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Arabic hyped up vs. Persian and Turkish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 33 of 71 23 September 2010 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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No I meant that 40% of the population speaks a Turkic language that is written in Arabic
script.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5273 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 34 of 71 24 September 2010 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's actually very interesting. I heard that in China the Hue used to use Arabic script. I wonder if there's a branch that still does.
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 35 of 71 24 September 2010 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
Are you talking about Azeri? They are 16-25%+ of Iran's population and their language is practically mutually intelligible with Turkish. They use Perso-Arabic script, whereas Azeri's in the ex-Soviet Union (i.e. Azerbaijan) uses Latin and/or Cyrillic. Turkmen would also be written in Perso-Arabic or Cyrillic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 36 of 71 24 September 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged | |||||
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Iran Oops, I overestimated a bit. I apologies, I thought there two or three Turkic languages/dialects that comprised 40% of the population. I knew that the Turkic languages of Iran use Arabic-Persian script. If one learned Turkish and the Script there should be enough transparency to read those languages/dialects fairly well. Much Like I would be able to read say Portuguese transliterated in Cyrillic. I have never studied Portuguese but it's close enough to Spanish and French that I don't have much trouble reading it (even if the language were transliterated {and I knew said script}) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5621 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 37 of 71 24 September 2010 at 5:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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In regards to the mutual intelligibility of Turkic languages, I have two friends from Russia, one from Tataristan and one from Yakutia. They say that, using their respective languages, they can understand each other with some work, and they misinterpret what the other says quite often, but it's still possible for them to communicate without Russian. So, it is entirely possible that Turkic language speakers could learn to speak another Turkic language very easily.
Therefore, it may not be entirely correct to group all Turkic language speakers together, but I'm sure that Turkish and SOME of the other languages are more mutually intelligible than the various Arabic languages. *I have no knowledge of Arabic, so don't hesitate to dispute or correct my assumption.* 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5273 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 38 of 71 25 September 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Technically any Arabic speaker could understand one another if they both spoke MSA. As for specific dialects intelligibility with each other I'm not sure. Edited by CaucusWolf on 25 September 2010 at 12:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nebojats Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 89 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Italian | Message 39 of 71 27 September 2010 at 8:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would like to point out that Marc Frisch has made the best comparison of Arabic to another language I have ever seen... standard German. Regional variants can be mutually unintelligible, but an overarching standardized language allows for communication amongst the various groups. This is far more appropriate than the comparison of MSA to Latin and describing the relationships between regional variants to those between romance languages.
As for the original question, why Arabic over Turkish or Persian? First of all, I agree with the original post! Yes, Arabic is hyped up, especially when considering the MSA/local dialect issue. AND, there probably will be a flood of Arabic students and a shortage of learners of Persian and Turkic languages. However, if I had to choose to learn Arabic, Persian, or a Turkic language, I wouldn't hesitate in choosing Arabic. My personal opinion is that Arabic is the most internationally useful language certainly after English and Spanish, and potentially before or after French. What I mean is that it is a widely spoken PRIMARY language (sorry French) used by not only tons of people, but also in MANY countries (sorry Chinese and Russian and Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu) [insert - this is just a personal opinion of how to define usefulness, so I guess this point could be moot]. Yes, it is fractured into regional variants, but you can still read newspapers, listen to politicians, and talk to educated people in 20+ countries around the world. Arabic is also the language of a major world religion. I hear it also has a long, rich tradition in the sciences, philosophy, math, politics... Basically, whatever your major in college was, there's probably plenty of relevant study material in Arabic. In terms of literary tradition, Arabic is a powerhouse, and I think leaves Persian and Turkic language in the dust [insert - I'm actually pretty clueless and am only vaguely basing this off of distant memories of college courses on religion, philosophy, and politics, so I suppose that once again, this point may be moot]. Also, it's no secret that the so-called Western sphere and the Arabic-speaking world are having some major issues right now (this is of course true for Persian and arguably Turkic languages, to a lesser extent)... this misunderstanding is probably one of the defining conflicts of international relations in the 21st century so far, and has worsened the lives of countless people around the world. The cultural and ideological gaps can only be adressed with communication, which necessarily entails language study (not just Arabic speakers learning English). Even if you were just discussing learning an Arabic dialect and ignoring the wider Arabic-speaking world, I still think most regional varieties of Arabic would give Persian and and Turkic languages a run for the money in terms of the number of speakers and countries. According to wikipedia (shun me), Maghrebi is spoken by around 75 million, Egyptian by 80, Gulf by 70, Levantine, 35. Those numbers might be off, but I'm fairly certain most regional dialects allow you to speak with at least tens of millions of people in at least a handful of countries, and this is all without taking MSA into account. Persian apparently is spoken by a ton of people, but is an official language only in three countries. As for the Turkic languages, previous posts indicate the levels of mutual intelligibility run the gamit from an Irish person and a Texan laughing at each others accents to something maybe on the level of a Russian and a Polish person half-understanding each other's words. Edited by nebojats on 27 September 2010 at 4:03pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 40 of 71 27 September 2010 at 8:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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I must object a bit to the "number of countries" gauge of a language's usefulness. If China suddenly split into many independent countries, would Mandarin suddenly become more useful?
I can see some use in counting cultures, however. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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