|
 |
Mutual Intelligibility of Moroccan Arabic | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5536 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 17 02 June 2012 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
I agree, communication is possible between certain Romance speakers, it is just that it does not happen to the extent that Arabic speakers intercommunicate using their respective L1 Arabic variants. One thing that I would like to explore, is if the divergence of the various tenses in the Romance languages plays a large part in that intercommunication between them is not as easy as it is between the Arabic vernaculars. In Arabic, only two true tense forms exist: past and present, and the morphology is largely uniform throughout the Arab world. Edited by Al-Irelandi on 02 June 2012 at 2:38am 3 persons have 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 10 of 17 02 June 2012 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
In addition (kind of off the subject) I have friends who have told me that they got around perfectly in Morocco
using solely Modern Standard Arabic. What!?! NOBODY "speaks" MSA, right?! It is useless to learn, right?! On the contrary, they said that everyone in Morocco with access to a radio or a TV can understand MSA. One friend in particular who probably isn't much past an A2/B1 level, said that not only were people more than willing to speak MSA with him, but that some were very apologetic that their MSA was not as good as HIS (!). Apparently using MSA in conversation is a mark of education and is respected (at least in Morocco from what people have told me...). I'm quite sure that one could not go around Europe, speak Latin, and be perfectly understood. I listened to some basic Moroccan Arabic podcasts this week. It is true! Even though Moroccan Arabic has this reputation for being "incomprehensible" to other Arabic speakers, I found it to be MUCH closer to the other Arabic dialects than, say, Portuguese to Italian. Yeah, Arabic is pretty cool all right... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5536 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 17 02 June 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Amazing to read this here, someone admitting that Arabic speakers even from as far west as Morocco can understand and speak MSA/CA (could be argued both are the same, just context is different) to a reasonable level certainly shatters the prevalent view that some posters have attempted to present of native Arabic speakers not ever using MSA/CA. I have to wonder how well they (claim to) know Arabic and what kind of exposure they have had to the various vernaculars. I always doubted such a view; some of the first guys I used to speak MSA/CA with were Moroccans, Algerians and Libyans. I also have used it with a wide range of Arabic speakers hailing from Mauritania to Iraq. All were very accommodating and I benefited much in my interactions in FusHaa with them: I acquired both knowledge of MSA/CA and various vernaculars when they resorted to their L1s from time-to-time. Edited by Al-Irelandi on 02 June 2012 at 6:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Abu Seyame Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4568 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Aramaic, German, Spanish, Persian, French | Message 12 of 17 02 June 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Liddytime, I've had varied experiences in the Middle East. For instance in Yemen, people were usually willing to try
and speak MSA with me and were just very excited that I could speak a bit of Arabic. In Damascus, the people were usually cooperative and spoke a mix of MSA and Levantine with me once they realized that I only spoke fusha. However, in Cairo where I am currently studying, people almost always insist on speaking in ameyya. Usually when I tell people that my fusha is much better they respond by saying that is great, but why don't I know ameyya (or how come I am not studying ameyya, etc.) and then proceed to speak in colloquial. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5832 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 17 02 June 2012 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Which Arabic dialect is usually considered to be the easiest? I've heard that Egyptian Arabic has the least complex grammar, is this true?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 17 02 June 2012 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
|
@liddytime: I have had a similar experience in Morocco as have some of your friends. I've spent probably about a year (not all at once) in Morocco, spread out among a few cities, and I found that most Moroccans were very willing to use MSA, though they didn't feel it was the strongest command of it. I think what most previous posters meant by saying "nobody speaks MSA" is that it's not most Arabs' default form of spoken Arabic. They are definitely capable of it in many Arab countries, but colloquial is preferred for the more informal situations. Comparing MSA and the dialects to Latin to modern Romance languages, IMO, is indeed preposterous.
I also agree about the intelligibility of Moroccan/Maghrebi Arabic vs. the Eastern dialects. They have far more in common than some people believe. The differences - namely in pronunciation and a higher number of loan words from other languages, for example - are without a doubt important and can make it more difficult for Middle Easterners to understand, but it's not as dramatic as it's made out to be. It's definitely a matter of exposure. Going from having a strong command of MSA and Egyptian to Moroccan was not as difficult as I thought it would be. @Abu Seyame: Agreed. How Arabs feel about using MSA sometimes changes from region to region, country to country. In Morocco, Algeria, Syria, and Oman, I found most people willing and even somewhat comfortable with using MSA. Egypt is an interesting case - most Egyptians have a stronger pride in their colloquial dialects than most other Arab countries, and as a result, tend to be very certain about sticking to it instead of MSA. It seems to be a result of the Cairene dialect having been dominant in the media (movies and music more specifically), historically speaking. @COF: It's very difficult to pinpoint the "easiest" dialect. In my opinion, it most depends on one factor: the available resources. When I decided to move from MSA to Moroccan Arabic, it wasn't the differences that I found initially as daunting, but rather that there were very few resources to study the dialect, even less those that were reliable. As a result, after having a perhaps intermediate grasp of the variant, I chose to change to Egyptian. Today, Egyptian and Levantine have the most resources available, and some are generally well-crafted. Iraqi also has some good resources, though much of it has to do with militaristic/governmental subjects. Gulf and Saudi dialects have less materials, though they're not lacking. The weakest point, IMO, is having resources for the Maghrebi dialects. There are some good introductory to intermediate courses on Moroccan specifically, much more than there were when I originally studied it, but there is very little (virtually nothing) on Algerian, Tunisian, and Libyan. That being said, Maghrebi is also slightly more difficult due to the greater differences - but if there were better resources, there's no doubt that they would be much more accessible. As for Egyptian grammar being the simplest, I don't necessarily agree. The dialects in general have a simplified grammar compared to MSA, but I don't think Egyptian is easier than any of the others. The biggest deal is perhaps not being scared by the MSA-First Dialect transition. I could go into great detail about the several aspects of dialect grammar, but it would only show that Egyptian is distinct enough to not be considered "very easy". 4 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 15 of 17 15 June 2012 at 4:25am | IP Logged | ||
|
My experience is that Algerians/Moroccans/Libyans/Tunisians can usually understand one another with a bit of
improvisation. As for other speakers, that really depends. They usually will "Egyptianise" their speech at least a little bit (especially pronunciation). As for MSA, I think that educated Moroccans/Algerians/Tunisians may be some of the best speakers of MSA. I really think that this does have something to do with the fact that most of them know that their dialects are too hard to understand, and know that learning MSA will help them be understood. However, many people in these countries can't even speak dialect (but Berber languages) and uneducated people definitely don't have a good grasp of MSA. Algerians are often much better educated in French and speak Berber languages too. I have tons of Lebanese/Palestinian/Israeli Arab/Egyptian/Gulf friends, and not one of them can speak "very confidently" in MSA. Sure, some of them can write and speak for a while (particularly Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and people from the Gulf) but they will usually get frustrated with lack of fluency and make mistakes. Lebanese and Egyptians are not often extremely competent in MSA. As for the easiest dialects - Lebanese and Egyptian get my vote. Granted, this is probably due to the exposure they get. But they also have much less complicated sounds than Gulf/Iraqi/Moroccan/Algerian/Tunisian. I would rate the degree of difficulty like this for someone accustomed to European languages: - Egyptian - Lebanese/Syrian - Palestinian Then a big jump - Gulf (I'm not sure which is the hardest - maybe Emirati) - Iraqi Then a big jump - Tunisian - Moroccan/Algerian For me, I can hardly understand a word a Moroccan or Algerian says. I have to ask them to speak extremely slowly, repeat everything and then I can grasp a tiny bit. They also speak insanely fast and collapse a lot of vowels which makes things really difficult too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lovinglanguage Hexaglot Newbie United States lovinglanguage.wordp Joined 4539 days ago 4 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, French, Ukrainian, German, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Arabic (classical), Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Maghribi), Dutch, Persian | Message 16 of 17 23 June 2012 at 6:02am | IP Logged | ||
|
What a fascinating discussion! I love talking about Arabic dialects. I lived in Morocco for 9 months and I learned Moroccan dialect *before* MSA. A few observations from my experience.
* The mother of the family I lived with could not understand MSA. She had spent very little time in school in the rural village she came from. Her husband translated the radio for her, and I saw her brother translate a letter for her. * My first experiences with Moroccans was not in Morocco but in Ukraine. They used to hang out with other Arabs. The Moroccans would purposely bamboozle Saudis by speaking Moroccan dialect. * I spent some time in Lebanon. A man asked me how I knew Arabic. I told him that I had lived in Morocco. He hollered at me, telling me that Moroccan is not Arabic--it's Barbarian! * In Lebanon, I saw a news program with a Moroccan segment. The bit was subtitled! * Regarding a comment above: I think that Arabs can speak with each other because of common cultural touchpoints. For example, every Arab has some exposure to MSA and Egyptian and some Lebanese dialects. They can manage using bits and pieces from these various languages. So even though an Iraqi, speaking pure Iraqi may confound a Moroccan, and vice-versa, if they try they can manage to understand each other. Regarding the easiest dialect, my Moroccan training gets easily confused by "disappearing" qafs. While Jordanian/Gulf accents sound goofy with all their "gafs", I find it easier to follow. Putting aside those missing "qafs," I find Levantine easiest. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
