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Reading: Latin vs Other Alphabets | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 28 19 December 2010 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As the discussions show the main problem with Arabic writing is that the vowel signs are left out so that you basically have to know the language in order to guess how anything is pronounced. And as Doitsujin writes: "many native speakers often pronounce Arabic words according to their own interpretation of the unwritten vowel signs".
To be fair there are also elements in Roman and Cyrillic writing which aren't written (such as the moving accent in Danish and Russian words), and you would end up with something quite weird if you tried to learn English just from written sources - though in all three cases you could in principle have your own pronunciation with just one defect, namely that no native speaker would ever be able to understand what you said (if you dared say anything). Nevertheless it would be easier to learn Arabic by homestudy if all the vowels signs were there in ordinary texts (basically everything except the Quran, which allegedly contains vowel signs due to its religious status). Edited by Iversen on 19 December 2010 at 12:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 28 20 December 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you're at an intermediate level in your studies then you should be familiar with at least 1000 kanji. Many characters used frequently in Japanese fall neatly within the 1006 elementary school 教育漢字, so if you know them, there are no major practical barriers* left on the road to indulging in Japanese literature, only psychological ones. *Well, 熟語. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pleiades Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5097 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh | Message 19 of 28 21 December 2010 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Though I speak from a biased viewpoint, Latin alphabets are far simpler than the likes of Arabic. Arabic does fascinate me however as even in its most basic form it's like calligraphy, very aesthetically pleasing. Yet again, if your native language is written in a non-Latin script you'd probably take the opposite view? It's all down to individual perception and interpretation I suppose.
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| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 20 of 28 21 December 2010 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Th 'athr wrte sm bks n th ffce. (I know I left in a vowel but it's not really cheating.
The 'a would be be the equivalent of a hamza or maybe an 'ayn) vs. ktb al katb b3d al ktb fi al mktb. I just don't feel that the Arabic trilateral root system lends itself particularly well to being read without vowels. Even more infuriating is when they leave out shaddas and sukuuns. One little sukuun makes all the difference between tansayna and tansiina. When a preponderence of your words are 3 letters long, the (unwritten) vowels make up a significant percentage of each word. Hence, you're always left guessing a significant percentage of your words. So clearly, it is NOT the same as reading the Latin alphabet without vowels because: a) You only need to guess a smaller percentage of each word in the Latin alphabet. b) The Latin alphabet doesn't follow a trilateral root system, i.e. closely related words don't all look similar. Again, compare 'author', 'wrote', 'books' and 'office' vs. 'katb', 'ktb', 'ktb' and 'mktb'. c) You rely heavily on context to understand a sentence in Arabic, not so much in other languages based on the Latin alphabet. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 21 of 28 21 December 2010 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't agree - I think Arabic is well suited to being read without vowels. In fact in your example above, the Arabic is easier to understand than the English. This is partly because it is in context, but also because Arabic has a number of features which enable the omission of vowels: 1. Most words have a specific shape - so it is usually possible to tell a verb from a noun just from its shape. If it is in context you nearly always know what part of speech a word is. And from the shape you usually know how to pronounce the word. 2. The Arabic letters are 100% phonetic and only ever have one sound per letter. No combinations like "TH" or "OUGH" to confuse you. 3. When you are omitting vowels, it is only the short vowels you omit and not the long ones. And there are are only 3 short vowels "a" "i" and "u", unlike in English where there are many more vowel sounds. 4. It won't usually affect your understanding of a sentence if it doesn't have vowels - it will only mean you don't know how to pronounce some (not many) words. 5. The short vowels that are omitted will never be at the beginning or end of the word - just somewhere in the middle. The excption to this is when you are talking about case endings or the end short vowel of verbs, but in these cases you always know what the short vowel will be. Edited by Andrew C on 21 December 2010 at 11:26pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 22 of 28 23 December 2010 at 4:42am | IP Logged | |||||
That the words are 100% phonetic is not the point. It would be fantastic if this was an ideal world (i.e. diacritics are not ommitted.) However, them being phonetic is useless when you don't know the correct accompanying vowels in the first place. Going back to the 'ktb' example. If you happen to see this in isolation, how are you going to read it? Will you read it as kataba or kutub? I could pronounce them perfectly because they're phoenetic but if I've never seen or learnt this word before, I could be left guessing all day. Kataba? Kitibi? Kutubu? Katiba? Katabi? etc etc. And I would argue that not knowing how to pronounce words is a serious flaw/lapse to any self-respecting language learner. Can you imagine claiming to be fluent in English but having to guess the vowels in words. Your conservations will sound like this... Hulla. Hew aru yuu? A'm fane, Thenk yuo. I'll sii yuo litar. Bya. That didn't affect my understanding of the conversation. It just doesn't sound quite as appealing. Your fourth point is also debatable. Let's say you saw this sentence/phrase: درس المدرس. How will you interpret it? Is it: a) darasa al-mudarrisa. He studied the teacher. b) darrasa al-mudarrisa. He taught the teacher. c) durisa al-mudarrisu. The teacher was studied. d) durrisa al-mudarrisu. The teacher was taught. e) dars al-mudarrisi. The teacher's lesson. You'll tell me that it'll depend on the context. Which goes back to the 3rd point in my previous post. Most languages aren't so over-reliant on context to get their message across. Edited by strikingstar on 23 December 2010 at 4:46am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 23 of 28 23 December 2010 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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m frd dnt gr wth y
ts sy t rd rbc wtht vwls bt glsh s tgh translation: I'm afraid I don't agree with you. It's easy to read Arabic without vowels, but English is tough. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 24 of 28 23 December 2010 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
But knowing kanji is not knowing Japanese. What you are saying is akin to, "If you already know the Roman alphabet, there are no major practical barriers left on the road to indulging in Italian literature" -- even if I have only a basic understanding of Italian. I'm fluent in (written) Spanish and I have a grasp of basic Italian, and I still wouldn't take on a complete novel in Italian because I wouldn't want to have to stop at the dictionary at every other word. Same with Japanese. Edited by furrykef on 23 December 2010 at 5:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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