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Do Almost All Muslims Speak Arabic? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6067 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 29 01 September 2014 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, so that title sounds really uneducated, but the answer would be helpful to me. I
know that people can convert to Islam part way through their life, and if they do that, they might not yet be proficient in Arabic. I'm pretty sure everyone who practices Islam is supposed to attempt to learn Arabic, so they can read the Quaran. So, I presume that anyone who was born into a Muslim family probably knows Arabic? Are any of those presumptions wrong? The main reason I'm writing this is that at the start of next year, my wife and I will be moving to a town with many people from all over the world. Many of them are refugees, and many of them are Muslims. The two big reasons that so many refugees have moved to this particular city is because there is a big factory (work) and there is a Mosque (worship). The city isn't very big, and maybe 15% (give or take. I may be way off, but this is my estimation with the information that I have) of the community are Muslims. There are people from Asia, also with a large Muslim population, and a large number from Africa, as well as a very large hispanic population. Here's an interesting fact. Even though the city is in the US, according to census information, less than 10% of the community speaks English at home. The largest percentage of the population speaks Spanish (and my Spanish is pretty decent), with the next being Myanmar, at around 10-15%. So, here's my question. Myanmar or Arabic? If my goal is to speak with the most people possible (and it is), would it be better to attempt to learn Myanmar/Burmese or Arabic? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 4825 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 29 01 September 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Short Answer
All Muslims do not speak Arabic. Long Answer Most Muslims do not speak Arabic. They certainly use Arabic phrases. Like Salam Waleikum and Bismillah. Just like people in the US use Yiddish words like klutz and chutzpah. That does not mean they know Yiddish right. Who speaks Arabic, then? Arabs. Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs and everyone else in Arabia. However, each region has its own dialect. The Arabic spoken on the banks of the Nile is very different from the Arabic spoken in Mecca. Classical Quranic Arabic, and its modern equivalent, Modern Standard Arabic, which is used in the media, is the same everywhere. This is a very literary and archaic register of the language and is usually not spoken, except by newscasters, professors and clerics. Would you be comfortable speaking like Shakespeare's Hamlet? "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Typos fixed. Edited by napoleon on 02 September 2014 at 12:34am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3720 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 29 02 September 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Most Muslims I know (and I know it's anecdotal) don't speak any Arabic. In fact, what's sad is that some of them say their daily prayers in Arabic and don't have a firm grasp of what they're saying. One of my best friends in high school was a Muslim from India, and he used to use the Hindi/Urdu terms for religious matters rather than the Arabic (and his mother was part Iranian, so he heard a little Persian growing up).
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| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6067 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 29 02 September 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
Fair enough. And thank you. I have been actively seeking Myanmar language tools, and I'm starting to use them, but just a second guess told me that maybe I was barking up the wrong tree. Thank you for the insight, both of you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4253 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 29 02 September 2014 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
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It would be like saying all Roman Catholics speak Latin which is the language used in Vatican City.
Originally, the Catholic faith was confined to Western Europe where Latin was widely used. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church changed the rules to allow native languages to be used in church services. Latin was mainly used by the educated and those belonging to the clergy. The followers of Islam span from N. Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia into East and S-E Asia. Followers would know phrases in Arabic order to read the Koran in the original language but if you are in a country like Malaysia, you'd expect Malay to be used. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6470 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 6 of 29 02 September 2014 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
I think that when someone says that they can read the Quran in Arabic, the logical assumption would be that they know Arabic. However, that is not necessarily the case. The spelling can tell you exactly how the words are pronounced, which allows one to read it without understanding. It is actually pretty common for non-Arabic speaking children to learn how to do this. In other words, just because someone may be able to read the Quran with the correct pronunciation, it does not imply that they took the next step towards understanding the meanings of the language. edit:typo Edited by Talib on 02 September 2014 at 11:29pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6067 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 29 04 September 2014 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you very much. Very helpful. We are attempting to work alongside a local community center to develop a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program for the refugee community, so we're hoping to at least learn a little bit of the more popular languages represented. Thanks again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5870 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 8 of 29 05 September 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I guess the question has been answered, but I feel I must comment on this last bit. In fact, if you want to address refugees' communities proceeding from countries where Islam is predominant, you must be very specific (which I believe you are trying to). Depending on the particular region, you'll be talking about different ethnic groups, religions and traditions. In some countries, people with different beliefs have lived together for centuries without any major problem. Such communities have kept alive traditions and languages throughout millennia. I won't enter a political discussion here (nor everywhere else in the forum). However, having studied the staggering diversity of these regions a few years ago, I couldn't help but to contribute my bit. Please feel free to contact me by PM if you need some more help and deem it to be outside the scope of a particular language. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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