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Arabic hyped up vs. Persian and Turkish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| JasonBourne Groupie United States Joined 5757 days ago 65 posts - 111 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Arabic (Written), Turkish | Message 9 of 71 06 August 2009 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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People choose Arabic over Persian and Turkish because
A. Sheer number of speakers; in most cities (even small ones in the midwest) have significant populations of immigrant speakers who can converse in at least one Arabic dialect. I hear people speaking Arabic almost everday where I live (midwest America), while I don't think I've ever met anyone in my life who could speak Farsi or Turkish. While there are significant Persian and Turkish immigrants in the US, compared to the Arabic speaking immigrants, this number is negligible. B. Fascination with Arab culture. Many westerners have the desire to travel to Cairo, Beirut, Dubai, or Morroco. Turkey and Iran, while very beautiful in there own right, are simply less accessible to the common westerner. C. Strategic military/foreign affairs importance...nuff said. Edited by JasonBourne on 06 August 2009 at 11:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hamba Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 6736 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Arabic (classical), Urdu | Message 10 of 71 07 August 2009 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Why would you not want to learn Arabic over the other languages you seem to think are somehow not receiving the same attention?
For the last 1400 years the Arabic language has shaped, defined and impacted on the grammatical, terminology and faith of the Turkic and Farsi speaking communties thoroughout the world. Despite each of the above languages having rich pre-arabic literary histories, Arabic still resonates through persian and turkish poetry and defines each of the above cultures. Unlike Latin, Arabic remains a very "alive" language and continues not only to assert its influence on Turkish and Persian but also on every language it has come into contact with during its period of influence. Something I see everyday in teaching Indonesian and Malay literature is just how much Arabic loanwords are being chosen over even 'modernised' English. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| phantometal Newbie Turkey Joined 5620 days ago 23 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Turkish* Studies: English, Spanish | Message 11 of 71 12 August 2009 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
i think 206 million is the number of people who speaks the entire arabic languages/dialects. actually wikipedia says 280 million native speakers. well turkey has a population of 70 million plus 3 million in the europe(mostly in Germany). if we talk about all the turkic languages as a family like arabic languages, it has at least 200 million native speakers. take a look at the turkic languages page in wikipedia. wikipedia - turkic languages 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scoobs Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5668 days ago 27 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Persian | Message 12 of 71 12 August 2009 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Might've been mentioned but a lot people say Arabic is the most complete language in the world because mostly it doesn't borrow from other languages. So I hear. I know virtually nothing about it. In fact, it's only recently that I've noticed how many people are learning it.
Other reasons for this may be religion (Arabic is the language of Islam, afterall). I know it is a mandatory subject in Iran. Lots of countries like Lebenon speak Arabic, so it may be popular because it's useful in Middle Eastern countries. It's influence on other languages of that region may also be a factor in its popularity- the Persian and Urdu languages are written in Arabic script- people might want to see what's so influential about it... And of course, the recent boom of business, tourists and immigration in Dubai could be another reason why people choose Arabic over other languages of that region. They do have gorgeous beaches there, so I hear... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5580 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 13 of 71 24 August 2009 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Just out of curiosity, would learning Turkish provide you with transparency to the other Turkic languages (as someone mentioned?) This would put it into close competition with Arabic in sheer numbers. Basically are the difference within Arabic bigger than the differences within Turkic Languages?
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6299 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 14 of 71 24 August 2009 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
I'm curious about this too. A Turkish friend of mine said he could communicate with great difficulty with Uyghurs from Xinjiang, China. Seems kind of interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5580 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 15 of 71 25 August 2009 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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The Real question is how we define a language/dialect/language family from wiki:
"In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million[1] people as a first language and by 250 million[2] more as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible.[4] In principle, this would define Arabic as in fact a family of closely related languages, although in popular perception it continues to be considered a single language... VS "Turkic languages are spoken by some 180 million people as a native language;[3] and the total number of Turkic speakers is about 200 million, including speakers as a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper...The Turkic languages may be divided into six branches..." Wiki on both... What do you think? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Al-Malik Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member United Kingdom arabicgenie.com Joined 7139 days ago 221 posts - 294 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical) Studies: Mandarin, Persian | Message 16 of 71 25 August 2009 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
One simple reason for the focus on Arabic rather than Persian or Pashto consists simply in the fact that there are many more Arabic speakers than speakers of other Middle Eastern languages.
Over the centuries Arabic has probably borrowed less than other languages. However, there is still a long list of Arabic words that have their origin in other languages: French, English, Spanish, Greek, Latin etc. I'm currently in the process of compiling a list of frequently-used words that are shared between English and Arabic and have reached the 200 mark already. Of course, there are even more words to be found in the more scientific areas. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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