not to mention the most beautiful (imo) and has some pleasant Farsi spoken in Iran.
Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
121–130 of 318 posts
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#122I 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…
> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives.
This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The colloquial (or at least urban) vocabulary seems so much smaller than English that it's just faster to code-mix in English words and phrases in a lot of situations. And insisting on speaking in Hindi would require a lot more metaphors and indirect expression than seemingly how the same thing would be said in English.
Even if a Hindi word exists for a very specific concept, and the speaker knows the listener probably knows it, it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#123Somehow 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.
German is not as awful as Dutch-should be noted as a throat condition.
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic That crosses into some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar. Please don't. It leads to destructive dynamics that are just what we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The discussion has been polite so far and it's not an unfair point. Earlier in the 20th century, German was the language of engineering. Before that, French. Before that, Latin. Before that, something else. Languages and their significance in different fields wax and wane.
Yes, and things of importance happen in any of them.
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm native arabic speaker too, and can tell you that your statement is far from the truth. Arabic is far more simple language with fewer exceptions than english or french (I love/speak french :D). There are only 3 tenses: Also it's derivational language which mean once you learn about a verb you actually learn about the whole lexical family of the verb. In english for example you have : Book, Author, Library In Arabi…
The translation is Book, Author, Library; (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba); respectively.
Good catch ! Thank you
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#126Language buffs should also check out Maltese, which is basically a form of Arabic written in a Latin script with a heavy admixture of (mainly) Italian and English loan words
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, I know that. My mother is Algerian ;)
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#128Arabic, among many other languages is on a low profile simply because no science is produced in these languages. English won the game because bits and bytes were invented in English. Arabic is indeed a great and very rich language, perhaps more than English, unfortunately, nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic, especially in the last 1.4k years.
> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic That crosses into some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar. Please don't. It leads to destructive dynamics that are just what we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I do not care about race. I care about the truth.
Having said that, Arabic is not a race, it is a language. Multiple races use Arabic.
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#129I 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.
Except of course glorious English! /s
Re: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm native arabic speaker too, and can tell you that your statement is far from the truth. Arabic is far more simple language with fewer exceptions than english or french (I love/speak french :D). There are only 3 tenses: Also it's derivational language which mean once you learn about a verb you actually learn about the whole lexical family of the verb. In english for example you have : Book, Author, Library In Arabi…
I'd argue that Arabic is simpler than English. It might have been simpler for you as your were the native :) For me Arabic and English both are foreign and I can definitely tell you that English was much simpler to learn. While words "transformation" might seem cool and convenient, there is no common rule on how to predict final meaning. Also the pronunciation is very (VERY) important. One tiny mistake and you will e…
you're right ! and a little bit biased because pronunciation is important for all languages out there I see the same issue with french foreign speakers too.
In Arabic pronunciation is straight forward, in english pronunciation depends on each word (a,u,o) can have a different sounds (depends in which word used) and the emphasis also is a dark magic :D there are no such exceptions in Arabic
Arabic can be difficult but simple. English can be easy but complex.