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TE Lawrence (lawrence of arabia) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| portunhol Triglot Senior Member United States thelinguistblogger.w Joined 6064 days ago 198 posts - 299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (classical) | Message 9 of 12 30 April 2008 at 3:26pm | IP Logged |
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Kudos for finding that Google book source! I thought that I had looked everywhere on the net but apparently I hadn't. Edited by portunhol on 30 April 2008 at 3:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6084 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 10 of 12 12 May 2008 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
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French was his best foreign language. Arabic seems never to have overtaken his knowledge of French. I think he mentions knowing 5,000 Arabic "roots" in one of his letters but he also said there were limitations in his Arabic, if I remember rightly. The various spoken varieties and their difference from Classical Arabic may have given him trouble.
I don't know if he knew Ottoman Turkish. He may not have needed to, as at least in vocabulary it was not as far removed from Arabic as modern Turkish is, and many non-Arab Ottomans could speak Arabic, at least to some extent. He would have been heavily exposed to Latin and Classical Greek at school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| El Guasca Tetraglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5845 days ago 18 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English, Spanish Studies: Latin, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 12 23 May 2008 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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Besides English, he spoke German, French, Italian, Latin, Greek and Arabic for sure. It seems he did have some troubles learning Arabic, and being a student of Arabic myself, Ican understand why: it is very hard to decide what regional variant you are going to chose, and practically all of them differ in a large extent from the standard Arabic - which is, of course, the variant used for writing in every Arab country... I suppose he firstly learned the Lebanese and Syrian variants, which are similar but not the same - if I remember correctly he studyied first in Damascus and then in Beirut. Afterwards, however, he traveled to what is now Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. I suppose he might have had some trouble with all those regional variants along his journey. Nowadays the Lebanese variant is the most likely to be understood in other Arab countries, but as far as I know it happens because of TV programs and videoclips. As there was no such thing in Lawrence's days, I suppose he might have had a hard time speaking Lebanese Levantine Arab in all those different countries.
I'm not sure if he spoke Turkish, but that's certainly possible. As for Greek, his translation of The Odissey into English is considered by some as one of the best of its kind. Edited by El Guasca on 23 May 2008 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6084 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 12 of 12 15 February 2009 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
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His book Seven Pillars Of Wisdom is inconsistent in the spellings of place-names and personal names. He seems to have thought little of consistency or rules of transliterating Arabic. Exposure to different dialects might have also been a factor in the inconsistency. Edited by William Camden on 15 February 2009 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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