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Hebrew and Arabic: How similar? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6230 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 21 07 May 2012 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Really? You can't understand ANY Palestinian Arabic; even if it is spoken slowly? I can't comment because I haven't studied Hebrew yet. But, I remember reading a New York Times article several years back commenting on how the Hebrew (or Palestinan - can't remember exactly which one) Sesame Street used very basic language in its skits so both Hebrew and Arabic speakers could understand it. I agree with above that you won't get much of a discount but I would think that there would be some overlap in colloquial vocabulary between Palestinian Arabic and Hebrew a-la "Spanglish" in California. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tiyafeh Pentaglot Newbie Israel Joined 4779 days ago 12 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English, Modern Hebrew*, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Written), German, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 10 of 21 07 May 2012 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Beyond some basic vocabulary mutual intelligibility is virtually nonexistent. Certainly Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic share quite a bit of slang, but beyond that very little. Keep in mind that although the two languages are now spoken in the same area, this was not the case until slightly more than a century ago, so there are few similarities of the sort the Romance languages have maintained due to their geographical proximity to each other. I'm not sure, but could it be that they meant that the Hebrew Sesame Street uses basic language so that Israeli Arab children who are learning Hebrew at school will be able to understand it with their limited knowledge of Hebrew, rather than due to the similarities between Arabic and Hebrew? However, I have to disagree about there being no discount. Although there is no obvious discount, such as between Spanish and Portuguese, you do get a lot of the grammar almost for free, for example the root system, the idafa, the possessive suffixes, the conjugation of the verbs and so on. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| laban Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 5823 days ago 87 posts - 96 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English, Italian Studies: Norwegian, German | Message 11 of 21 08 May 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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liddytime - I don't mean to brag, but I don't consider myself to be the
"average-joe" when it comes to languages, and still, I can't understand any Arabic of any kind. Therefore, I stand by my previous, more general, claims. I didn't quite get that last comparison you made, but considering that "Spanglish" is not even a language, makes it sound somewhat absurd. tiyafeh - Even with your things in account, I still find that "discount" to be almost nonexistent (as you mentioned yourself). Nonexistent to a degree, that it's not even worth mentioning as any type of "discount". The reason I'm saying this, is because what you wrote might be confusing to some who actually wish to use the one for the other. So again, I stand by my initial claim. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6230 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 12 of 21 08 May 2012 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, I didn't say it was a language. (although there are some who say it is) If you are unfamiliar with "Spanglish" this is an interesting story on it: NPR : Spanglish It is a means by which English words have been incorporated into Spanish and used like Spanish words. Similar to "Hinglish" in India. I thought that a similar phenomenon might occur with Hebrew and Palestinean Arabic due to their proximity. I suppose not. Edited by liddytime on 08 May 2012 at 6:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5536 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 21 13 May 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Depends what you mean by 'discount'. Acquiring another language is the process of building up an underlying knowledge or competence in that target language or L2 which governs its use. That is developed from exposure to and successful processing of L2 input. Knowing what is similar and what is not, may make the language easy to begin with (e.g. shared phonology, lexis and other surface level phenomena) but in the long run you still have to acquire that language, and go through many U shaped learning curves where you have to make mistakes before getting various aspects of the language right (whether morphology, syntax, sociolinguistic etc) and this occurs through a long acquisition process and not on the provision of a few declarative rules and list of similarities between languages. Language transfer does happen, but is not as pervasive (or as predictable in causing ease or difficulty) as was once held back in the heyday when Lado's Contrastive Analysis ruled the roost, being propped up by behaviourist and especially structural linguistic theory. In sum, the kind of exposure you are going to get of a language and the amount of input you get to process of it, has far more of an effect on how easy it will be to acquire in the long run. Edited by Al-Irelandi on 13 May 2012 at 5:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shemi Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4547 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew, Spanish Studies: French, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Gulf), Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 14 of 21 15 June 2012 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to go against the grain here.
They definitely are related, and you will get a discount. I spoke Hebrew first, and what attracted me to learning Arabic was the similarity between the languages. It's true that at first you won't understand much (or any) of whichever language you learn second (mostly due to sound shifts that have taken place in Modern Hebrew). However, after you familiarise yourself with the basics of both languages, you can start to see a LOT of similarities and you will eventually start to intuitively guess meanings of words and grammatical structures. Not everything, but some things. There is a ton of common vocabulary. Verb conjugation is almost identical. As are pronouns. It doesn't appear when you first hear the other language, but once you familiarise yourself with the basics it becomes clear. Now, as for MSA/dialects. I find MSA very difficult and I don't know it. I can't make a sentence or understand any of it, though some parts of it are more similar to Hebrew than dialects. I would put this down to the fact that dialects are mixed with the speakers' native languages and foreign languages (Levantine is mixed with Phonecian/Aramaic/whatever else, Egyptian with Coptic, Maghrebi with Berber/French/Spanish, Iraqi with Persian) and that they have diverged over time. To be honest, I don't really like MSA and find that beyond watching the news and reading newspapers it isn't very useful. Dialects are great - they're practical, they have amazing cultural significance and they allow you to really understand a nation. Additionally, they're kind of "easier". For me, I would recommend learning Levantine or Egyptian because they're "easier" and most widely understood. Gulf is hard and not that well understood outside the Gulf; same as Iraqi but Iraqi is even less understood than Gulf; Moroccan/Algerian/Tunisian/Libyan are so different that they sound like foreign languages and are not understood at all. If you want to specialise within Levantine, my favourite is Lebanese because I love how it sounds and it's very popular. Palestinian is a bit harder for me and sounds like a mix of Egyptian and Lebanese. Syrian is a good choice too. I would rate the dialects I know in terms of ease of learning for a Hebrew speaker in this order: - Lebanese/Syrian - Palestinian - Egyptian Then a big jump in difficulty - Gulf (I can't really tell the difference between Gulf dialects yet) - Iraqi Another big jump in difficulty - Moroccan/Algerian/Tunisian/Libyan As for the discount - I would say that there is one, and I made (and still make) use of it. Not like Spanish/Italian/French, granted (with my knowledge of Spanish I can understand a large portion of those languages, much more than Hebrew/Arabic). But it exists if you're willing to look hard enough. Give it a try and see for yourself. You may be surprised :-) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Shemtov Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4815 days ago 49 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English*, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Aramaic | Message 15 of 21 15 June 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Would somebody who has experience with Aramaic get a discount for Arabic?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shemi Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 4547 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew, Spanish Studies: French, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Gulf), Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 16 of 21 15 June 2012 at 7:14am | IP Logged | ||
My experience with Aramaic is limited, but I can understand quite a bit (especially if I have a little bit of help) without ever studying it. I'm sure there are similarities. But it seems much closer to Hebrew than it is to Arabic (as far as I can tell). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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