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Arabic hyped up vs. Persian and Turkish?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
71 messages over 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 7 ... 8 9 Next >>
lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5961 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 49 of 71
28 September 2010 at 9:46pm | IP Logged 
nebojats wrote:
Ari!

I can see why the number of countries is arguably not a good way to define usefulness.

I suppose it depends on why you learn language. I study language to expose myself to
new ways of life, and in that respect, I suppose the number of "cultures" would be a
better guage of usefulness. For me, I can't completely discount the number of
countries, though. I honestly do think that Mandarin would be more appealing to me if
Mandarin-speaking China broke up into several smaller countries. Is that bad?

Regardless of how you define usefulness, calculating the number of cultures would be a
far more messy and contentious business than counting the number of countries!

It might be more useful to think of China as a continent, considering the geographic
and cultural dimensions it has. The argument "Mandarin is only spoken on one continent"
doesn't quite have the same pull to it.
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!LH@N
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6822 days ago
487 posts - 531 votes 
Speaks: German, Turkish*, English
Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish

 
 Message 50 of 71
03 October 2010 at 11:50am | IP Logged 
Funny side note:
During this years meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan and Iran spoke in Turkish when speaking to each other
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LatinoBoy84
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5576 days ago
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Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian

 
 Message 51 of 71
04 October 2010 at 11:07pm | IP Logged 
That's really interesting, I imagine many people are bilingual in the region with one of
their languages being a Turkic language. Making Turkish easier to learn for them and thus
a convenient Lingua Franca
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Jon1991
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 5366 days ago
98 posts - 126 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French, Russian

 
 Message 52 of 71
06 October 2010 at 9:15pm | IP Logged 
I understand Arabic is a very important cultural language and the political matters of today make it even more important. I have never really understood why Persian/Farsi is popular, it's the language of two countries which are turbulent to say the least and offers no economic incentive but maybe it offers cultural benefits, I'm not sure.

Turkey is an important language as Turkey is a regional power, has a growing economy, strong military, it's a very popular tourist destination for Brits, Germans and Russians and was the centre of the Ottoman Empire. I'm sure the popularity of Turkish will surge is Turkey becomes a full member of the European Union.
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Ubik
Senior Member
United States
ubykh.wordpress.com/
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147 posts - 176 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish

 
 Message 53 of 71
06 October 2010 at 10:55pm | IP Logged 
ANK47 wrote:
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.


So its kinda like a "rich get richer while the poor get poorer" convention except for languages. I find that sad. Its part of the reason why I personally would rather learn Persian than Arabic and Xhosa versus Zulu. I know *I* alone cant save a language, but for me its the same thing as preferring to shop at and eat at "mom and pop" places versus Walmart or Applebees.
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Lucky Charms
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
lapacifica.net
Joined 6950 days ago
752 posts - 1711 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: German, Spanish

 
 Message 54 of 71
07 October 2010 at 4:41pm | IP Logged 
Jon1991 wrote:
I understand Arabic is a very important cultural language and the political matters of today make it even more important. I have never really understood why Persian/Farsi is popular, it's the language of two countries which are turbulent to say the least and offers no economic incentive but maybe it offers cultural benefits, I'm not sure.

Turkey is an important language as Turkey is a regional power, has a growing economy, strong military, it's a very popular tourist destination for Brits, Germans and Russians and was the centre of the Ottoman Empire. I'm sure the popularity of Turkish will surge is Turkey becomes a full member of the European Union.


I would really like to see the international popularity of Turkish to grow as well.

As for Persian, it was once a colonial language, spoken by court rulers ranging from Turkey to India. The Sassanid Empire was considered equal to Rome. Its scientific, philosophical, literary, and cultural contributions rival those of the Arabic world and Ottoman Turks.

You mentioned the poor economies and political turbulence of Iran and Afghanistan. I think that for some people, the fact that these two states (and their 'turbulent' relationship with the West) are the focus of world attention make them all the more crucial and interesting to study.
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LatinoBoy84
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5576 days ago
443 posts - 603 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian

 
 Message 56 of 71
15 October 2010 at 4:58am | IP Logged 
Turkish has tremendous potential, not only because of the number of speakers but also
because of the geographic extent of Turkic languages. The script is Latin based, making
the language more transparent. There are also some very good resources available to
French, English and German speakers. I can't wait to get a little more serious with the
language.


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