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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

#151

Post by csomar »

z92 wrote: post #68

To me Arabic seems to have two dialects mainly. Egyptian and the rest. Egyptian being so different as to sound like a separate language. And as for Iraqi, Syrian, Gulf, Arab or rest of North African Arabic -- those are more or less the same. And if you learn MSN you can cover those.

> And as for Iraqi, Syrian, Gulf, Arab or rest of North African Arabic -- those are more or less the same.

This is very wrong. The is a massive difference between North African and the gulf arabic. So massive that the speakers will have to revert to the standard arabic to be able to communicate.

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

#152

Post by afarrell »

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…

> in english pronunciation depends on each word (a,u,o) can have a different sounds (depends in which word used)

It is also highly regional. Someone from Glasgow pronounces things rather differently to someone from Brighton.

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

#154

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

ramigb wrote: post #113

"But Western students who sign up for a class in it soon discover that nobody speaks this “standard” as a native tongue; many Arabs hardly speak it at all. " This is not completely true! I'm a native Arabic speaker and MSA is the official language of newspapers, news segments, and legal documents, governments speeches even wedding invitations and not to forget the Quran and the Arabic bible. So it's spoken and writte…

There are many places on the margins of the Arabic world where people lack an active command of MSA (as opposed to a merely passive understanding), and where newspapers may well be in French instead of MSA. After all, an active command is learned through formal schooling, and regrettably there are places in the Arabic world where children do not get much formal schooling.

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

#155

Post by narvval »

pjmlp wrote: post #74
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.

Just like Spanish was actually the language of Castilla region, and all other Iberian languages had to struggle for survival. During multiple times throughout the history, it wasn't healthy to speak other Iberian languages in public.

This is the case in most European countries:

- Florentine Italian displaced Sardinian, Napolitan, Romanesco, etc.

- Ille-de-france French displaced Provencal, Occitan, Breton, etc.

- English displaced Scots, Gaelic, Welsh, etc.

Even countrires traditionally considered "nation-states" in a linguistic sense such as Portugal went down this route to some degree, with Mirandese and Barranqueno all but gone nowadays.

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

#156

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

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?

You are overestimating the numbers of Arabic speakers migrating to Europe. (Even during the big wave of 2015, a considerable portion of those migrants were Dari or Pashto speakers.) And even within Europe’s Arab-migration enclaves, the second and third generations usually lose touch with the Arabic language and only know the local language; something the first-generation parents often bemoan.

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

#157

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

amasad wrote: post #147
mega_behemoth wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It is smart people that produce science and not Islam Who said anything about Islam generating the science. You're just a bigoted asshole looking for a way to bash islam.

You write "bigoted", which is often a charge that assumes the person is from outside the Muslim world. Yet within the Muslim world, you can meet plenty of "freethinkers" who will write in a private venue the exact same deprecations of Islam that the OP did. Never underestimate the dislike of Islam found even among some Arabs or Iranians.

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

#158

Post by zouhair »

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…

> It is an awful language.

Well that's a stretch. I am also a native speaker and given Arabic(s) has its quirks it can be extremely fluid especially when politics leave it alone.

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

#160

Post by avar »

User23 wrote: post #141
avar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.or…

Parent is extrapolating from the trend.

Such an extrapolation doesn't make sense. You could also assume that all of New York would be speaking Italian by now given historical immigration rates.

Foreign languages only tend to have staying power until the 2nd or 3rd generation. All these immigrants are going to public schools in their respective countries where the official language is spoken, it's expected that they speak it at their jobs etc.

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