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

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

#131

Post by mega_behemoth » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:19 AM UTC

amasad wrote: post #13

mega_behemoth wrote: post #2

Arabic, 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.

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...

Those "muslim" scholars were mostly not arab,, and were constantly being accused for heresy. It is smart people that produce science and not Islam. The only science Islam has produced is the magical benefits of drinking camel urine and Hijama. No thanks.

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

#132

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

As a typical American who mostly just speaks English, the #1 most useful language I wish I also spoke is Spanish. It's pervasive, both in the US and elsewhere. I'm currently in Barcelona for a conference and this is the third time in 1.5 years I've been in a Spanish-speaking country for a conference.

The only other language that can have a similarly credible case for learning it would be Mandarin, but unlike Spanish, that's only good for one country. For anyone living in the Sinosphere, that would obviously be the best choice, but for someone living in the US, Chinese isn't nearly as important. Plus, Spanish is way easier to learn, given that it shares an alphabet, similar pronunciation, and through casual exposure you likely already have a start on a basic vocabulary.

As for Arabic ... yeah, that's far down the list. I've only ever been to one Arabic country (the UAE), and more people there speak English than Arabic. Obviously that's atypical for Arabic countries, but way more westerners are likely to go the UAE than to, say, Egypt.

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

#133

Post by andyshuxin » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

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,…

The Quran and its language ("Modern Standard Arabic") may be what binds the "dialects" together under one umbrella label "Arabic". Chinese is in a similar situation, whose writing system unifies the mutually un-intelligible "dialects" like Mandarin, Hokkien, and Cantonese as one "language" called "Chinese".

Such is an advantage of separating written and spoken forms of a language: as the spoken form inevitably mutates over time and fractures over space, having a stable written form means people who would otherwise consider each other foreigners may (1) share a common understandable set of historical and cultural documents, (2) communicate with each other at least in letters, (3) identify each other's language as but a "variation" of the standard written form.

English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese remain largely uniform across the Oceans because they are spread across the Oceans only recently, that is, not long before centralised nation states, compulsory education, sound recording, radio broadcasting, and YouTube.

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

#134

Post by nealdt » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #86

lgessler wrote: post #26

This article was hailed by Language Log as being mostly right in its scientific treatment of language[1], which is unfortunately pretty rare in journalism. [1]: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379

Interesting that he says MSA is further from region arabic than Latin is from Spanish. Provides useful context for people familiar with European languages.

It's a somewhat misleading comparison because nobody uses Latin today. MSA however is the language of the news, media and academia so everyone can understand it.

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

#135

Post by mega_behemoth » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:22 AM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #63

mega_behemoth wrote: post #2

Arabic, 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.

"English won the game because bits and bytes were invented in English" English as the dominant language in Science is a new thing, just 100 years ago it was German.

Whether new or not, Computers speak English. Game over for German/French/All others.

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

#136

Post by avar » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:29 AM UTC

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 think it will be the second most spoken language in Europe

Arabic has 4-12 million speakers in Europe depending on how you count. If we take the most generous estimation (12 million) which compares 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants to native speakers it's at best the 13th most spoken language in Europe[2].

Why do you think it'll displace all the languages that are currently ahead of it?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#Immigrant_...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#List_of_la...

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

#137

Post by mega_behemoth » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:29 AM UTC

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…

Nonsense. Arabic is Arabic. It is not convoluted. It is sophisticated and powerful. You are mixing dialicts with languages. Go to rural -middle of nowhere- villages in Scotland. Good luck understanding a single word.

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

#138

Post by abol3z » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:34 AM UTC

smel wrote: post #130

avaika wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you, I even think that Arabic speakers are the best at understanding foreigners speech.

As he pointed, you might tell your girlfriend this is a gift from your dog (كلب) instead of heart (قلب), but I'm sure that if she is a native speaker, she'll understand correctly.

I've seen the same mistakes happen in other languages, but the native speaker usually miss the meaning.

I think this relates to the fact that Arabic spoken language has a vast number is unique dialects, and they mostly understand each others dialects, unlike other languages that differs between dialects mostly in spelling sounds.

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

#139

Post by User23 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

browsercoin wrote: post #123

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.

German is not as awful as Dutch-should be noted as a throat condition.

Strangely the Dutch all seem to speak better English than most Americans and even Brits.

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

#140

Post by usrusr » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

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,…

The spreading of English and Spanish across oceans is much younger than the spreading of Arabic. Arabic had many centuries more to diverge than English or Spanish. The regional separation of Arabic is only few centuries younger than that of Latin if we pretend for simplicity that the empire somehow had uniform language.