Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arabic, a great language, has a low profile

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 318 posts

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

#191

Post by int_19h »

mega_behemoth wrote: post #137
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.

There's no hard line between dialects and languages. As they say, "language is a dialect with an army".

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

#192

Post by int_19h »

CydeWeys wrote: post #179
jpatokal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 better stat to use is # of speakers worldwide, not official languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num... 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…

French can come in very handy in many places in Africa, in the same vein as Spanish is in South and Central America.

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

#193

Post by skocznymroczny »

isolli wrote: post #187
smel wrote: post #116

Earlier 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…

It reminds me of Czech, where a fixed list of prefixes can be used to modify the meaning of any verb, with very creative possibilities! https://mluvtecesky.net/en/grammar/prefixes

Same in Polish, with some curse words providing very flexible bases for every situation.

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

#194

Post by barry-cotter »

qubax wrote: post #169
jpatokal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Looking at the official languages of countries, French Countries with french as an official language only have a total population of 434 million people. And a few of them, like canada, has english as an official language as well. Also, most of the francophile countries are small former african colonies which may one day give up french as an official language and move to english or a native language. https://en.wiki…

> Also, most of the francophile countries are small former african colonies which may one day give up french as an official language and move to english or a native language.

That’s not happening outside of a war. It did in Rwanda because of a war where the side that eventually won spent long periods outside their home country and hated French as a symbol of the Belgians. Ditto for Algeria with the French though French is still a lingua franca so pervasive it might as well be official.

Why would an entire country that’s not undergoing a war or revolution stop speaking a language basically all educated people speak? Where is the political benefit in doing so?

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

#195

Post by anonu »

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 only took issue with the analogy, not the starkness. Which I suppose is maybe a different argument since you need to understand the Latin languages relationship to Latin.

But one thing I can say is mabrook (congrats) on the fund raising. Really cool stuff you're doing. At least that word is common across the region.

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

#196

Post by bovine3dom »

fatihdonmez wrote: post #172

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.

You'd have a hard time doing the same in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...

Some quite common words are on that list: jumper, cat, fanfare...

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

#197

Post by nbvkkiauhvcr »

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 am a native speaker. I have no idea what language you are describing. 1) Arabic is highly expressive, the number of ways a root word can be morphed is astonishing. In fact, I would guess it’s unmatched in expressiveness. 2) grammatically speaking, it’s very simple. A little kid can tell you when something is off in grammar. Why? Because Arabic is a language where the semi-vowels indicate the grammar. And because of this, a grammatically incorrect statement will just sound weird. This ease is why most (educated) native speakers have learned grammar at a young age. They will have poetry memorized and understand grammar in a fundamental way.

You know, and I don’t mean to question the veracity of your statement, I don’t think you are a native speaker at all. I think you grew up hearing enough Arabic to understand it and speak it. I would bet you speak and think in English and not in Arabic.

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

#198

Post by nbvkkiauhvcr »

simias wrote: post #184
smel wrote: post #116

Earlier 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 love learning languages and learning about languages. I considered seriously learning Arabic but I eventually decided against it mainly because, as the parent points out, there seem to be many variations between countries and also between formal, literary arabic and the spoken dialects. Given that learning the language (in any form) is probably going to be a huge challenge the prospect of spending years studying th…

Even though there are many dialects, nobody will misunderstand you. And, beyond that, it’s easy for everyone to shift to using a more formal Arabic in order to communicate with you.

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

#199

Post by tralarpa »

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.

Yep.

First rule of languages: Languages are not logic. If somebody tells you that their mother tongue is more logical than language X, it's in most cases just bias of the native speaker who is not aware of the difficulties.

Second rule of languages: There are no easy or hard languages. Whether a language is easy or difficult to learn, depends entirely on the languages you already speak (and, of course, the environment, e.g. whether you have access to learning material).

(edit) Big exception: Writing systems. Learning 5000 Chinese characters is objectively harder than learning how to read Spanish. Unfortunately, a difficult writing system has also a negative impact on speaking skills because it hinders you from quickly extending your vocabulary by reading books etc.

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

#200

Post by mbel »

jki275 wrote: post #183
smel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference is that English words don't really change meanings based on pronunciation. Words do have many pronunciations, but the meaning remains the same.

Oh really, what about 'lead' and 'lead'?
Post reply on HN