Why Arabic is Terrific • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#11

Post by csomar » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

There are a few words that take a regular plural suffix, but most of the time to make a plural you have to change the structure of the word quite dramatically:

The structural change is regular. That is you don't have to learn each name plural.

The Arabic writing system is exotic looking but easy to learn, which is a rare combination. The language uses a straightforward alphabet, but because letters change their shape depending on what their neighbors are it is quite impenetrable to the uninitiated.

I thought the same thing for English and French, no? When I learn English and French in school, we join letters.

Formal Arabic distinguishes between groups composed entirely of women and groups that contain one or more men, and has distinct pronouns, plural forms, and verb conjugations for feminine dual and feminine plural.

The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)

What we call Arabic numerals aren't used in Arabic except in extraordinarily formal contexts. Instead, Arabic uses "Indian numerals", which look like this:

Not true. The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today. The Indian numbers were used in the middle east region because of the strong Indian influence.

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Well, if you are really interested in Arabic, then what you should learn is the Arabic poetry. It's one of the marvelous human inventions. It's very hacky, and quite hard to write. The wealth of books (old books) and poems written in Arabic are worth learning it.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#12

Post by ziyadb » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

The most interesting part is the deviation of spoken Arabic (which as mentioned in the article, varies by region, e.g. Saudis speak different Arabic from Jordanians, or the Lebanese) from written Arabic. I'm a native Arabic speaker but most of my education and upbringing were in English, so I tend to use the "higher form" i.e. written Arabic, when communicating with fellow speakers. And yes, it is terrific indeed.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#13

Post by Jun8 » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 2:51 PM UTC

Interesting post but the OP is linguistically naive, which is generally what happens when English speakers encounter another language with more interesting (i.e. exotic") morphological, phonetical, etc. elements. If Arabic if your first foray into a highly inflectional language, it might look fairly exotic. If you had studied, say ancient Greek or Latin, first, it might look less so.

"you find out that the underlying language is pretty vanilla, and meanwhile there is a stack of three thousand flash cards standing in between you and the ability to skim a newspaper." This comment about Chinese and Japanese (totally unrelated languages with very different writing systems, is laughable. The syntax of Chinese is simple (it pretty much has non at all) but Japanese syntax is complicated.

The OMG moment one faces when faced with thousands or weird Chinese signs is partly an illusion. Yes, you have to memorize a lot of things, like any other languages, but the meaning of a Chinese word can be guessed if you know the determinitve, even f you don't know the word. There are only about 200 determinitives.

An interesting thing about Arabic is that, due to its tie to Koran, it's been studied linguistically since early times. But other languages can also boast such long examined lives, e.g. Sanskrit or Chinese.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#14

Post by hackermom » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:12 PM UTC

If you're looking for something that is terrific for real, read up on Japanese - its entirely syllabled nature is fascinating.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#15

Post by jarek » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:14 PM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #13

Interesting post but the OP is linguistically naive, which is generally what happens when English speakers encounter another language with more interesting (i.e. exotic") morphological, phonetical, etc. elements. If Arabic if your first foray into a highly inflectional language, it might look fairly exotic. If you had studied, say ancient Greek or Latin, first, it might look less so. "you find out that the underlying…

The OP knows Polish and Russian, so it's pretty safe to say Arabic isn't his first encounter with inflection.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#16

Post by hermanthegerman » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:21 PM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #7

I agree totally with #1, the root system is very cool. The diglossia has two sides to it, on the one hand it makes it harder to structure learning because the basic phrases that are the bread and butter of every other language learning program are usually expressed only in the dialects and may not even have agreed upon spelling in the written language. On the other hand, if you just want to speak, you can spend relat…

Hebrew has a vocalization system to signal it, though (for educational purpose, for example).

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#17

Post by adnanymously » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #4

> The combination of numerous dialects and a formal/informal continuum is pretty much unique to Arabic and gives rise to fascinating situations watching Arabs calibrate their lanugage based on the situation and the linguistic background of their interlocutor. Not Chinese? (Also, #9 hardly seems like an item to include in an article explaining 'Why Arabic is Terrific'. 'Terrifying', perhaps.)

dates in Arabic are not read right to left as the author suggested. They are written and read left to right.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#18

Post by gms » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:30 PM UTC

adnanymously wrote: post #17

gwern wrote: post #4

> The combination of numerous dialects and a formal/informal continuum is pretty much unique to Arabic and gives rise to fascinating situations watching Arabs calibrate their lanugage based on the situation and the linguistic background of their interlocutor. Not Chinese? (Also, #9 hardly seems like an item to include in an article explaining 'Why Arabic is Terrific'. 'Terrifying', perhaps.)

dates in Arabic are not read right to left as the author suggested. They are written and read left to right.

The numbers are written left to right, but dates are indeed right to left.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#19

Post by yariang » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:43 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #11

There are a few words that take a regular plural suffix, but most of the time to make a plural you have to change the structure of the word quite dramatically: The structural change is regular. That is you don't have to learn each name plural. The Arabic writing system is exotic looking but easy to learn, which is a rare combination. The language uses a straightforward alphabet, but because letters change their shape…

> I thought the same thing for English and French, no? When > I learn English and French in school, we join letters.

You can write cursive but, generally, we don't join letters together (think online text like this comment).

> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)

And for Spanish--Ellas y elllos--and for Italian.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#20

Post by yariang » Sun, Aug 21, 2011, 3:45 PM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #13

Interesting post but the OP is linguistically naive, which is generally what happens when English speakers encounter another language with more interesting (i.e. exotic") morphological, phonetical, etc. elements. If Arabic if your first foray into a highly inflectional language, it might look fairly exotic. If you had studied, say ancient Greek or Latin, first, it might look less so. "you find out that the underlying…

> This comment about Chinese and Japanese (totally unrelated > languages with very different writing systems, is laughable.

No it's not. I studied Japanese as my fourth language for 1.5 years and went through pretty much exactly what the OP described.

Edit: Other languages were Spanish English and Italian.