Arabic is too small to read!!!

[KeepYourChinUp]

Whenever I see Arabic written on the web it's always too small to read and I have to zoom in on the page to see all the little dots and stuff, is this normal or will I just pick up on the look of the word within time?

After all when you read English you don't look at each letter, you recognise the word based on the look of the word.

[Traveler]

I don't know any Arabic, but I have wondered about this before. It looks so small and it all seems to blend together. And if I remember correctly, most of the letters are written differently depending on where they come in a word? I'm not sure what the answer is.

[KeepYourChinUp]

I've been reading online and I think there is a browser plugin that you can download that increases the font of Arabic but I just can't seem to find it.

[xTinx]

I think Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn. If you really want to learn all aspects of the language, you need to be prepared for the rather challenging Arabic writing system. I hear they write starting from the right going to the left. The curves and dots seem to be connected as well. Really difficult.

[KeepYourChinUp]

I know the alphabet already and yes you're right. The letter changes shape depending on where in the word they occur but once you practice a bit it's not that hard although writing it is another story all together.

[Hexahedron]

Yes, I can see where you are coming from. Arabic is really difficult to learn if you aren't brought up in a country which speaks it. Reading Arabic is pretty tough, speaking is a little bit more, and writing is extremely difficult (like above poster mentioned). I would just tell you to use a browser extension which increases the font size and slowly reduce it till you get used to it.

[Chris4Davi]

The fact that you are trying to learn the language and the font is your only issue, you are well on your way. With a little more practice, you will be able to read it much easier as it is just a matter of distinction between the letters. I gave up from I learnt the first letter. :wacky:

[czarina84]

On ‎9‎/‎28‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎35‎:‎00‎, KeepYourChinUp said:

I know the alphabet already and yes you're right. The letter changes shape depending on where in the word they occur but once you practice a bit it's not that hard although writing it is another story all together.

So, it's really just similar to listening to a different language.? Once you know what to look for, you can usually pick it out.  I just got a job with an Israel-based company.  I saw some websites in Hebrew.  The letters (characters?) were enlarged.  I wonder why they don't  do that for Arabic as well.

[宇崎ちゃん]

Practise is king.
You can as well do CTRL and + to zoom in, then the text will become bigger too.
But best is to practise at its usual font size, you won't get accustomed to it otherwise and therefore you'll always need enlarged font to read it.
This is a problem, considering you won't be able to enlarge the font used in a newspaper, menu cards or whatever else.

[宇崎ちゃん]

On 24/09/2014, 23:26:26, KeepYourChinUp said:

After all when you read English you don't look at each letter, you recognise the word based on the look of the word.

Not really, it seems so because you're a native English speaker and you got used to reading English.
If you would ask an Arab to read English text when he or she just started to learn it, he or she would say the exact same thing, except that he would say "Arabic" instead of "English".
Every foreign language you learn, you start off reading it letter-by-letter.
Once you get used to it, you'll automatically read it word-by-word.

Taken roughly from IWillTeachYouALanguage, language learners think in words, native speakers think in sentences.

 

Edit: moved this topic to "Study Arabic".

[jamesbonner]

Well i'm native arabic speaker, and I don't really thing that the letters are too small, in the hand write, we write the letters as big as we write the english letters, maybe you've seen that in a website with small front, maybe because your computer doesn't have arabic fonts, or maybe because it's the first time you see new letters lol

[OmniHead]

When visiting a site with small fonts, press the control key in your keyword at the same time you press the plus  "+" symbol in the numeric keypad or wherever else this symbol is.

Do this repetitively until you are comfortable with the size of the font, and revert by pressing control and symbol minus "-" as many times as required to go back to normal or smaller.

This is the zoom option, usually available also from the browser's menu.

[jamesbonner]

On 24/12/2015 at 4:28 AM, OmniHead said:

When visiting a site with small fonts, press the control key in your keyword at the same time you press the plus  "+" symbol in the numeric keypad or wherever else this symbol is.

Do this repetitively until you are comfortable with the size of the font, and revert by pressing control and symbol minus "-" as many times as required to go back to normal or smaller.

This is the zoom option, usually available also from the browser's menu.

that's what I was trying to say, I think that topic maker have seen a website with a small font and he tought that that's how  the arabic letters wrotes