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

281–290 of 318 posts

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

#281

Post by posterboy »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #204
int_19h wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In english for example you have : Book, Author, Library In Arabic (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba) which is the same root (k,t,b) and with simple rules you can discover all those words or even invent them if not used previously I don't see why the word for "author" has to be derived from the same root as "book", logically speaking. There are a great deal more things than books that have authors. The reason why this partic…

Indeed, many languages have a concept of root from which words must be derived. In Arabic, it’s much more pronounced, because knowing the root of a word is essential to being able to use the language effectively. 2 of may favorite things about the language: 1/ fun fact is that the vast majority of verbs have only 3 letters in them 2/ Pronouns make a distinction between one, two or more people, and even indicate wheth…

The concept word is not clearly defined. As a programmer it seems natural to assume that a word is a short series of bits. Anything else is composition. Why is of a word but -ed isn't? ab- is from the same origion, as in aberrant. The difference isn't completely arbitrary. Bio Logy might as well be two wods. The keyword is lexicalization and how words are learned. Obviously, shorter words are easier to discover.

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

#282

Post by Riverheart »

Tor3 wrote: post #248
Riverheart wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any free alternatives to DuoLingo's Japanese offering or general advice?

An easy one is to start with Human Japanese (Windows, Android, or iOS). The 'light' version is free on Android and gives you the first chapters (seven, IIRC) to give you a taste of it. After that there are lots of resources.

Thanks :)

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

#283

Post by CydeWeys »

isostatic wrote: post #245
CydeWeys wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frankly amazed that you've never been to a Spanish-speaking country given your homeland and travel propensity, and that are 20 of them (plus Puerto Rico). It's almost like you've gone out of your way to avoid Spanish-speaking countries. Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap flight to Barcelona and make it 51.

In the last 10 years (had to do this for an Indian visa recently so have them on file), I've been to New Zealand, Austrailia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Pakistan, Russia, Qatar, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, St Lucia, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Portugal, Gibraltar, Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Germa…

Here's a list of countries where Spanish is the official language (note, this doesn't include countries where Spanish isn't official but is still widespread): https://www.spanish.cl/vocabulary-lists/spanish-speaking-cou...

That's all countries in the western hemisphere of any decent size except for the US, Canada, and Brazil.

So you just haven't traveled much in the western hemisphere.

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

#284

Post by posterboy »

eudora wrote: post #246
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…

That's a totally different letter, not a different pronunciation.. It's like confusing thumb with sum

... which likely happens as well.

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

#285

Post by mega_behemoth »

sctb wrote: post #239
mega_behemoth wrote: post #144

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.

Would you please read the guidelines and then stop trolling? Your comments in this thread don't meet the standards of civility and substantiveness of this site and we eventually ban accounts that don't fix that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

State the guideline that my current comments are not meeting. Be useful instead of repeating yourself.

I am the one being trolled here. I only said the f---ing truth.

You can ban my disposable account - I have keyboard, internet connection and disposable emails.

People hate the truth when it is painful.

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

#286

Post by dang »

mega_behemoth wrote: post #128
dang wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic That crosses into some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar. Please don't. It leads to destructive dynamics that are just what we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I do not care about race. I care about the truth. Having said that, Arabic is not a race, it is a language. Multiple races use Arabic.

That's why I said "some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar". There's a grey area between commenting on a language and slurring the people who use it, and you stepped into the latter, which is unacceptable here. Please don't do it again.

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

#287

Post by jki275 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #250
jki275 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean? “Dog” and “cat” have different pronunciations in English, and therefore mean different things.

Dog and Cat are different words.

There are many word pairs in many languages that are written exactly the same way but have different pronunciations and different meanings.

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

#288

Post by getcrunk »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #87
getcrunk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very limited knowledge on the topic so take what I say with some skepticism, but one thing is that most words are formed by a variation of a three or four letter root word. So this gives a lot of flexibility and subtlety to the language. Context is everything. A root word for example made up of the letters d - r - b in its most basic form means to hit. But that same root can be used to mean depress (as in a pe…

This isn't exactly an unusual concept; you can see the same thing in earlier English, preserved in different forms like "rise" (present) / "rose" (past) / "raise" (causative). This was once considered significant enough that a distinction was drawn between "strong" irregular verbs that inflect through a vowel change (rise / rose; grow / grew; swim / swam...), and "weak" irregular verbs that derive their irregular pas…

Yea it goes further than that in Arabic. In the example of r s e only vowels were modified for tense in Arabic you will add consonants to radically change the meaning. Same in hebrew as another commenter showed much better than I did

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

#289

Post by isostatic »

CydeWeys wrote: post #283
isostatic wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 10 years (had to do this for an Indian visa recently so have them on file), I've been to New Zealand, Austrailia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Pakistan, Russia, Qatar, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, St Lucia, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Portugal, Gibraltar, Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Germa…

Here's a list of countries where Spanish is the official language (note, this doesn't include countries where Spanish isn't official but is still widespread): https://www.spanish.cl/vocabulary-lists/spanish-speaking-cou... That's all countries in the western hemisphere of any decent size except for the US, Canada, and Brazil. So you just haven't traveled much in the western hemisphere.

Correct, I've traveled to US, Canada and Brazil :)

(And St Lucia)

The Western Hempisphere is mostly water, there's not a lot there compared with the eastern hemisphere. Far East is my favorite long haul destination, but both SubSaharan Africa and Middle East have their charms.

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

#290

Post by thaumasiotes »

getcrunk wrote: post #288
thaumasiotes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't exactly an unusual concept; you can see the same thing in earlier English, preserved in different forms like "rise" (present) / "rose" (past) / "raise" (causative). This was once considered significant enough that a distinction was drawn between "strong" irregular verbs that inflect through a vowel change (rise / rose; grow / grew; swim / swam...), and "weak" irregular verbs that derive their irregular pas…

Yea it goes further than that in Arabic. In the example of r s e only vowels were modified for tense in Arabic you will add consonants to radically change the meaning. Same in hebrew as another commenter showed much better than I did

Changing the vowel to form a causative verb from a base verb goes a little farther than "only vowels were modified for tense".

It's a productive system in modern Arabic and a fossil of earlier times in modern English, but it's not different in kind.

Post reply on HN