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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7319 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes  6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 49 06 February 2005 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
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You are indeed humorous, Ardaschir. What was your intention/motivation to learn formal Arabic?
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| souley Senior Member Joined 7242 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 10 of 49 06 February 2005 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your response and thoughts Ardaschir.
I do practice from the Quran, but I need variation and radio broadcasts are perfect in that sense because they offer different stories, conversations when people phone in, etc. When I was new to the arabic language, and didnt know anything about it, I never understood how serious the Dialect/Fusha issue was. I thought is was like the relationship between British-American-Australian, just different pronounciation. But it turned out to be more serious than I thought, arab friends who have been talking arabic all their life who want to learn fusha just to understand the Quran, arabs who dont understand eachother (Palestinians, Moroccans who dont understand Saudis, Yemenis etc). I personally loathe this fascination arabs (in Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisi, Morocco etc) have over the french language, to me there is no more beautiful and fascinating language than Al-lugthul 'Arabī, so I truly wish more arabs would appreciate it and hold on to it. The classical arabic. To have the ability to speak and learn Classical arabic from birth is really a blessing and a gift. Because it truly is an amazing language. Ardaschir, hal taarifu hedhani kalimatan: (Have you mastered the oh so unused today Dual form? =)) Do you know these words: Awaadim - pl. for people Azama - verb. to become Do you know if these words are Classical Arabic words or dialectial from Lebanon/Syria? Because I found them in a Gulf Arabic dictionary and my North African friend who has studied Fusha did not recognize them. مع سلام (just realized this is the third langauge Ardaschir and I have communicated in) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7239 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog | Message 11 of 49 08 February 2005 at 11:36pm | IP Logged |
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Well here's what happend to me in spanish... I would get that thing you were talking about... get all the words and not the whole idea/sentence. After a little longer I found there would be these minute spans were i would understand everything & then lose it again. But those spans have slowly grown (and still growing) keep at it.
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| souley Senior Member Joined 7242 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 12 of 49 11 February 2005 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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El Comadreja
Thank you for your advice. Ardaschir, Here's what I found on a website, how would you rate these describtions, they here make a clear distinction between Modern Written Arabic and Fusha: There are three main kinds of Arabic: (1) Classic Arabic, the language of the Qur'an, Islam, ancient poetry, and other literature. It is rarely spoken except by scholars and studied as a specialist subject in all Arab universities as well as some Western ones. (2) Modern Written Arabic is the language used in newspapers, scientific and technical material, and in novels. It is spoken on TV and radio. It is understood throughout the Arabic-speaking world by anyone with a secondary education. (3) Colloquial Arabic is the spoken language of everyday life, not often written down. People use Colloquial Arabic to talk about what they read and hear in Modern Written Arabic. Colloquial Arabic varies from country to country, but the differences tend to be in vocabulary and pronunciation. The main core of Arabic remains fairly constant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7377 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 49 11 February 2005 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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Souley, thank you so much for this clarification - a review of Arabic will soon be under way on this website along those lines.
May I ask a few more details? (1) Is Modern Written Arabic also spoken? (2) What is the language spoken on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabyia? Modern Written Arabic? (3) What language do Arab businessmen speak in Dubai? (4) With Modern Written Arabic, can you read Egyptian newspapers? Jordanian? Saudis? (5) What language is used on the Internet? Can you read any Arab website with Modern Written Arabic? Thanks for any light you can shed on these questions! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| souley Senior Member Joined 7242 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 14 of 49 11 February 2005 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
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To be honest Francois, I am not actually very knowledgable yet of the different dialects and their relationship to each other, and I think Ardaschir would be more suited to answer those questions. However, I would love to answer questions or write a few lines on how hard it is to learn the language, problems you may encounter, and any other questions regarding grammar, if this would be needed.
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 15 of 49 11 February 2005 at 8:18pm | IP Logged |
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Excuse me if this reply is disjointed, but I would like to answer all the querries that have come my way from three of four of you over the past five or six days and so I have to keep scrolling up to see what they are.
Victor, my motivation to learn Arabic was cultural and etymological. I aspire to know the classical language of each major civilization so that I can read its literature in the original. Also, just as Latin vocabularly (with Greek help) provides the intellectual and cultural vocabulary for all European languages, so Arabic provides the intellectual and cultural vocabulary for all societies that have been in historical contact with it, from Spanish and Portuguese to a degree that has been reduced by time, through African languages such as Kiswahili, through Turkish and all the Turkic languages, through Persian, Urdu, and many other Indic languages, all the way to Malay/Javanese/Indonesian. If you want to say "literature," for example, in most of these languages, you will probably use the Arabic word. So, knowledge of Arabic can be considered a "key" to the further eventual study of many important languages. Souley, I don't know the words you asked about and couldn't find them in my dictionary, so I suspect they are probably Gulf dialect. I couldn't agree with you more that written Arabic is passionate and rich and knowledge of it is a great privilige, so that it is indeed tragic to witness the number of native speakers who are indifferent to it or indeed even hostile to it. Over the past few months I have had many of my students tell me that they actively dislike Arabic and a few even go so far as to say that they hate it. One misconception about Arabic, spread by authors of Arabic textbooks themselves, is that the dual form is "rare" and can be left till later while more important things are studied. The dual is not "rare" at all - it is used each and every single time you speak about two things. If you think about it, you may not speak about two things as often as you speak about one thing or about three or more things, but you probably speak about two things as a unit at least once a day, and probably many more times than that. Well, it is flat our wrong to use plural pronouns or verb endings in this instance, you must use the dual and that is that. I believe the most official term for the contemporary written language, spoken also for educational, scholarly, journalistic, and diplomatic purposes, is "Modern Standard Arabic" or MSA for short, so let's use it henceforth. In Arabic itself, this is the variety that is referred to as "al fus-ha," although that term also certainly applies to "classical." Yes, you can find web sites that may say there are three varieties of Arabic, namely classical, MSA, and spoken dialects, but read further and you will find that MSA is living classical and that the differences between classical proper and MSA are ones of style and vocabulary. Unfortunately, many young Arabs are entirely ignorant and, as I just wrote above, perhaps even contemptuous of their culture's past, so if they ever endeavor to read older texts, they may need some lexical preparation and guidance in a style that is new to them. Likewise, devout Muslims who wish to focus only on the Quran may be contemptuous of modern stylistics and lexical innovations. Indeed, the "modernization debate" regarding how to introduce new terms into the language in order to express the concepts of modernity was a true verbal war just a few generations ago. All this said, any scholar who appreciates the language as a whole has only one written form to master. I sit with my private tutor for an hour a day these days and read texts ranging from the 8th century fables of Kalila wa Dimna through the contmporary novels of the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Nagib Maghfuz and I am cognizant of reading only one language, not two, while I am aware that the form that I heard spoken on the streets does indeed constitute a different linguistic manifestation. Now I'll cut and paste short answers to the administrator's questions. (1) Is Modern Written Arabic also spoken? Let's call it MSA and not MWA. Yes, it is spoken, but not as anybody's native dialect, rather as a school language. Tune in BBC or Deutsche Welle or any other Arabic service and what you are hearing is MSA. It is the language of journalism, diplomacy, and education, and it is supposed to be the form that Arabs from different regions use to communicate with each other, but actually they prefer to use French or English. (2) What is the language spoken on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabyia? Modern Written Arabic? Yes, MSA. (3) What language do Arab businessmen speak in Dubai? Dubai dialect. (4) With Modern Written Arabic, can you read Egyptian newspapers? Jordanian? Saudis? MSA is the only language written in any newspaper from any provice of Arabia. (5) What language is used on the Internet? Can you read any Arab website with Modern Written Arabic? MSA is the only language written on the internet. It is the only language written anywhere because it is the only written language. To those of you who might be confused by this, the linguistic situation that obtains in Arabic is known as "diglossia," which means that people speak one form of a language but write another one. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7377 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 49 24 February 2005 at 3:01am | IP Logged |
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Ardaschir:
I am now writing the much needed profile for Arabic on this website. When I first read your rich and informative posts about this language it took me many days to digest it so please forgive the lack of inital response. The profile is already half written but there are more questions if you allow: * Is it fair to say that for the sole purpose of travel and cultural considerations apart, the most useful language to know in Arab countries is not MSA but either the local dialect or French or English? * What are the biggest obstacles in grammar and vocabulary that an English speaker needs to overcome when learning Arabic? * Is the grammar of Colloquial Arabic much simpler than that of MSA? * Is the pronunciation of Arabic a source of permanent difficulties, or do people overcome this after a few months of study? * How tolerant are Arabs of mistakes you make in Arabic? Do they welcome your trying to speak to them in 'Mexican'? What about the local dialect? * Does the vowels-are-not-written problem present a permanent challenge, or is it just a matter of having heard the word once? * Do I understand correctly that MSA is a language that, practically, you will use mostly passively to read and listen to the medias? * Is there any good learning material for learning Colloquial Arabic(s)? I have this problem with Swiss german, another case of diglossia, where almost no written material exists and only spartan language programs. * For those who would want to learn MSA with an eye on business, is there any sense in this regard, or in practice all you can use is some small talk and then move on to English or French? I assume this is probably the case in Lebanon, but what about in other countries? * What language programs would you recommend for learning Arabic (I assume you will recommend the reader starts with MSA) ? * For the student who would like to practice his Arabic in his home, there must be hundreds of ways to do so. What would be the principal source of newspaper article on the Internet? Are there many books you can read in Arabic? Are they easy to get from the West? Can you understand all that is said on Al-Jazeera with a knowledge of MSA and no Colloquial Arabic? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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