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Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

economist.com

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

#101

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Uberphallus wrote: post #77
theprotocol wrote: post #64

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Ara…

I'm a polyglot, and what keeps me from trying to learn Arabic is precisely that. Back in the day I worked in a very international environment, two Tunisian colleagues spoke Tunisian to each other, but when the Moroccan or Lebanese guys from the other teams came to ask some questions, everybody switched to French. If was small talk, they would stick to Arabic with the Moroccan though. It's pretty amazing that Arabic,…

Would it be comparable to, say, Dutch and Afrikaans? They sound similar and up to a point people from those countries can have a conversation in their respective languages, but there's just so many differences that it's easier to switch to English.

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

#102

Post by rat87 »

Uberphallus wrote: post #77
theprotocol wrote: post #64

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Ara…

I'm a polyglot, and what keeps me from trying to learn Arabic is precisely that. Back in the day I worked in a very international environment, two Tunisian colleagues spoke Tunisian to each other, but when the Moroccan or Lebanese guys from the other teams came to ask some questions, everybody switched to French. If was small talk, they would stick to Arabic with the Moroccan though. It's pretty amazing that Arabic,…

> It's pretty amazing that Arabic, technically spoken in a contiguous region from Morocco to Saudi Arabia isn't mutually intelligible with itself, whereas English, French or Spanish, separated by oceans for centuries, even if they grew different variants, stay intelligible.

Language is political.

If a different political situation had come about you could see French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian dubbed one language named Neo-Latin, this language wouldn't be very mutually intelligible either

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

#103

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Annatar wrote: post #71
theprotocol wrote: post #64

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Ara…

All that aside, I find the script flowing and incredibly elegant and beautiful, purely from an aesthetic point of view.

Can't deny that; same with the eastern languages. Latin script on the other hand appeals more to the engineering side of me, simpler 'instructions' so to speak. RISC vs CISC?

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

#104

Post by afroboy »

amasad wrote: post #21
anonu wrote: post #8

I would disagree with the articles analogy of MSA to arabic dialects is like Latin to Romance languages. The difference is not quite that stark with Arabic.

It's pretty stark. I speak Laventine and I struggle to communicate with my North African friends and often end up supplementing with english. I'm not sure I'd go this far but some scholars make the case that the dialects are not really dialects, they are there own language that were influenced by Arabic. See for example Taleb's argument on Lebanese being a language https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philolog…

I live in Algeria, you need to know that France colonized Algeria for more than 130 years so like 25% of our words are French when speaking Algerian dialect that's why you struggle. without mention there tons of words from Berbers tribes before Islam that still in use. but the official language is still Arabic Fusha and its used in every official document not dialect.

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

#105

Post by jacobolus »

wholien wrote: post #89
jacobolus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I grew up in Shanghai from 1994 - 2013. To go through your points: 1) media in local languages is allowed and state-funded in Shanghai, 2) Kids did speak Shanghainese in school, though official instruction was in Mandarin, 3) Official documents can't be translated into Shanghainese since it's not written, 4) there is institutional support for cultural preservation - as I write below TV shows are in Shanghainese / Wu,…

Thanks for chiming in with your direct experience.

I am not an expert, but my impression as an outsider is that Shanghai, as one of the richest and most politically influential cities (and main media centers) in today’s China, can accomplish quite a bit more along these lines than most other cities.

It’s great to hear that there is significant support for continued use of Shanghainese. In your experience, has the government’s approach changed over time? Would you say that support for the Shanghainese language is increasing or diminishing? What about popular awareness/activism?

In your experience do most kids in Shanghai today end up using Shanghainese as their primary language when talking with their peers? I have heard from multiple Chinese immigrants that the younger generation in their home cities now primarily use Mandarin.

> Now though, more and more schools are starting to do Cantonese classes with their own textbooks, alongside the standard Mandarin education.

That is encouraging.

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

#106

Post by theprotocol »

unhammer wrote: post #76
theprotocol wrote: post #64

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Ara…

> knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly So just like every other language.

I speak 4 languages and Arabic is by far the worst in this regard.

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

#107

Post by bshimmin »

Bombthecat wrote: post #82

It is on my list of languages I want to learn! Because I think it will be the second most spoken language in Europe. But as others already wrote: the dialects are very strong and different.. So, not sure which one to learn :) Any advise? Or maybe prediction which will win the "language" war in Europe?

I would love an answer to this too - Arabic always sounds beautiful to me and I would love to learn at least a little bit. It seems like learning both MSA and a dialect (perhaps Egyptian) might be the way to go, at least from what I can infer from this thread, the article, and conversations I've had with people in the past, but it's probably not as simple as that. It would perhaps be an easier question to answer if there were a specific region you were interested in living in / communicating with people in (but at least in my case, my only goal is "learn some Arabic because it sounds lovely", not "move to Syria and be able to communicate with people there").

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

#108

Post by quickthrower2 »

theprotocol wrote: post #64

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Ara…

At least it is phonetic though.

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

#109

Post by amasad »

_shadi wrote: post #93
amasad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. In Jordan, 5-10% of our words, when we're speaking Arabic that is, is English.

This morning someone shared with me an article on cnbc that a guy and a girl from Jordan raised 4.5 million and now I see you here, congratulations :)

haha only on HN. And thank you!

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

#110

Post by Arnt »

theprotocol wrote: post #106
unhammer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly So just like every other language.

I speak 4 languages and Arabic is by far the worst in this regard.

I too speak four languages (one of them very poorly).

Each of them has its own infuriating challenges, but they all share one big characteristic: Native children learn to speak them well around the age of seven. After that age, most children just add advanced vocabulary. Each of the four languages is by far the worst in some regard, but in a real, practical sense all four exhibit the same overall difficulty for a comparable group of learners.

I've heard that the age is the same for most languages, not just "my" four. For Arabic too, or is it one of the exceptions?

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