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Modern Arabic Dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5608 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 1 of 4 26 July 2009 at 11:19am | IP Logged |
Why does Arabic have so many dialects? Please see attached picture.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 2 of 4 26 July 2009 at 11:40am | IP Logged |
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It would seem to me that it is much like the varieties of Chinese, which I understand can be very different from one another. If it were not for the written language, Arabic would probably have fragmented into ten or more separate languages long ago.
The map actually understates the variation in Arabic, as dialects are spoken in countries not featured here, like Nigeria, Chad, Iran and Turkey. Edited by William Camden on 26 July 2009 at 12:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5608 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 3 of 4 26 July 2009 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
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Perhaps Arabic has much more dialects than Chinese does. The most difficult Chinese dialects are Minnanese(Taiwanese) and Cantonese, or to an extent Wunese. As everyone knows, Mandarin is the official language of China, it's the most important and useful language in Mainland and Taiwan. If you don't know any Cantonese or Minnanese, it doesn't matter so much. However, IMHO, Arabic has some different official dialects which are almost equally or parallelly important (though Egyptian might be a bit more popular) and spoken in different countries, while only Modern Standard Arabic is acted as a common written form of Arabic speaking world. So, not only does Arabic have a similarity to Chinese, but it also lies in a different position from Chinese.
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| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6203 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 4 of 4 26 July 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
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I can't compare Arabic to Chinese, but I believe Arabic has so many different dialects because it has been spoken
over a very large gepgraphical area since a time when communication between places was much more difficult, and it has also had quite different substratums in different areas. Also, this is just a guess, but I think since Arabic is traditionally spoken in many different political entities, there may be less of a pull to unite the dialects and encourage the use of the standard form only than with languages like Chinese. And of course, the same happened with Latin for example fragmenting into the Romance languages, but in the case of Arabic, it's sacred in Islam and that makes people want to consider what they speak Arabic and not a separate language (that's probably a small part of the reason why Malta, a Christian country, considers its language Maltese and not a dialect of Arabic). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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