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Why Arabic is hard to learn.

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
11 messages over 2 pages: 1
Envinyatar
Diglot
Senior Member
Guatemala
Joined 5296 days ago

147 posts - 240 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 9 of 11
01 September 2010 at 10:05pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
Learning to read Arabic is the least of the problems that most Arabic learners face.

That's a study made in Haifa where people speak Hebrew. For them learning to read Arabic must be the biggest challenge about learning the language. Most other aspects must be way easier to them than to us because they speak a Semitic language too.
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Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5141 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 10 of 11
01 September 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged 
Envinyatar wrote:
Doitsujin wrote:
Learning to read Arabic is the least of the problems that most Arabic learners face.

That's a study made in Haifa where people speak Hebrew. For them learning to read Arabic must be the biggest challenge about learning the language. Most other aspects must be way easier to them than to us because they speak a Semitic language too.

Their biggest challenge is probably cultural, I'd say.
1 person has voted this message useful



Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5080 days ago

1256 posts - 2363 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 11 of 11
01 September 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged 
Arekkusu wrote:
Their biggest challenge is probably cultural, I'd say.

Nope, that's not it. At least not for me. The biggest problem is the diglossia. To give you a simple analogy: Modern Standard Arabic is to spoken Arabic as Shakespearean English is to colloquial English. I.e., most educated native speakers understand it just fine, but few can converse in it for longer periods of time.
One of the best books about the difficulties of Arabic for linguists who don't speak Arabic is Arabic in chains: structural problems and artificial barriers by Robert Marzari. Unfortunately, it's a bit expensive and usually only available through the German publisher.


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