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TAC 2014 - Rare Languages Team Thread | ||
Tags: Nahuatl | Armenian | Team Thread | Sanskrit | Georgian | Indonesian | Rare Languages | Hebrew | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3867 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes  Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 153 of 223 10 May 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank's, Luso, for making me learn about those events. I had no idea about Operation Magic Carpet, and I always love learning something new about history.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 154 of 223 10 May 2014 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
You're welcome. I just want to make clear that the official name was Operation on Wings of Eagles (the original Magic Carpet was another one), but it's the name by which it usually goes (also Operation Messiah's Coming, according to Wikipedia). I don't own many CDs now, but one I do is called Yemenite Songs, by Ofra Haza. I went to see why, and found this. Im Nin'Alu is originally a Yemenite song. Edited by Luso on 10 May 2014 at 5:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4649 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 155 of 223 10 May 2014 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't recommend going there anytime soon - the country has been in turmoil for several years, rebels springing up left and right, and lately (read this month) two foreign embassy workers were shot or something. Every time I hear something happened in Sana'a I worry about Sarah (as she happens to be studying and working there) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 156 of 223 14 May 2014 at 1:30am | IP Logged | ||
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May challenge: the dispersion of the Arabic language.
This will be my cultural presentation of the language, since it's more than a grammatical feature. I hope you'll enjoy the perspective I chose. 
Arabic is a language with lots of words. In the image above, there's a comparison with English, French and Russian. I'm not posting it to start a debate about the exactitude of the numbers, but rather to take it as a "ballpark figure". I believe I've already wrote here that many words foreigners dismiss as dialect are, in fact, proper Arabic words that have fallen out of use elsewhere. But this post has a different intention: I'd like to explain a bit how dialects evolved. Just don't wait for a complete and dry academic paper. :) With the appearance of Islam, Arab civilisation had one of the fastest expansions in human history (the only other example that comes to mind is that of the Mongols, but they vanished very fast). Just one hundred years after beginning their expansion they were stopped deep into the territory of today's France. More than a thousand years later, a significant part of the territory conquered back then still speaks the language. Such a vast area couldn't retain political unity forever. New kingdoms emerged, rivalities played out, caliphs and sultans rose and were toppled. In spite of religious unity (and sometimes, not even that), differences settled in. From the very beginning, some cities asserted themselves as centres of influence: first Damascus, then Baghdad, then the Cairo, and finally Cordoba. One could travel from Lisbon to places deep into Asia without changing language or culture. Not bad, considering this happened more than 1000 years ago. Mathematicians from Samarkand exchanged ideas with astronomers from Timbuktu. Caravans and fleets traded textiles, spices, books and ideas. It was as perfect as you could get back then. With time, and in spite of exchanges, isolation played its part, and dialects developed. Vibrant cities or areas developed its own idiosyncrasies, setting them slightly apart from others. The wandering tribes of Arabia kept versions closer to the original language, whereas Egypt, the Levant and the Maghreb strayed a bit more from the norm. There are some interesting cases: - the Libyans, not having a major cultural centre, kept a version much closer to the original than their neighbours on both sides; - Mauritania, in spite of being closer to Morocco than to Arabia, had more contacts with the latter, due to the trans-saharian caravans; therefore, they have a "purer" version of the language, but with a lot of Berber words: quite a mix; - Iraqi Arabic is similar to that of Syria, with many influences of Aramaic (the ancient lingua franca of the region, still spoken in some places in Syria); - Gulf Arabic (which is not a unit in itself) is quite different from the versions of Saudi Arabia, since most people from the latter lived in the West of the peninsula; contacts were few and far between, due to the inhospitable conditions of the Empty Quarter (the Arabian desert); - the Sudanese version is quite close to the Saudi ones, though; - Yemeni Arabic versions are conservative ones, and (predictably) very close to those of Somalia and Djibouti; - Omani Arabic was spoken until recent times in Kenya and Tanzania. I can't end this post without a reference to the extinct Andalusian Arabic: not quite the same as the Maghrebi dialects, it had a significative influence in the Iberian languages (mainly Portuguese, Spanish and Ladino, but also Catalan). Edited by Luso on 14 May 2014 at 2:23am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3867 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 157 of 223 14 May 2014 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||
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An excellent presentation, far from dry and academic. Thank you for taking the time to do all that, because it's clear you read a lot to write these few lines. It explains a lot about the famous arabic dialects, and the paragraph on culture was great.
Do these numbers have to do only with word roots? The difference is impressive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 158 of 223 14 May 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the comment. I'm sure it isn't only the roots, as that would be impossible. If you multiplied by all the possible variations, you'd have a number in the hundreds of millions. There's a moment when it becomes inhuman.
As this article suggests, things are not comparable: some languages use roots, some inflect more than others, some have compound words, and some others have completely different systems (Chinese, for instance). December 18th is Arabic language day and the authors wanted to show the array of words contained in their dictionaries. Compiling words is a sort of competitive sport since the early days of Arab (and Arabic) expansion (it goes way back). If you ask me if Arabic has more words than English, I'd say probably yes. 20 times as much? I don't think so. I must make a feature regarding the incredible diversity of verbs they have. Maybe later this month, or next one. As for my presentation, I'd thought of doing only by memory, but then it became so big I decided to fill in a few gaps. This meant a couple Wikipedia pages and confirmation articles. In the end, I also learned a bit: the Omani influence in East Africa and the absence of contact between different regions of the Arabian peninsula, for instance. Edited by Luso on 15 May 2014 at 12:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 159 of 223 14 May 2014 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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May Challenge
კიდევ ერთი სტატი უნდა დაგვიწერო ქართული კულტურისა და ენის შესახებ. ერთი სტატი საკმარისი არ იყო. დღეს მინდა დავწერო საქართველოს საჭმელის შესახებ. საქართველოს ორივე უფრო ცნობილი კერძია ხაჭაპური და ხინკალი. ხაჭაპური დიდი ყველისპურია, ნამდვილად ხაჭოს პურია, ამიტომაც ხაჭაპური ჰქვია. ხინკალი კი ცომის გუფთაა, ე.ი. ცომში იხვევა ხორცი და იხარშება ერთად. I have to write yet another article about Georgian language and culture. One article wasn't enough. Today I want to write about Georgia's cuisine. Georgia's two most well-known dishes are khachapuri and khinkali. Khachapuri is a big cheese-bread, it is actually a cottage-bread, that's why it's called khachapuri. Khinkali, on the other hand, are dumplings, i,e. meat wrapped in dough and then boiled together. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3867 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 160 of 223 20 May 2014 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Hebrew is not the only language that has no vowels, but it is a rather rare thing so I thought I should say a few words on that. As a Semitic language, the vowels weren't written since the beginning, and experience was required in order to know how to pronounce. However, as the centuries went by and as the Jewish speakers stopped using the language, the rabbis understood that somehow those vowel sounds should be present. As a result, the nikkud, or niqqud, or nekudot, or vocalization marks, or diacritics were born. They are a series of dots and dashes, added around each consonant in several positions and combinations. The connection of Hebrew, scriptures and rabbis is essential to the fact that no actual letters were ever developed for vowels. Apparently "not a single letter in the Scripture could be either added or removed". So, the human mind finds the solution: the nikkud are not letters. The only letter closer to a vowel in the alphabet, the famous aleph, is silent! There are even diphthongs to be learned, but I can't tell you more about that yet. So, experience is a key factor in using the Hebrew language, and for everyone learning it this is the elephant in the room. You can't complain about it, because it is what it is. However you'd better be careful what you say, because דוד can mean David (beloved) or a boiler (or something...), according to the vowels between the letters. Who knows what an inexperienced student may say at any given moment! Fortunately these vowels are pronounced crystal clear in Hebrew, and very close to the greek ones (identical I think), so three cheers for that!  Edited by Penelope on 20 May 2014 at 11:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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