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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 1 of 6 28 December 2014 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm trying to finalize my hit list of spoken languages. I'm trying to decide between
Chinese and Arabic. Since they are both generally considered to be extremely difficult for native English speakers, I'll probably just learn one, but it's tough to choose. I wonder if anyone can tell me if either of them tends to be significantly easier than the other. (Feel free to skip this part) My personal list of pros and cons: Both languages sound pretty cool to my ears now, but neither are beautiful to me. I would love to visit China (sometime in the near future preferably). I will actively avoid most Muslim countries. My first love is reading so I'm a bit intimidated by the sheer number of Chinese characters that have to be learned. The beautiful Arabic script might be a bit challenging due it's lack of vowels, but at least it has an alphabet. Unlike my current languages, there appear to be plenty of both Arabic and Chinese speakers in my area so it shouldn't be nearly as hard to find people to practice with. On that note there is at least one member of my church who speaks Arabic. With Arabic I wouldn't have to worry about tones, but there is a confusing mess of dialects and the whole issue of learning MsA in order to be literate. Or at least that is what my limited google research told me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5082 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 2 of 6 28 December 2014 at 7:52am | IP Logged | |||||
I think you've already answered your own question. (That said I would reconsider this view about "Muslim countries", they're not a monolith and Turkey is very different from Comoros, Mauritania is very different from Malaysia, etc.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 3 of 6 29 December 2014 at 4:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for your feedback. Since you are studying Arabic, do you think there's anything in particular that I should be aware of? And are the dialects really as big of a deal as they seem? I've never really let interest in visiting a country, or lack thereof be the determining factor for my language choices, but there could be something to it. (I know that not all Muslim/ Arabic speaking countries are the same, but none of the ones that I have any passing knowledge about are at all enticing.) Edited by Darklight1216 on 29 December 2014 at 4:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4650 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 4 of 6 29 December 2014 at 9:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was scared of the MSA/dialect split when I started. Turned out what I'm learning is MSA with dialectal pronunciation, and it allowed me to communicate with... let's see, Yemeni, Tunisian and some non-Arabic speaking folks who had Arabic as a foreign language (Iranian, Turkish).
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5082 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 5 of 6 29 December 2014 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. It's best to treat them as a family of closely related languages than as a single language, at least for the sake of a foreign learner. I'm actually learning Moroccan Arabic, I've done some MSA but not much really.
What is your motivation in learning then? What do you plan to do with these languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 6 of 6 29 December 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's certainly a pro for Mandarin.
I just like languages. Of course, since I do want to travel to China, I'd use it there. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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