Arabic, a great language, has a low profile • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by gumby » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #290

getcrunk wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The root properties of Arabic go far beyond the example you gave of schwache Verben in germanic languages or the historical PIE/PIG roots that give us names like Rhine/Rhône (i.e. Fluß).

For example the word (as written) k-t-b (كتب) means "write" but could just as much mean letters, writer, books etc; these stems are really how you think of the word at a much deeper level than you get out of English etymology[+] or (IMHO) Hanzi radicals. Arabic has some limited case, but the grammar is quite different from PIE languages, lacking a "to be" verb and adjectival/adverbial distinctions (a fast car and a car that was swift are differentiated only by the article).

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

#302

Post by anon0293948 » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #164

narvval wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed, however in the case of Wales and Portugal there are some ongoing efforts to keep Welsh and Mirandese alive, which of course depends on the willingness of the local population to actually care about it. Didn't knew that main Italian came from Florence, thanks for the hint.

Does Spain have any ongoing efforts to keep other Iberian languages alive?

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

#303

Post by gumby » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #301

thaumasiotes wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The root properties of Arabic go far beyond the example you gave of schwache Verben in germanic languages or the historical PIE/PIG roots that give us names like Rhine/Rhône (i.e. Fluß). For example the word (as written) k-t-b (كتب) means "write" but could just as much mean letters, writer, books etc; these stems are really how you think of the word at a much deeper level than you get out of English etymology[+] or (…

Oh I forgot my footnote

[+] I really love that English is pretty conservative in spelling so that you can often tell the meaning of the word by looking at how it is written. Languages like German that reform their spelling periodically to match pronunciation shifts snip those connections away (while French goes the other way...there's a reason why a spelling bee can be prime time television in France).

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

#304

Post by dorfsmay » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

t-3 wrote: post #214

DigitalHobo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But spelling keeps changing. What's the origin behind "check", as in checkbook?

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

#305

Post by dorfsmay » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 1:47 AM UTC

kranner wrote: post #122

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…

> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives. This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The…

> it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.

Why is that?

Reverse snobism towards the upper or more educated classes?

As an outsider who knows very little about Indian culture, it feels wrong and sad.

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

#306

Post by dorfsmay » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

tralarpa wrote: post #199

unhammer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 environmen…

I have to disagree. Past a certain age, you will learn a lot from written material, and the difference between a language that is orthographically regular and one that isn't, is like night and day.

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

#307

Post by kranner » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #305

kranner wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives. This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The…

> it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word. Why is that? Reverse snobism towards the upper or more educated classes? As an outsider who knows very little about Indian culture, it feels wrong and sad.

No it's not anti-intellectualism of any kind. If anything, Indians have a high regard for education. It just comes across as artificial because usage of those words is now mostly limited to literary contexts.

These days using a difficult Hindi word (especially one derived from Sanskrit, or one that sounds Sanskrit-ish) in place of a common English term also signals that the speaker supports the political right wing.

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

#308

Post by fatihdonmez » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 5:36 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #278

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.

>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. Ahem, but I think most Arabs complain about Turkish imperialism. I don't think Turkey was ever conquered by the Arabs, but the reverse is true.

They can complain whatever they want to but here are the facts. Turks brutally were murdered almost 70-80 years to turned to be a muslim and start believing arab god to survive. Turks adopted all the arabic culture/traditions as part of islam. Turks used arabic alphabet along with the bunch of arabic words. Even nowadays current government is pushing more islamic/arabic values to turkish people as part of islamization process.

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

#309

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

anon0293948 wrote: post #302

pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, however in the case of Wales and Portugal there are some ongoing efforts to keep Welsh and Mirandese alive, which of course depends on the willingness of the local population to actually care about it. Didn't knew that main Italian came from Florence, thanks for the hint.

Does Spain have any ongoing efforts to keep other Iberian languages alive?

Nowadays yes, Galician, Basque, Catalan, Valencian and Maiorquim share their status with Spanish on their regions and have newspapers, books, radio and TV shows.

I know my Iberian friends might have an argument about the last three ones, but I opted to list them as such anyway.

Then there are tiny ones like Leonese, which the government provides support for learning and still have small communities speaking it.

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

#310

Post by Tor3 » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

chosenbreed wrote: post #266

Tor3 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. True enough. I learned two of the languages I know by reading books (after starting with magazines etc). I never used a dictionary - not once. Because when you finally associate a word with its meaning, through understanding, you don't forget it, unlike with a…

> True enough. I learned two of the languages I know by reading books (after starting with magazines etc) Interesting...how long did it take you to become proficient? And does proficiency in speech your reading ability?

I can't honestly remember how long it took. Not that long, possibly. The first book took a while, but at the end of the book I had decoded what I first didn't understand (by seeing the words used in various contexts), and reading books after that became easy. New expressions and phrases were quickly understood.

Before that I had been reading a magazine about stuff I was very interested in (I for one need more motivation than just 'learn the language'. I believe my interest in what I was reading was crucial, without that it wouldn't have worked).

Then I read a couple of relatively short books about science, again not too difficult. At a later time I picked up a book in the international section in a book shop while travelling for work (lots of hotel time..), and since then I just continued.

And yes I think it does help a lot with my speaking proficiency too (I think that was what you meant by your last question), although it does absolutely nothing for my pronunciation..