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.
yes but you are judged based on the dialect you speak, i have experienced cases where i wasn't taken seriously by businessmen coz i spoke a turkish variant of arabic in saudi arabia
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 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...
this is not a fair comparison. arabic words when spoken, are always assumed to have religious connotations first whereas english is always assumed to have contextual connotations first. it is a huge distinction
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.
Words don't change meaning based on pronunciation. They're different words.
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,…
Up till about 100 years ago, most of today's Arabic speaking areas were at least nominally under Turkish suzeranity, Turkey also was the centre of the Islamic world for so long, I wonder if the Turks did not try to replace Arabic with Turkish?
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.
Is it as regional as Arabic, though?
I don't speak Arabic, but my understanding is that someone from Morocco can't necessarily hold an easy conversation with someone from Qatar.
Whereas, I can name very few varieties of English that aren't easily mutually intelligible with basically all of the rest of the English-speaking world - patois and gullah, for example.
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 someone coming from an Arabic Muslim country, I'm really interested to understand why you have this view. 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).
Because Turkey is a very heterogeneous country with different people mostly deeply disliking each other (sad but true). Diversity != tolerance. I lived in the Bay Area and Boston area for years, and for example, these cities are more ethnically and racially diverse, but in my experience Istanbul is much more culturally rich (i.e. there are more heterogeneous groups). Inside this group there are "secular" and "religious" Turks who are roughly half of Turks. Due to years of politics and other stuff, these groups deeply hate each other. They try to live differently, act different, eat different stuff and even talk different languages. I grew up in a "secular" middle/upper class Turkish family (my family was also non-practicing Muslim) and when I met more religious people in my high school years it was clear even the language we speak was different. For me, I grew up in a bubble and never had any contact with any culture other than mine (except some Jewish people who were majority where I lived). Anyway, pretty much all groups had a similar experience, but when one of them has the power, they basically try to control everyone and this brings insane amount of frustration to other side. The entire political history of the Republic is all about seculars trying to make conservatives secular and vice versa. This is so crazy it affects things like language, education, art etc... I was very frustrated of this whole mess and luckily (thanks to my family's wealth) I went to US for undergrad to restart my life.
> Arabic is far more simple language with fewer exceptions than english or french Would you say this is true of spoken english as well? By that I mean, a large amount of the difficulty involving english involves our train-wreck of spelling rules, spoken english on the other hand tends to be reasonably easy to become functional in (apart from idioms). Would you say that Arabic is simpler than purely spoken english as…
English spelling is a feature, not a bug. You can tell the origin of nearly any word by it's spelling, and knowing that gives you clues to pronunciation and grammar. If you're ignorant of latin and more modern European languages it might be difficult though.
They will never be confused because context supplies the clues.
This is often true, but far from universal. Oftentimes there are differences in verb and noun (as with "lead" and "lead"), or transitive vs. intransitive verbs ("seconded"), but occasionally we have problems with two nouns or two verbs with the same form:
"I read that magazine": do I mean regularly, or that I have done in the past?
"The messenger wrote down Lincoln's address": was that his home, or his speech?
The context would need to be quite explicit to work around problems such as this.