171–180 of 318 posts
Arabic is a horrible language both written and spoken. Turkish on the other hand is a beautiful language and it should be more popular.
Any arguments as to why that is so?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Arabic numbers are written in the same order as in, say, English, Thus Arabic is little-endian. I grew up with the Hundu digits (and the European ones!) which look more like the digits we use here than the actual arabic ones.
Is the Hindu and English ordering the same? If so, it's gone through two endian changes from India to Europe!
Most of their names (at least in Hindi) are recognisable from enlish/latin/greek. Looks like that's not the case in Arabic, unsurprisingly really... unless 7 = سَبْعَة = sabʿä = sabbath counts, but I suspect we got that from semitic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers_in_various_lan...
I'm turkish and because of hidden arabic imperialism and assimilation rooted deep in islam, I refuse to use even arabic words which are common in turkish.
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 a rather US-centric worldview. Looking at the official languages of countries, French and Arabic are probably the most useful worldwide, with Spanish third and Chinese (Mandarin) indeed largely useless outside greater China. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/35348/as-a-native...
Not to mention the huge economic and culture importance of it in the future give that vasts amounts of culture products are produced in China.
There may be more countries speaking it, but many of those countries are practically speaking, not as important as China because they don’t produce much exported culture.
Even Korean and Japanese IMHO arguably have greater use dur to Kdrama/pop And Anime. Whereas Arabic would only be useful during tourist trips and practically speaking it’s easier for people to consume exported culture than to travel to dozens of countries.
So my original comment was flagged, possible by many sharia clerics floating around here. It was deleted. All I've said: "Nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic, especially in the last 1.4 years". Is this forum now abides Strict Sharia law ? f that. I thought hackernews readers are intelligent in average. clearly I was wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends heavily on the language course. Duolingo's Italian course actually manages to teach grammar and usage through their standard translation setup, while their Japanese course does nothing of the sort. It does not work very well for the latter, I've been through most of it by now and it's just translation-translation-translation, which doesn't teach you much at all, because the translation to English really do…
Are you sure you don't mean "gozaimasu" in the taxi driver example? I learned what little Japanese I do know from Duolingo and it was somewhat useful on a recent trip to Japan. Our tour guides were mostly impressed and certainly didn't point out any glaring issues with it (although that could be Japanese politeness).
I'm turkish and because of hidden arabic imperialism and assimilation rooted deep in islam, I refuse to use even arabic words which are common in turkish.
In my country (Egypt), Turkey is actually seen as being a huge part of Islamic history, and it's often cited as a proof of the diversity of the Islamic and Arabic world that it was hugely impacted by the Turkish culture (Words, Foods..etc).
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 a rather US-centric worldview. Looking at the official languages of countries, French and Arabic are probably the most useful worldwide, with Spanish third and Chinese (Mandarin) indeed largely useless outside greater China. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/35348/as-a-native...
The top 10 list is, in order, English, Mandarin, Hindustani, Spanish, Arabic, French, Malay, Russian, Bengali, and Portuguese.
English we already speak. Mandarin is primarily useful in China and not so much otherwise. Hindustani has the same problem but for India, and there's also a good amount of overlap with English there too. Spanish is the next language in the list, above Arabic and French. Incidentally I speak some French, and didn't find it that necessary for navigating the two French-speaking countries I've visited so far. English was widely spoken and understood.
And I have to point out the irony here of being accused of being US-centric when I'm talking about Spanish, and of visiting other countries where Spanish is dominant (Spain and most of South/Central America).
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,…
As a typical Brit who mostly just speaks English, and have over 50 countries on 6 continents under my belt, I've never been to a country that had Spanish as an official language. In a given year the languages that would help me are Russian, Mandarin, and Arabic. French in some parts of Africa (and France/Belgium of course). In places like India and Kenya, I follow conversations with the locals as they generally speak…
Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap flight to Barcelona and make it 51.