which we all know Microsoft owns GitHub. Erickson, NAC, Intel, Red Hat, Oracle, and Jim Zemlin with the Linux foundation proper. You said Tencent. Tencent is as in Tencent, people behind PUBG and stuff like that? Yeah, they own PUBG, Fortnite. They have like a 90% ownership of right games. They also own TikTok. Well, because my brother who handles Papa John's signed an IP with them, an IPO or something, now they have PUBG on the boxes of Papa John. Yep. Now, the reason why I ask is the Linux foundation evil is because not that long ago, they actually used to have a chair that was dedicated for the community. And generally people from the community would elect a developer to sit in the community chair of the Linux foundation. Well, VMware, which you might know for their product of ESXi, which is a hypervisor, is a Linux-based operating system. And basically, they never contributed anything to the Linux kernel, nor did they post any of their kernel patches to a public repository. So they weren't contributing to the GPL. And this marks the largest GPL violation in the history of the GPL license. I was going to say, I was going to say it's a violation. Now, the Linux foundation, you can buy a chair in the Linux foundation for $500,000. You can buy a seat on the board. You can buy a seat, buy a seat. So even if you don't do anything to contribute anything, you just buy a seat. Yeah, so what VMware did was they bought a seat. And when they bought a seat on the Linux foundation, they pushed forward a proposal to the board of directors to eliminate the community chair, of which they approved. Uh-oh. That's a big no-no. Yeah, I would agree that this is something negative.    But also, the Linux foundation is not a community-focused thing, at least I've never seen it as one. So I'm not surprised that that happened. Since they've been more corporate-wise, has it always been corporate-sponsored since the beginning of it, Josh? You know the history, but I don't know. Initially, no, it was not, but the corporations have basically moved in. Also, I think I saw comments. Somebody's like, what does this have to do with regular everyday Linux users? The thing is that one thing you have to understand is that they, this isn't a desktop Linux thing. I don't, I mean, they're- It trickles down, the decisions, we suffer the decisions that trickle down because you got Intel, Microsoft, like specifically Intel because they're responsible for the CPU microcode and their CPU microcode and a lot of hardware-based microcodes and drivers and stuff like that. Mainly the ArcGPUs that Josh keeps shoving in our face every episode. I've still got the box, it's sitting back down on a shelf. Okay, so to help guide you guys in that, they pay for the development of the Linux kernel. They control the group that runs Automotive-grade Linux which is basically all the US automakers are moving towards besides Tesla because Tesla already made their own thing. They also have a controlling stake in the Open 3D Foundation which those are people that guide projects such as Blender and then the OpenJS Foundation which I'm not 100% certain but I think that they have something to do with the several JavaScript libraries that are very popular. Yeah. Now, how this would affect the user is say that like Big Daddy Linux Foundation, you know, who pays for the Linux development of the Linux kernel says, hey, Mr. Linus, can you just like approve this patch without actually reviewing it? Well, we'll grab our wallet here and we'll hand this corporate credit card to you if you do. Of course, Linus, you can only say. Okay. Now, in the event that you don't know, open source developers typically don't make a lot of money. Duh! Linus makes it probably the nicest paycheck out of anybody that actually develops open source code. Plus he made a mint back in the 90s. Yeah, but you know, if it's say like a million dollars for a one time thing. Wow. So basically the way you're describing the Linux Foundation is don't call your own. Something like that. Yeah, don't call your own. I'm gonna make him an offer to get reviews. Well, he can refuse it, but you know, I honestly would, there's probably plenty of people that would say you should just take in the money for Linux and do something else. Dude, recently with the 6.2 kernel and the ArcGPUs, that's what Intel did with Linus. They went through the Linux Foundation and they brought him a very handsome paycheck to include proprietary code in his kernel. Well, there's all kinds of proprietary could have been in kernel, even stretching from before the Linux Foundation establishment, so that's not exactly untrue. Well, I'm not saying this is the first time I'm just saying that it's one of the situations that confirms what you are saying, is they sat down Linus and the Intel guy and they were talking, including new proprietary code in the 6.2 kernel. So, and he was like, yeah, of course. Critically, if I'm wrong though, Intel does quite a bit of Linux development and contribution as well, so it's not as if they're just saying, hey. Yeah, they do. They're open source, they're contributions alone for not just Linux, but like the various BSD kernels that they contribute drivers towards. Of all the GPU manufacturers, Intel is your friend. Well, yes and no. Yes, when we say they have the highest number of open source contributions, but they also have proprietary stuff on the other side. Well, yeah. So, and proprietary stuff in the kernel. So, I'm like, how can Linus accept such things if the whole ideology behind the Linux kernel is to be open free and open source? Well, that's where the Linux Foundation comes in. He needs incentive to do that and that incentive is the Linux Foundation. Well, also the Linux kernel, yes, is free and open source, but it's not as regimental, it's not as regimental, it's not as, what's the word that I'm looking towards? It's not, they're not as tied to free and open source as like the new project is, for example, right? That's the reason why there has been proprietary blobs in the kernel for quite a long time. Yeah, not like the GNU Libre project. Yeah, or GNU Herd, if I remember correctly, I could be wrong. So, we were talking about corporations and their contributions to the Linux kernel. I just found this, this is not very recent, but this is from the 5.10 kernel. So, Huawei was the number one employer of Linux kernel developers at 8.9% of commits. Intel was number two at 8%, 6.6 and 5.9 were unknown and none. Then he had Red Hat, Google, AMD, Leno, which I've never heard of, Samsung, IBM, NXP, Facebook, Oracle, Sousa, Code, ORA, Forum, ARM, Renaissance, Electronics, NVIDIA and Texas Instruments. NVIDIA? Uh-oh. Good old NVIDIA. Well, that was also about when they were starting to rewrite their driver into the open source driver too. So that might be why. I didn't find the more recent ones. This is just why I found first. So yes, corporations do influence through the Linux foundation, but a lot of them also contribute back to it as well. And what I was gonna say earlier was that a lot of the corporations are interested in this because they use it on servers. It's all enterprises, the reason why they're interested. No, no, no, it's not one of them care about the, the Linux foundation has no interest whatsoever in desktop Linux. That's the reason why they all use Macs. We know that. Right? Whoa, they use Macs? Yeah. I mean, they're business people. They're not really developers. True, true. But if you go to all of the Linux conferences, all the people that are giving presentations, they're generally not using Linux computers to run the conferences. Yeah, but what I was going to say was that, yes, corporations kind of help and are needed in some areas for Linux to somewhat grow in the enterprise world and the server world. So I don't see them as evil in that area, but where they are, where they can tend to be seen as evil is when their iffy decisions, corporate decisions, trickle down to desktop Linux. Because sometimes they do. A lot of some of their decisions slip through and end up affecting desktop Linux. So that's how it is. That's how it can be perceived as evil. But otherwise, I don't see it as evil and nothing but evil. This is my point of view anyway. They are only evil if their decisions end up on the desktop Linux realm. Otherwise, who cares? Let them do whatever they wanna do. I do agree that these corporations should probably be involved in Linux kernel development. Yeah, they help the kernel grow. But I really do think that with the Linux kernel being maintained in this open source manner, the only company that is on the Linux Foundation board, or at least the only company name that I see on there that I particularly don't mind being there, because they do have some interest in desktop Linux is Red Hat. Because Red Hat, they also maintain the GNOME Foundation. They are big drivers of developing and maintaining GNOME itself on both Red Hat Linux and Fedora, which I think there's something like 50% of the people that make contributions on the GNOME's GitLab page. But I think that they're the only ones that have an interest in desktop Linux. So I do think that the corporation should be there, but I also think that there should still be a community chair. You know that the seats are bought and paid for when they have levels. So they have Gold Director and Silver Director.  So I think that what side you come down on this really does depend on where you are and the whole corporation influence on Linux things. So we've talked about on the podcast before about how big corporations like Canonical and Red Hat and SUSE, how they have an enormous influence on desktop Linux, because they control the largest, you know, distros that are out there for the most part. You know, it's out of Arch. Like Arch is like the big distro out there that's not corporately influenced by corporations. The rest of them. Can I raise you Debian? And Debian, I forgot, sorry. Yeah, Debian, sorry. Debian is bigger than Arch. I forgot about Debian. How do I forget about Debian? I think I've been spending too much time with Debian. They just wanted to forget about it for a little while. Anyways, yeah, Debian and Arch those are the two examples of non-corporate influenced distros out there. And the rest of them basically are run by them, the big ones anyway. You know, I got a bunch of small ones, obviously, that aren't, but, and where you come down on the whole evilness of the Linux foundation, I think is kind of tied to, do you think that the influence of corporations period is evil? If so, then your answer to this is obviously yes, or do you think that in some situations, corporate influence can be positive? So for me personally, it's a weird proposition for me to be in, but I think, yes, corporations do evil things because they're influenced by one purpose only, which is making money. But also, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily always evil because obviously, every time something comes up to me and says, Matt, I don't like the influence of Red Hat or Canonical with Linux. I asked them, do you like Linux? Because without Canonical, without Red Hat, without the developers that work for them, without their money financing the development of these technologies, Linux would be back in the 90s still, right? We'd still have horrible audio. We'd still be using XORG, but worse, like really old, old XORG. And we'd have, for all of you Waylon fans, there'd be no Waylon, there'd be no System D, there'd be, you name the technology. There'd be no Pulse Audio. There'd be no Pulse Audio. You name the technology that has made Linux usable over the last 15 years, it was probably developed by, or at least financed by a corporation of some kind. Now, you can take the argument in another direction and say, yes, we can put up with the influence of Red Hat and Canonical and SUSE and whatever, because they have a, they have a iron in the fire, they have a interest in Linux themselves because it's their business, right?  You make cameras, bro. TVs, dude, TVs. The TV is based on Android and Android uses the Linux kernel. Somebody was gonna say PlayStation, but PlayStation uses BSD, so. Yeah, they're built off of free BSD, so I don't really know what they would be using Linux for. The smart TV is Android, smart TVs. But they don't, they're just using Google TV. That'd be a reason for Google to have a chair on the thing, not. Yeah, maybe something with the cameras. Could be. Maybe the cameras have a Linux kernel running on them. That'd be hilarious. Oh, no. Anyway, so you can kind of, I guess it really does depend for me personally what corporation is having influence because I'm perfectly fine with Canonical and Red Hat and Suiza and I'm gonna say something horrible, maybe even Oracle, that tasted bad. But when it comes to Microsoft and Fujitsu and Tencent, like what the, why do you need influence over the Linux kernel? It feels more nefarious when they do it than the other guys does. That's just my point of view. Well, I do think that Fujitsu and Huawei, while they seem a little weird, I do believe that they are using a Linux stack for their embedded devices. Well, and networking, right? A lot of that stuff is, a lot of their interest there is networking. And a lot of these companies you can see, like VMware, you can understand, because virtual machines and stuff, that Intel obviously has a big deal because of the CPU processors and GPUs and stuff like that. Some of them, you're just like, what? Like Tencent, what possible, I mean, Tencent's not developing games for Linux, I don't think, are they? I don't even think Tencent does anything themselves. They buy other companies and things for them. Yeah. And like, I guess Meta, you can kind of understand because they're probably running Linux on their servers and stuff. They're Oculus, they're Oculus stuff. Don't they run? That's Meta. Oculus is Meta. Yeah, that's what I said, Meta. Yeah. Yeah, that's. When then you have some weird ones, like you have like Panasonic, like is it Panasonic, is it Panasonic still the thing? Yeah. It's like they have those. They have those. They have those. They have those. Of TVs back in the day. Panasonic still have those portable audio players like Sony's Walkman line. They run a sort of a Linux thing. Panasonic is also the IEM distributor for Chrysler car radius. Yeah. How do you know these things? I might own a couple Chryslers and maybe that's how I know. You need to get on Jeopardy or something, man. I'm telling you. All right. That's Joshy boy. That's not even a Linux thing. I just know that off the top of my head. Weird, weird trivia topics. But yeah, Panasonic in general, like they still sell and make cheap home audio equipment. Like a lot of the sound and they work as an IEM distributor for a lot of other projects too. Like, you know, they might just remove the Panasonic label and put like a TLC logo on the sound bars. This is like having RCA on the board. Also RCA still in business, by the way. Going strong. So let's come up with a different, it'd be like having Kodak on the board because I don't think actually, I think Kodak is actually gone. No, they're not actually. They're not actually. They're still around. So I know for sure they file for bankruptcy, but they are still actually still. I know that they're the only company that still produces film. Yes, the reason I know that is because I'm into the technicalities behind filmmaking. There are still directors that refuse to go digital. And they use Kodak and Kodak film and Fujifilm. I don't blame them for not going digital. There are some advantages to film when it comes to like image quality. You can still get them on the New York Stock Exchange for four dollars and 16 cents. Yeah, there we go. There's our Wall Street bets right there. How many people are undervaluing that? Let's, yeah, I'm not gonna take a moment to look into that, not right now. So they're 52 week high at six dollars and 34 cents. So you could have made some money, man. I got it, I got it. Yeah, but I think they should, The Linux Foundation is evil, yes. But is it evil for us desktop Linux users? Not so much, that's simplifying it. For us desktop users, we just sit back and watch. But when it comes to VMware buying a seed, when you said VMware bought a seed, well, VMware has a lot of their technologies running on Linux. Okay, they did not, they did a felony here where they're not sharing. Yes, but at some point they will and their input will be super helpful because we do use VMware all in it. So yeah, other than that, I don't know, this topic is kind of weird. There's a lot of silence. I'm trying to think of something to say, but I mean, nothing I can come up with. Well, I think we already read the subject down. Let's change the topic for just one moment. Let's talk about Microsoft and specific because Microsoft is the big, and technically, I suppose you could consider Google also equally as big in terms of the influence on Linux, but you hear more stuff about Linux and Microsoft together, right? Because Microsoft's always doing things together, you know, W and W, and they're talking about, you know, their own little Linux distribution and stuff like that. So let me ask you this question, just kind of fill this out a little bit. What do you guys think the future of Windows actually is? Do you think that the Windows will continue to use the current thing that they do, or will they go to a Linux kernel in the future? Windows will still continue using the NT kernel for as long as they possibly can. Yes, I agree. 100%. Because there are some advantages to the NT kernel. For one thing, they know how it works. Another thing is there is so much software that uses hardware kernel calls directly that I don't think for legacy support reasons, which, you know, Microsoft does a fantastic job of legacy support, I don't think that they can never switch off of the NT kernel or a translation layer for the NT kernel. That's why they're having problems with ARM, right? Yeah, that's actually why they have so many issues with ARM. They're gonna continue doing it the way they are and WSL will continue to grow. They have already a Linux technology that works on Windows called WSL. So that covers that. Yeah. Oh, I tried to get us to talk more. All right, let's go ahead. I'm sorry. It's fine. I thought it would be kind. We're actually gonna end on time for once. I thought we were gonna have a little controversy here, but it didn't happen. Anyway, let's, before we jump into the thingies of the week, let's talk about the contact information you can find us at all sorts of places online. But the best place is the website, lilinxcast.org is the website. There you'll find previous episodes all the way back to season one. And you'll also find blog posts when I post them. I have several posts that are on Patreon that have been exclusive there for quite a while, but I haven't posted them on the website yet. That'll happen eventually when I remember. I do get that habit sometimes. Anyways, you can find all that stuff there. You can find Josh at 10lyj.com slash you changed it. It's contact. Slash contact. I like stalker because I could remember it. So 10lyj.com slash contact. Well, stalker still works. Okay. Stalker still works. Okay, good. So if I mess that up, I'm not screwing anybody. Good. Steve is on mastodon at flasodon.org slash at zero Linux. I'm doing this without in front of me by the way. So I'm completely off memory. So you can follow him over there. He also has a YouTube channel which he no longer uses for a while. He's taking a break. He's on discord and Patreon. He's on Ko-fi and all those places. So all that stuff. You'll find all of our contact information. You can do so at thelinxcast.org slash contact. There you'll find links to the discord and all that stuff. If you want to support the channel, you can do so at shop.linxcast.org. There you'll find some merch, which is awesome. You can also do Patreon or Ko-fi, both of those links again at thelinxcast.org slash contact. Also like and subscribe. So I appreciate that. So there's the contact information. Let's go ahead and move into the thingies of the week. Josh, your thingie of the week, please. My thingie of the week, might be something after your near and dear heart because you're using KDE, which means that you're slowly gonna be using more KDE specific applications. So I'm going to bust out the good old faithful MPV plus a client and that's called the Haruna media player.  It is honestly like the best video player that you can have. That's not called a VLC. And this is just a front end for it. Have you also MPV have a GUI already? It does. This is a better one. Technically it does, it just doesn't have a ton of options. Most of your configuration and stuff is done in a configuration file and stuff. So if you want to have a KDE like experience when it comes to configuration, Haruna is the best way to go. Oh, cool. If you want to have a more GTK, like there's a front end for GTK as well. I don't remember. It's called Celluloid. Celluloid, that was the name. Yep. So yeah. I've actually made a video on Haruna. I've made videos on everything apparently. Apparently. I mean, you've definitely got a lot of videos on your channel. None of them are any good according to Josh. All right. No, they all suck.  Thank you. This is my friend, guys. I appreciate that. Steve, your thingy of the week. My thingy of the week is a game. Everybody heard of it. Everybody's playing it. It's called Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not playing it. Wait, wait, there's a third one? Yeah. Yeah. So the reason I'm making it the thingy of the week is because I just got into it today. I played for, I don't know, 45 minutes total. And I already fell in love with it. Because you can create all sort of characters. All genders are accepted just to be YouTube friendly. I'm not going to go into detail about that. You can, and the best part of the game, I saw it at my brother's place. He's very far along into the game. Like, you can, if you don't have enough gold to buy stuff from the stores, you can pickpocket the shop owner. You just have to do it with tact and you have to figure out how to do it without getting caught. And there's another thing. You can be one thing. Let's say you're an elf while pickpocketing. You can transform into a midget or a hobbit or whatever you want and go hide somewhere so you don't get caught. It's so big. This game is so big and so well done. And the story is amazing. And so, I'm enjoying every part of it. I enjoyed every minute of those 45 minutes. I'm just waiting to download the rest of the updates because I have the GOG version and it has received a total of 13 patches so far and the patches total 17 gigabyte. So I'm waiting to finish downloading those. Update the game to the latest and resume. And it's running at 70 plus FPS on my old aging 1080 at ultra setting. This is a well optimized game. I haven't enjoyed a well optimized game in ages and it runs flawless on Linux. I'm using, I'm launching. And this is the very first GOG game that I cannot launch directly from the shortcut it creates on the desktop. So I'm launching it using bottles and it just works. It just worked. No need for shenanigans or special configurations or anything. It runs and it runs beautifully. So if you haven't checked that game out, check it out. It's awesome. Cool. I'm not buying any more games right now. I can't. That's fine. One thing that I really appreciate from Baldur's Gate is back when I had a less reliable internet connection, the day one download of Baldur's Gate actually worked, which is not something you can say about modern video games. Everybody note that every time he mentions his internet connection, he has to rub it in that he has now has fiber, okay? I do have fiber. Well, it's a fiber back end. It's not actually a fiber connection. I'm still connecting via DSL over a fiber back end, but that's going to change. He'll be mentioning this now for the next three years at least. Every episode. All right. I'm going gigabit. Like I've had gigabit for, and it's not fiber, but that's the reason why my uploads speed suck, but I don't mention it, because I don't have to mention it. It's coaxial? Yeah. Oh, okay. Like I had in Ireland. I could go up to 1.2, but they want it like a lot more expensive, a lot more money for the extra 0.2 of a gig. I don't really need it. So honestly, I don't need gig, to be honest with you, because I think it'd be more impressive that internet speed if the upload speeds weren't like not gig. I feel like 60 megabits per second.  So I don't find that I do, really. I'm fully expecting to attempt a couple of downloads. You know, once I actually have something greater than a 25 megabit download speed. So what he's saying is he's bragging about having fiber, but he doesn't actually have the benefits of fiber yet. Well, I already said that. Right, I know, but what I'm saying is that we just wait until he has the benefits of fiber, then it's gonna be 10 times worse. All right. It'll be weekly streams. Guaranteed. That's gonna be some distro hacking right there. He's gonna compile the entire Gentoo repository. You just gave him an idea. I've done it before. What did you just do? All right. My thingy of the week is Ivory. I've been using Ivory now for a little while. It is a Mastodon client. And if you have an iOS device and you need a Mastodon client, it's probably the best one. It is very well designed. It's the same guy who did tap bots for Twitter back when third party Twitter clients was a thing. Like I said, it's very well designed. It does cost money. So if you are wanting to use it. It's on iOS, so it does cost money, definitely. Well, I mean, there are free Mastodon clients on iOS if you wanna use them. Yeah, I'm using one. But Ivory is good. Has all the features that you want and very well designed. One thing I'll say after going back to iOS is that I often forget after having been on Android for three years is that the applications on iOS are 10 times better than Android. I'm just saying it's just in terms of design and functionality and performance, way better than Android. Matt, I bow to you now. I just bow to you because you said the magic word, the applications, they're like, it's like GNOME. On GNOME, the GNOME suite of applications, they're amazing. Okay, I don't care if you hate GNOME, but if you compare the GNOME applications versus the KDE applications or the Qt applications, GNOME just beats them hands down. Same thing with iOS. I still can't find a good music player that is written in Qt. They all kinda suck.  But on GTK, I've settled on Rhythmbox for 10 years now. I'm not switching off of anything else. I've been using Amarok for the past year, but anyway.  I hate that design.  Oh, they're horrible. Bad. No good. Sucks. So I'm currently looking for a phone, an Android phone as a secondary travel phone, and I'm gonna be using it here as a hotspot thing. There are inexpensive phones that are good, I realize. Well, that's one place where Android has the win, is if you want a cheap phone, you can go there and get one. Yeah, I found a $100 phone, $100. Just a $100 bill will get you a phone that has eight gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, 120 Hertz display. Dude, to get those specs on the Apple side, that's a minimum of $700. I'm like, but the caveat with Android is very apparent, is when you buy those, like in Lebanon, the major brand is Techno. So those have two-year software update with one extra year of security updates, so a total of three years. So after those three years, you can chuck this phone in the garbage unless you wanna flash it and put some weird OS on it that would help. I'm not interested in all these things. So, but those phones are cheap enough to, once they're done, chuck away by no one. So I'm doing that, but yeah. Ivory on iOS is an amazing application and there's a tidbit, nobody knows, the guy who created Tapbots and, by extension, Ivory, the main guy, the head guy, is from Lebanese origins. Hope everyone was wearing headphones when they did that. All right. Well, we Lebanese are all over the place. You can't get rid of them. Nope, we're a virus. All right, that's it for this episode of the Linuxcast, guys. We've had a good time. I know the topic, you know, we had some trouble getting into the topic. We'll, it's just because it was such a blatant, obviously thing is obviously evil because Josh came up with it. Well, first of all, hold on a second, hold on a second.  Look at that shirt that Josh is wearing.  Well, guess where I'm going right after this podcast? Oh, how I hate Ohio State. Ghost Spartans. All right, anyways, that's it for this one. I will talk, we'll talk to you guys next week, record this live every Saturday, and it's every Saturday, I guarantee it's every Saturday. We never miss an episode at three o'clock p.m. Eastern time on the Linuxcast at youtube.com slash the Linuxcast where you can find that, you can subscribe, hit the notification bell so you know that we do go live, even though it's definitely every Saturday that we go live, you'll never, you'll never miss it. Anyways, thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast.  Without you, the challenges would not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very, very much for your support. I truly, truly do appreciate it. Thanks everybody for watching. Again, we never miss an episode. We never have missed an episode.  We'll see you next week. Bye.


Welcome to this short introduction to the core concept of network-based discovery. Network-based discovery is an example of knowledge discovery, that is, the goal is to discover new knowledge from existing knowledge. In network-based discovery, the goal is typically to discover indirect links between entities. The field falls in the intersection of many other research areas that I've covered in earlier talks, namely text mining, enrichment analysis, knowledge graphs, and machine learning. So let's start with text mining. An early example of network-based discovery is Swanson linking, named after Dun Swanson, who discovered a link between fish oil and a certain disease. The idea being that both the disease and fish oil had a relation in the literature to blood viscosity, leading him to propose that fish oil could be used to treat the disease. This is known as literature-based discovery. And there are two variants of it. The first is what is called closed search. In this case, you have two different concepts, A and B, and you're looking for a link between them, C. This can be used to explain observations. If you've already seen that there seems to be a relation between A and B, but you don't know why, you can go hunt in the literature for an explanation. The other variant is open search. In open search, you start from one concept A, then link to B and further to C, thereby making new discoveries. As you can probably imagine, that doesn't have to be only one path. One could look for multiple indirect links linking A and C. That is, A might be linked to both B1, B2 and so on, all of which are linked to C. And having multiple such links would obviously strengthen the association. Another way of doing network-based discovery is enrichment analysis. Imagine that you're starting from a disease of interest and you've performed a genome-wide association study or a transcriptomic study. In either case, you end up with a list of genes. You now do gene-set enrichment analysis or over-representation analysis to discover pathways that contain many of the genes that you already found to be involved in the disease. That is, you found an indirect link between the disease and the pathway. This is equivalent to doing an open search looking for multiple indirect links. You have A, the disease, being linked to a lot of different B's, the genes, which are linked to the pathway C. The only difference is that in this case, we're not looking in literature. Rather, the links between the disease and the genes come from experimental data and the links between the genes and the pathways typically come from curated knowledge. So, evidence could come from many different sources. So, why don't we use knowledge graphs for this? In a knowledge graph, you can have many different types of entities or concepts and you can have many different types of evidence integrated, including text mining, experimental data and manually curated knowledge, leading to many different types of links between the many different types of entities. That gives you a graph like this, where you have, for example, genes and anatomy terms and diseases and drugs linked to each other in various ways. You can now go in this graph and also look for longer paths. You don't need to have A linked to C just via B. You could have A linked to B to C to D. The problem with longer paths is that you get a combinatorial explosion and many of these paths may not make sense. For this reason, they are generally constrained with so-called metapaths that allow you to follow only the meaningful path. For example, you could have a compound, a drug, being linked to one disease, which has a gene involved in it, which is also involved in another disease, thereby indirectly via a longer path linking the compound to the disease. Or you could have the compound belong to a pharmaceutical class in which you already have another compound that is used to treat the disease. Of course, when you look for these longer paths going via many different types of concepts, you need some sort of scoring scheme for ranking them in terms of which are your most reliable predictions. And the obvious way to do that is to turn to machine learning. What is most commonly used in this field is unsupervised learning. Specifically, you can do a random walk within this knowledge graph and have it be constrained by metapaths that way obtaining a metapath embedding. This is a vector representation of every node or entity in the graph in terms of what it is connected to in its neighborhood. You can then use these vectors for doing clustering or for doing link prediction, thereby getting the indirect links that we're trying to get. Another way of casting the problem is as a supervised learning problem where you can use graph neural networks directly on top of these knowledge graphs to do label prediction. Although a lot of work has been done in this field, there are still many open challenges. One relates to the fact that networks are not perfect. And for that reason, the methods need to be robust to error. And that is difficult to do when you're looking for indirect paths because all it takes is one wrong link to produce many wrong predictions. For this reason, it's important to be able to benchmark the methods, which is another challenge. Prediction is, as it's famously stated, very difficult, especially about the future. And the only way of really testing whether these methods are able to make predictions about the future is to do pseudo-prospective tests. That is, we try to make predictions based on what we knew up until some point in the past to see if they can predict what we know now. Unfortunately, this is really difficult to do in practice. It's very difficult to make a clean dataset that doesn't leak any information from the period you're trying to predict. But the most difficult problem is how to avoid trivial discoveries. These are high-scoring predictions that will often dominate your output, but which are in principle true, but completely trivial to experts. For example, we may have a drug that is used to treat a disease, and you can trivially predict that another drug that is nearly identical might work for the same disease. This is not interesting to predict. Unfortunately, it's very hard to filter these predictions out. So for that reason, when you use these methods, you have a tendency to have to go through long list of predictions that are correct but uninteresting to find the few interesting ones. That's all I have to say about network-based discovery. If you want to learn more about the knowledge graphs and how they are created and what other things they can be used for, I suggest that you take a look at this presentation next. Thanks for your attention.


Hi, this unit provides you with several arguments why linguistics is a great subject to study. But it also discusses some reasons why you might want to stay away. Find out if linguistics is right for you in this unit. The content section discusses the main arguments for and against linguistics and exemplifies them using arguments from language therapy, language teaching, or even literature studies. If you don't know where to start, use the question set in the how to proceed section as guidance. The mastery test presents several questions about the importance of linguistics but also checks your language awareness. The answers to these questions are all discussed in the content units and should thus be easy to answer. Well, and in this unit's suggestions for in-class activities, you will find some interesting linguistic phenomena ready for analysis. Try on your own first, the model suggestions will be given later. And once an activity is ready, don't forget to tick it off to show your learning process. So, even if this unit involves a lot of new information, we made it as accessible as possible for you. So, good luck.