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Arabic hyped up vs. Persian and Turkish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5758 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 1 of 71 19 June 2009 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone noticed that although there seems to be a huge interest for arabic in the western world, there are very few people interested in the other major languages of the region?
I regularly meet people who say to have an interest in arabic (but I only know one non-native speaker who actually knows it well) but very rarely people interested in any of the other languages I mention. Why is this so? I personnaly think it's a good thing that europeans and americans take an increased interest in these parts of the world. Still, IMO there is an excessive interest in arabic at the expense of other oriental languages. Put differently, if one considers the number of westerners interested in learning oriental languages to be a constant sum, there are too many students of arabic vs. turkish or persian. There are at least three major reasons who apeak out against arabic: it's reputedly extremely difficult (5 cactuses on this forum), the elites of the arab world are all fluent in English and/or french and there are different regional varieties of arabic who are really languages on their own. In Iran or Turkey, this is not the case and there is less material available on these countries in european languages. My friend (who has been a teacher of arabic) agrees with me. Although there is a real need for arabic, it's overestimated and the need for speakers of persian and turkish likewise underestimated. The latter languages are also easier to learn. Any thoughts on this? Personnaly, after learning russian for several years and finally achieving decent fluency and good reading skills, I'm considering picking up persian. For the moment, I'm just playing around with the alphabet, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5656 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes  Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 71 19 June 2009 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know Persian, I've started working on Arabic, and I hope to learn Turkish. My interest is mostly in reading classical texts rather than dealing with current commercial or political issues.
These are some other factors to be considered when choosing which languages to study, though, ideally, someone interested in the area would learn all three. --In learning Persian, one learns a great amount of Arabic vocabulary which has been adopted by Persian, much as English contains much French. Classical Persian contains only a small amount of Turkish, though I'm not sure about colloquial Persian. My understanding is that Arabic contains a fairly small amount of Persian and Turkish vocabulary. Turkish tried to purge itself of Arabic and Persian elements, but there are still many common Arabic and Persian words and other linguistic elements remaining in Turkish. --A sizeable portion of Iran speaks Azerbaijani Turkish. --Arabic is important throughout the Muslim world as the language of religion. --There's a large cultural heritage which is shared by the entire region covered by Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. This is partly due to the influence of Islam, partly due to interwoven population movements and fortunes of empire, and partly due to a broad base of legends, stories, and so forth. Once you start dealing with one group or one language, it's hard not to be drawn into the other groups and languages. --Once you get comfortable with the Arabic alphabet, whether through Arabic, Persian, Urdu, or whatever, the other languages using that alphabet seem far less daunting. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6670 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 71 20 June 2009 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that in Germany there's more interest in Turkish than in Arabic. At my language school, there are about equally many people in the beginner's Turkish course and the Arabic course.
It's perfectly understandable why there is more interest in Arabic than Persian. It's a world language spoken in more than 20 countries, while Turkish and Persian are only regionally important. True, Arabic is very difficult. But I really don't think learning Persian will be that much easier. I mean, grammar may be easier, but in the long run, it's not the grammar that will take most of your study time but the acquisition of vocabulary and idioms, which will take a lot of time for both languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7102 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 4 of 71 21 June 2009 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Like Marc said, according to Wikipedia Arabic is spoken by about 206 million people, Persian is spoken by 72 million, and Turkish is spoken by 50 million. This isn't the entire reason, but it definitely plays a part in why Arabic is more popular. Another reason more people want to learn Arabic is because lots of people think that everyone in the middle east speaks Arabic. The everyday American believes that Arabic is spoken from Morocco to Pakistan. If you're tan and wear something on your head other than a baseball cap then you speak Arabic. Hey, before I started learning Arabic I thought the same thing. I didn't know that in Afghanistan and Iran the number of people who speak Arabic is incredibly small.
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6670 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 5 of 71 21 June 2009 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
But it's a lot higher than the number of people in the Arabic world speaking Persian or Pashto. There are millions of people learning Arabic as a second language (most for religious reasons), which adds much to its appeal. I believe that Arabic beats Turkish and Persian in just about every criterion imaginable. They just don't play in the same league, just like Italian just doesn't play in the same league as Spanish. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 71 21 June 2009 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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But as the OP says, Arabic isn't exactly a language. From the English speakers point of view, calling it "a language" suggests that the internal differences are no bigger than the difference between UK English, North American English and New Zealand English. Similarly, a Spanish person would intuitively think about the differences between his own way of speaking and that of someone in Mexico, Peru or Argentina.
Selling Arabic as a "language" is almost like selling Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc as "a language". When you ask yourself "which Arabic am I learning", you'll find that the number of speakers is a lot less than 206 million. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 7 of 71 21 June 2009 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say the number of speakers of Turkish is more like 70 million, even if that includes some for whom it is a second language.
I note that there is an Iraqi satellite TV station called Türkmeneli, which is partly in Arabic but partly in Turkish, catering to the Turkoman minority, and the Turkish tends to be the kind you would use in Turkey. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6670 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 8 of 71 21 June 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
The situation is different, because there is a common standard language (MSA). It's more comparable to Germany with its dialects and a superposed standard language with the significant difference that Hochdeutsch is far more widespread in Germany than MSA in the Arab world. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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