Despite the fact that Arabic is one of the most spoken languages in the world, it always seems to take a backseat to English when it comes to resources to make learning the language accessible, easy and fun.
That's exactly what Natasha Quariab, the Jordanian behind My Letter Village, wants to change, by establishing a creative platform through which people, especially children, can easily learn the Arabic language and actually enjoy it.
"My Letter Village" (Qaryat Huroofi) is a cartoon program that teaches the phonetics of each Arabic letter and how words are formed in Arabic, it also provides vocabulary.
But what makes it different from what's been available before for learning Arabic, which isn't one of the easiest languages to learn, is the unique teaching method it uses in its five-minute episodes.
In the "letter village", each Arabic letter takes the form of a character that makes the sound of the letter's phonetic sound. The viewer gets to follow the story as these different characters go on adventures and build Arabic words in order to achieve their goals.
Through this method, the viewer gets to learn what each letter sounds like and what each letter looks like when written in different Arabic words, so that they can easily recognize them when they come across them in the different forms they take in different words.
Quariab, who struggled herself with learning Arabic as a child, just started a Zoomaal crowdfunding campaign to make the dream of making "My Letter Village" available for a wide audience a reality.
"We created a pilot episode and starting showing it around, the response was overwhelming, with parents begging for more episodes and children asking us to keep repeating the same episode over and over," Quariab said in her campaign message.
Setting the goal at $25,000, Quariab aims to create 20 episodes of the animated show and broadcast them on the major Arabic cartoon satellite TV channels, as well as upload them to YouTube so they can be available online for free.
In addition, part of the money will be used to create the "My Letter Village" app that will include the show's episodes, as well as edutainment games and videos that are engaging and enjoyable.
Quariab, who has previous experience in creating educational Arabic videos for children, ultimately wants to fill the gap in the market for resources that help people learn the Arabic language in a creative and enjoyable way.