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The Great MSA/Dialect Debate | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4646 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 21 29 March 2015 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone. Conventional wisdom seems to be to learn Modern Standard Arabic and
then move on to a dialect. Then I read things like this that seem to indicate conventional wisdom isn't always right: http://www.fluentin3months.com/msa-or-dialect/ However, it is also worth noting that Benny is also not always right. Are there any people here who are/have studied this and want to chime in? I am still working on the alphabet, so I've not gone too far down any path to re-do my plan. Once I have the alphabet down, I was just going to work through Mastering Arabic 1 (the new 3rd volume), and then the 30-Lesson Linguaphone course that seems to be so well-regarded, and which teaches MSA. It would take a while, but seems like I'd come out of it with a big vocab and solid reading ability. There do seem to be some well-regarded courses for specific dialects, though. So I could potentially go that way instead. I work for a large company that does business all across the Arab-speaking world. They do a lot of work on behalf of the US Government, so my eventual testing would be on the ILR levels. To earn bonus money and get to consider it as part of future applications for varying projects, I need to get to the CEFR equivalent of B1 in two of three categories of Reading, Listening, and Speaking. Writing does not play any role in my professional/personal goals. I don't have a particular tie to any given region or dialect, and any would benefit me equally in the end. I can test in Modern Standard Arabic as well. What does everyone think? Keep in mind that I need to get to either B1 in speaking/listening, speaking/reading, or reading/listening. Obviously getting to it in all 3 or higher in each category is cool too, haha. After learning the alphabet, should I go with the original plan of Mastering Arabic 1 and then Linguaphone? Should I just learn the alphabet and dive straight into a dialect? I am a bit confused on the diglossal thing. All written forms of Arabic I'd see in a newspaper or book or whatever is considered MSA, right? If that is the case, considering my goals, it seems like I'd either have to go with: MSA to aim for any combo of reading/speaking/listening or a dialect to aim for just speaking/listening. Or am I misunderstanding something? Thanks in advance for any help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3471 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 2 of 21 29 March 2015 at 5:28am | IP Logged |
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Based on what I know from a few arab friends, when two arabs meet and they don't understand each other's
dialect they'll use MSA. Dialects that are near each other geographically tend to understand each other better and those further apart - in some cases they're near incomprehensible (for example, Moroccan). Most arabs can understand Egyptian because of the amount of media it produces (tv shows, music and so on). In a business setting I imagine MSA first would probably be the best approach but outside of that, if you were learning for personal reasons I'd go for dialect and probably Egyptian at that since more people would probably understand you (unless you had ties to other nations). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 21 29 March 2015 at 9:45am | IP Logged |
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Benny's approach was oriented on a very different need - his travels in Egypt. You need
to learn the variant of Arabic which is the most relevant to your company - ask your boss what is required of you. Check which clients he is in contact with, and make sure that your spoken dialect is that of your business partners. I actually suggest learning more business-oriented Arabic because that's the type of Arabic you will need for this project. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6624 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 21 29 March 2015 at 4:28pm | IP Logged |
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There where a discussion about Benny a couple of years ago. My take is here on page 6:
how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3298 1&PN=18&TPN=6 I still stand by it. Here is my view on the debate :) I still haven't studied any dialect at all, and I have been a bit lazy in my MSA studies as well. I can understand most written media since everything is written in MSA. I just watched a few National Geographic episodes on YouTube dubbed to MSA and I had no problem following along. Dialects are an other matter all together. I've seen a few movies (slow dramas) in Egyptian and Syrian dialects and managed to understand a great deal. Of course missing just about all nuances, but still. I also tried to watch a Syrian soap opera (mosalsalat) and I barely understood anything. The tempo was insane. I have lots of friends from just about every arab speaking country and all of them understands my MSA fine. And I understand their mixture of MSA and their home dialects. That is probably the reason why I have been lazy to start study any dialect. But some of them say that MSA speaks to the brain but dialect to their heart, so I guess that I someday have to pick up one or several dialects. From my own experience I can't see any problem with starting with MSA. Edited by fiolmattias on 29 March 2015 at 4:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4646 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 21 29 March 2015 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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@tarvos, being that we work for the federal government, the situation is not all that
logical, haha. I can test in MSA or any of a number of dialects (Egyptian, Levantine, etc....) But even if I tested in Egyptian and did well, it doesn't mean my travels for work wouldn't take me to Saudi Arabia or Morocco, for example. It seems to just be the way the contract between the company and the government is structured. Any will do. @fiolmattias, thanks for that link. Interesting how all our conversations here loop back to old ones eventually. It seems my original plan to learn the alphabet and then work through Mastering Arabic 1 to set me up to tackle Linguaphone still seems like a solid one. Thanks for your input! Just out of curiousity's sake, how long did it take you to get good at reading Arabic script? I find I already can pick out a few letters easily (T, B, K, N), but it definitely seems that it'll take longer than Cyrillic did. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5196 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 21 29 March 2015 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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There is a nice little lecture on this by Maha, who is herself an Arabic native speaker as well as a language teacher. She is strongly in favor of learning MSA first, and in the video explains why.
Standard Arabic or a Dialect? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4646 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 21 29 March 2015 at 8:40pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the video, Kronos. Her saying you need two years to speak a full, correct
sentence is depressing, haha. The video also seemed like it could've been about a minute long, but whatever. MSA it is. Back to the alphabet! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 8 of 21 30 March 2015 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
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It's also nonsense.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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