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What makes Arabic difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5708 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 41 of 53 16 November 2009 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I for one learned to read and write Arabic as a small child so reading is not especially hard for me. My problems comes from the fact that I do not, in any way, read regularly. If I'm reading a childrens book, with the vowels I can understand. If I'm reading coversational arabic than I can understand some. In essence, I'm a functional illeterate in the Arabic language, but whenever I go through a spell of studying and learning the language, my reading speed and comprehension rise rapidly so I know that if I were to take the time to really master the reading and a good base vocabulary of maybe 100 words I could use the language more fluidly.
Because I'm very used to the written script Arabic has never been any more intimidating to me than English or Spanish, because its one of the languages that was in my sphere as I was growing up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5708 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 42 of 53 16 November 2009 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Have you guys never studied French?! Arabic is, from my 15 years experience, 97%phonetic, the remaining 3% is more of a grammatical, convention thing. If you can make the sounds and recognize the letters than you can read. Kitab is read Key-tab. Where I'm still not sure how to read a word like "de l'agneau (lamb)" in French. Besides, everybody is different and I'm sure if you have a good reason for learning something you will do better than if you are just doing it because it is required. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 43 of 53 16 November 2009 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
By the way, French DOES have spelling and pronunciation rules that, if you take the time to read through them (or just simply observe the spelling and pronunciation, as I did), they actually make sense. You'll just know by instinct how a certain word is pronounced or written. I personally think that French spelling is a better representation of the spoken language than English. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| JasonBourne Groupie United States Joined 5757 days ago 65 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Arabic (Written), Turkish | Message 44 of 53 18 November 2009 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The Arabic alphabet isn't really phonetic per say. The short vowels are not written, which is a HUGE challenge to reading. I've been studying Arabic for a year and I can still barely follow along to a monologue (native speed) with a transcript because the alphabet doesn't give you all the information on how a word is actually pronounced. I think people downplay the impact that a lack of short vowels plays in learning to read Arabic, it's a huge obstacle. For example imagine if the English word vowel was written as "vwl". A person who doesn't know that vocabulary wont know if it's pronounced vowel, vuwal, viwil, viwul, etc etc. To take your example, kitab as written is actually ktaab. You only know it's pronounced KEY-taab because you know that vocab word and it's been reinforced in your mind enough that you don't have to think about it. Sure, you can get the hang of short vowels with time and experience but it's very very tricky for a beginner. Moreover, as an anglo, French SHOULD be easier. While my French pronunciation may be laughable, I can glance a newspaper article and get the main gist of it, without studying the language a day in my life. Whereas I can go through an entire article in Arabic and only pick up a few rudimentary words even after going through an intensive college course and self study routine. Edited by JasonBourne on 18 November 2009 at 1:04am 7 persons have 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 45 of 53 18 November 2009 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I fully agree with Jason here. The lack of short vowel signs in most Arabic writing is a massive obstacle for beginning Arabic learners. Of course, with practice one can become good at guessing/predicting the short vowels based on the grammatical form of a word. But, this intuition is not developed overnight.
As mentioned by ellasevia above, French does have orthographical rules. Learning to read a French text aloud is much easier than learning to read an Arabic text aloud. Let me also add that from an objective point of view Arabic is more difficult to learn than French for a native English speaker with no other foreign language learning experience. Yes, there are personal preferences and aptitudes, but simply the sheer number of cognates makes learning French that much easier. 1 person has 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 46 of 53 19 November 2009 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
It can't really be argued seriously that French (or any Romance language for that matter) is more difficult for a native English speaker than Arabic is, all other factors being equal (starting from scratch with both languages, having the same interest in each language, studying each for the same amount of time, etc). I'll agree that Arabic was easier for you personally. If you're motivated to learn Arabic and aren't interested in French then you'll learn Arabic better and you'll be more likely to stick with it, but that really says nothing about the inherent difficulty of the languages. I think Jason hit the nail on the head. I'm not going to make a guess about the exact percentage of French words that a native English speaker can make a good guess at without ever studying the language, but I'd say it's at least 25%. In Arabic an English speaker will know very few words; television, radio, radar, computer, in addition to the entire language just being foreign to the native English speaker's ear. Telling the difference between the 2 'h' sounds, 2 'd' sounds, 2 's' sounds, 2 't' sounds, etc is something difficult. Just as it's difficult for Asians to distinguish 'l' and 'r' and for Arabs to distinguish 'p' and 'b'. Since French is related to English and Arabic is not, all things being equal, a person will pick up French faster than Arabic. I'm not saying the US government is perfect and all knowing in language matters but they allot 6 months to teach people French and Spanish from scratch. Arabic gets a year and 4 months. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5540 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 53 29 November 2009 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Agreed, the relative transparency between English & French (or any other Latin borrowing/derived languages etc) facilitates this ease. However I believe many of those complaining of their hardships with learning Arabic, appear to stem from a lack of a good manhaj/methodology in regards to their learning approach. I believe that I benefited from having lessons in an Arabic speaking country for half a year, and then having regular speaking and study from the time I arrived back home, and having a good exposure to the language, which the didactic learners indeed seem to lack from, and thus encounter a host of problems when approaching such a vast and rich language. As the poet says: Whoever takes his book as his shaykh, Then his mistakes will be greater than what he is correct in... (an Arabic proverb) Edited by al-Irlandee on 29 November 2009 at 2:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5708 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 48 of 53 29 November 2009 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Okay, I agree with your first point, a lot of people obviously missed my 1st post in which I admit that I am a functional illiterate in the Arabic language because I dont read that often. I can follow with the short vowels or read simple dialogue without the short vowels but I cant pick up the actual meaning. I may have spoken too hastily about the ease of Arabic learning. Like I said, its been in my sphere of the world since I was a child but not as a conversational language. Most of what I read has all the vowels and I still read at a first/second grade pace so I'm not trying to beef myself up to say that I can speak Arabic. or anything. I can follow and understand basic dialogues about a various number of themes like you would find in a textbook and thats all. Second point: You made a very legitimate point. Reading ease comes from vocabulary!! I never thought about it like that but your 100% right I think. If you know the vocab (and have reading comprehension) then you can pretty much tell what it says. Third point: This, I disagree with totally. How can you say that you can glance at a French newspaper and understand the gist of it without ever having to study French a DAY in your life? You cant really do that with English and ANY other language, I dont even know if you could do it with Arabic and something like Amharic...Maybe Italians/Spaniards can do this with one anothers languages, but I cant think of any language off the top of my head that one, as an anglophone, could do. You might THINK you understand the gist of the article but if you just take the time to factor in false cognates, vocab, conjugated verb forms etc you wont have a clue! I think your point about understanding the gist was really far-fetched but well-intended. Dont be fooled into thinking that English is as close to other languagese with Latin roots as as French/Spanish/Italian are. I only learned that recently!!! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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