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This article was hailed by Language Log as being mostly right in its scientific treatment of language[1], which is unfortunately pretty rare in journalism. [1]
by lgessler 8y ago
This article was hailed by Language Log as being mostly right in its scientific treatment of language[1], which is unfortunately pretty rare in journalism.
[1]: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379
- titanomachy 8y agoInteresting that he says MSA is further from region arabic than Latin is from Spanish. Provides useful context for people familiar with European languages.
- nealdt 8y agoIt's a somewhat misleading comparison because nobody uses Latin today. MSA however is the language of the news, media and academia so everyone can understand it.
- umanwizard 8y agoPeople did use Latin even into the 1800s for a similar purpose in western countries.
- jnbiche 8y agoAs someone who has studied and mastered Classical Latin and several Romance languages, as well as studied and learned some (but not mastered) MSA as well as an Arabic dialect, I disagree with that assessment, at least to some extent: Golden Age Latin is incredibly far removed from modern Romance languages. Even a Sardinian or Romanian (said to be the closest Romance languages to Latin) requires years of study to learn to fluently read Golden Age Latin. Vulgar Latin, on the other hand, is much closer to the modern Romance languages. An educated modern Italian or Sardinian could learn to read Vulgar Latin fairly quickly (and sometimes they do know it, from reading the Vulgate Bible). I'd say the difference between MSA and the North African dialects of Arabic is tantamount to the difference between modern Romance languages and Golden Age Latin. But the difference between MSA and Levantine Arabic is less, and more akin to the gap between Vulgar Latin and Romance languages. Overall, I'd say the MSA/dialects + Latin/Romance languages is a great analogy.