Arabic, a great language, has a low profile • Hacker News Board

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#51

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

sdegutis wrote: post #32

jacobolus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They [the Chinese Communist Party] think suppression of local languages “pays off” in the form of political consolidation/control. Which it certainly does, at the expense of Chinese citizens and their regional cultures. The Chinese government is by no means unique in this approach. Violent suppression of minority cultures has been a common occurrence in world history.

Do you have proof of the US government kidnapping people and forcing them to learn another language? Edit: it was mentioned in a previous edit of parent comment

[deleted]

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#52

Post by rvense » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #23

msvan wrote: post #10

Chinese also had the same "issue": it is more of a family of languages rather than a language. But the Chinese government has been pushing pretty hard for Mandarin over the past 100 years, such that it has now become the Chinese language. It has cost them a lot of linguistic diversity, but they probably think it pays off in the long run.

France is doing the same with French.

French was a minority language in France until the 20th century. The other languages were basically beaten and shamed out of school children.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#53

Post by diminish » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

Somehow the sound of Arabic accents are quite harsh among all languages I know to my ears. Only German is somewhat harsh - I have a lot of pleasure with Rammstein the metal/rock band sound in German. I always thought metal music would sound quite nice in Several Arabic accents as opposed to let's say a softer language like Italian. In short metal/hard rock in Arabic would sound wonderful whereas in Italian not.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#54

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

geowwy wrote: post #31

jacobolus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They [the Chinese Communist Party] think suppression of local languages “pays off” in the form of political consolidation/control. Which it certainly does, at the expense of Chinese citizens and their regional cultures. The Chinese government is by no means unique in this approach. Violent suppression of minority cultures has been a common occurrence in world history.

The RoC also promotes Mandarin, it's not unique to the PRC. Nearly every modern state promotes a national language.

> It's not unique to the PRC

Yes, that’s what I just said.

> Nearly every modern state promotes a national language.

While I agree that many states engage in implicit or explicit suppression of minority cultures (often worse in the past than today), and many (most?) states have a legally declared official language, your brief summary is a false equivalence. There are many places in the world where e.g. media in local languages is allowed, children are allowed to attend schools speaking their native languages, official government documents are translated into all of the most common minority languages, there is institutional support for cultural preservation, minority religious faiths are allowed to freely practice, etc.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#55

Post by improbable22 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 5:58 AM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #20

sandworm101 wrote: post #3

Except for arabic numerals. All of science, in every language, uses arabic numerals. That is a really big deal we rarely even mention.

Except that those are Hindu numerals and not Arabic numerals.

And I believe they are explicitly called this in Arabic.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#56

Post by vertline3 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:04 AM UTC

diminish wrote: post #53

Somehow the sound of Arabic accents are quite harsh among all languages I know to my ears. Only German is somewhat harsh - I have a lot of pleasure with Rammstein the metal/rock band sound in German. I always thought metal music would sound quite nice in Several Arabic accents as opposed to let's say a softer language like Italian. In short metal/hard rock in Arabic would sound wonderful whereas in Italian not.

Maybe conversely, I think Arabic written script is lovely with flowing line.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#57

Post by jl6 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #22

I learned MSA and some Egyptian and there really are things you can say in it that are almost impossible to express in English (or the other European languages I know). This is true of any pair of languages of course but structurally the root system allows much more nuance and overtone than more workmanlike languages like English. I believe Hebrew (which I don't speak!) has a similar structure though I've been told b…

Have you got some examples?

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#58

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #14

amasad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of science and philosophy was done in Arabic during the middle ages so "1.4k years" is an overestimate. Without the Arab and Muslim scholarship much of Greek/Roman wisdom would be lost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Cl...

Islamic/arabic world could not keep up with the science, unfortunately.

Let's not go into religious or racial flamewar, please.

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#59

Post by sonnyblarney » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:14 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #22

I learned MSA and some Egyptian and there really are things you can say in it that are almost impossible to express in English (or the other European languages I know). This is true of any pair of languages of course but structurally the root system allows much more nuance and overtone than more workmanlike languages like English. I believe Hebrew (which I don't speak!) has a similar structure though I've been told b…

"workmanlike"?

Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

#60

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:16 AM UTC

thebooktocome wrote: post #36

lgessler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ghazal is a poetic form, not science. Not saying I agree with GP, but this isn't a rebuttal.

OP didn't write what you seem to have read. > nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic, especially in the last 1.4k years. Poetry is important.

[deleted]