7 ms·

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of

I am a native Arabic speaker. It is an awful language. As the article points out, the dialects are just too numerous for it to gain any kind of critical mass of adoption. But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. edit: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Arabic, and the dialect factor multiplies this problem. It also encodes ideas very inefficiently for multiple reasons. 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives. I can recall a humorous TV ad that made fun of this, which involved a wife asking her husband for "the thing" and him being confused about what she was referring to. If we're to compare it to a programming language, I'd describe it as PHP ecosystem/stdlib/development practices combined with Rust syntax.

Annatar 8y ago
All that aside, I find the script flowing and incredibly elegant and beautiful, purely from an aesthetic point of view.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Can't deny that; same with the eastern languages. Latin script on the other hand appeals more to the engineering side of me, simpler 'instructions' so to speak. RISC vs CISC?
- umanwizard 8y ago
  That script is used in several languages that are unrelated to Arabic though, like Urdu for example.
unhammer 8y ago
> knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly So just like every other language.
- theprotocol 8y ago
  I speak 4 languages and Arabic is by far the worst in this regard.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    I too speak four languages (one of them very poorly). Each of them has its own infuriating challenges, but they all share one big characteristic: Native children learn to speak them well around the age of seven. After that age, most children just add advanced vocabulary. Each of the four languages is by far the worst in some regard, but in a real, practical sense all four exhibit the same overall difficulty for a comparable group of learners. I've heard that the age is the same for most languages, not just "my" four. For Arabic too, or is it one of the exceptions?
- zeofig 8y ago
  Except of course glorious English! /s
- tralarpa 8y ago
  Yep. First rule of languages: Languages are not logic. If somebody tells you that their mother tongue is more logical than language X, it's in most cases just bias of the native speaker who is not aware of the difficulties. Second rule of languages: There are no easy or hard languages. Whether a language is easy or difficult to learn, depends entirely on the languages you already speak (and, of course, the environment, e.g. whether you have access to learning material). (edit) Big exception: Writing systems. Learning 5000 Chinese characters is objectively harder than learning how to read Spanish. Unfortunately, a difficult writing system has also a negative impact on speaking skills because it hinders you from quickly extending your vocabulary by reading books etc.
  - Tor3 8y ago
    > a difficult writing system has also a negative impact on speaking skills because it hinders you from quickly extending your vocabulary by reading books etc. True enough. I learned two of the languages I know by reading books (after starting with magazines etc). I never used a dictionary - not once. Because when you finally associate a word with its meaning, through understanding, you don't forget it, unlike with a dictionary (which can't give you the exact meaning either - just the nearest translation). But I can't use that method with languages with a different writing system, not in the beginning at least.
Uberphallus 8y ago
I'm a polyglot, and what keeps me from trying to learn Arabic is precisely that. Back in the day I worked in a very international environment, two Tunisian colleagues spoke Tunisian to each other, but when the Moroccan or Lebanese guys from the other teams came to ask some questions, everybody switched to French. If was small talk, they would stick to Arabic with the Moroccan though. It's pretty amazing that Arabic, technically spoken in a contiguous region from Morocco to Saudi Arabia isn't mutually intelligible with itself, whereas English, French or Spanish, separated by oceans for centuries, even if they grew different variants, stay intelligible.
- curiousgal 8y ago
  The fact that the Tunisian dialect is infused with French words doesn't help with communication either, especially with someone from the middle East.
- navane 8y ago
  Your anecdote is also mentioned in the article [0] linked somewhere in this thread: "The one thing not mentioned in the article is the idea of registers, which is the vertical transition between intermediate stages between full dialect and full MSA depending on the socio-lingiustic context of a conversation or other language production opportunity." [0] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Would it be comparable to, say, Dutch and Afrikaans? They sound similar and up to a point people from those countries can have a conversation in their respective languages, but there's just so many differences that it's easier to switch to English.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Dutch and Afrikaans is probably in the top three most similar language pairs among Indo-European languages along with Spanish-Portuguese-Italian (a three way) and Danish-Norwegian bokmål. The fact that people switch to English is more a reflection of how good English language education is than the difference between the languages. If you are in Italy and you speak Spanish and English you’ll get more benefit from your Spanish outside tourist traps.
afroboy 8y ago
> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages It could be correct in the opposite side too, there is many Arabic sentences that need longer words to translate to English.
ainiriand 8y ago
Sounds to me like arabic is an equivalent of evolved latin. It is kind of the situation that would have happened if no languages had evolved from latin and we would still have regional interpretations of latin. Am I correct? Is it possible that arabic continues to evolve into completely different languages with grammar, lexicon and all? Edit: typos.
rat87 8y ago
> I'd describe it as PHP ecosystem/stdlib/development practices פעמיים נקודתיים
quickthrower2 8y ago
At least it is phonetic though.
shodan666 8y ago
>: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Arabic, and the dialect factor multiplies this problem. This is true only for English. When it comes to eastern European languages: written arabic is the same as spoken arabic. Arab people can read Polish, Slovakian, Belarusan language without any problems whatsoever with perfect pronunciation. English is an exception - its very rare case of language in which you write differently then you speak.
kissickas 8y ago
> It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages I definitely disagree on this. Sure, for some concepts, that might be true, but Arabic vocabulary and verbs are so diverse that there are many things that are much easier to say in Arabic. Combined with the fact that written words are much shorter, you can easily see why Arabic Twitter is thriving so well. Before the tweet limit was raised, Arabic tweets could hold about the equivalent of a paragraph of information. Now that it's been increased they're essentially blog posts.
smel 8y ago
I'm native arabic speaker too, and can tell you that your statement is far from the truth. Arabic is far more simple language with fewer exceptions than english or french (I love/speak french :D). There are only 3 tenses: Also it's derivational language which mean once you learn about a verb you actually learn about the whole lexical family of the verb. In english for example you have : Book, Author, Library In Arabic (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba) which is the same root (k,t,b) and with simple rules you can discover all those words or even invent them if not used previously The big problem of arabic as language is arabic societies/people/... but the language itself is a gem. https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/the-arabic-morphological-measure/ https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/the-arabic-morphologica...
- namanyayg 8y ago
  The translation is Book, Author, Library; (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba); respectively.
  - smel 8y ago
    Good catch ! Thank you
- avaika 8y ago
  I'd argue that Arabic is simpler than English. It might have been simpler for you as your were the native :) For me Arabic and English both are foreign and I can definitely tell you that English was much simpler to learn. While words "transformation" might seem cool and convenient, there is no common rule on how to predict final meaning. Also the pronunciation is very (VERY) important. One tiny mistake and you will end up telling your girlfriend that you have a gift from deep of your dog (كلب/ Kalb) instead of deep of your heart (قلب / K'alb).
  - smel 8y ago
    you're right ! and a little bit biased because pronunciation is important for all languages out there I see the same issue with french foreign speakers too. In Arabic pronunciation is straight forward, in english pronunciation depends on each word (a,u,o) can have a different sounds (depends in which word used) and the emphasis also is a dark magic :D there are no such exceptions in Arabic Arabic can be difficult but simple. English can be easy but complex.
mrhichem 8y ago
I'm also a native arabic speaker. I also speak french and English fluently. What you say is utterly false. I think that trying to evaluate a language based on it being similar to western languages simplicity for it to be good/bad is plain nonsense. Arabic having many variant local dialects is not an awful thing but a richness. I will not fall into the trap of saying such language is better or worse. What I can say is that Arabic as a language is complexe and that is why it is a very much powerful language to express ideas an emotions then other languages I know.
616c 8y ago
You might think that but I decided to major in it in college and it led to many crazy life choices I sometimes regret, but I go to the Arab world often as a result of them. I'll never regret what Arabic has taught me directly and indirectly about the world. I have seen a lot of the contrast of the myopic sheltered culture of middle class Northeast US I grew up in. And I learned Europeans borrowed and saved a lot of important knowledge for safe keeping with the Arabs in Arabic. I see certain artistic themes go so far back even beyond classical Arab history and they give evidence of that. Ditto for math and science. Ugly is beautiful too, man. من يعلمني حرفا فصرت له عبدا! For he who teaches me a letter, for him I become a slave. I saw this old trope on a classroom board studying in Cairo and it has stayed with me all my life.
- appleflaxen 8y ago
  What is the meaning of the quote? that when someone teaches you to read, that you have a huge philosophical debt to them (that can never be repayed)?
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    > philosophical debt Perhaps, not so much philosophical...
kranner 8y ago
> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives. This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The colloquial (or at least urban) vocabulary seems so much smaller than English that it's just faster to code-mix in English words and phrases in a lot of situations. And insisting on speaking in Hindi would require a lot more metaphors and indirect expression than seemingly how the same thing would be said in English. Even if a Hindi word exists for a very specific concept, and the speaker knows the listener probably knows it, it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.
- jki275 8y ago
  I've noticed that in Tagalog and Japanese as well.
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  > it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word. Why is that? Reverse snobism towards the upper or more educated classes? As an outsider who knows very little about Indian culture, it feels wrong and sad.
  - kranner 8y ago
    No it's not anti-intellectualism of any kind. If anything, Indians have a high regard for education. It just comes across as artificial because usage of those words is now mostly limited to literary contexts. These days using a difficult Hindi word (especially one derived from Sanskrit, or one that sounds Sanskrit-ish) in place of a common English term also signals that the speaker supports the political right wing.
mega_behemoth 8y ago
Nonsense. Arabic is Arabic. It is not convoluted. It is sophisticated and powerful. You are mixing dialicts with languages. Go to rural -middle of nowhere- villages in Scotland. Good luck understanding a single word.
- int_19h 8y ago
  There's no hard line between dialects and languages. As they say, "language is a dialect with an army".
zouhair 8y ago
> It is an awful language. Well that's a stretch. I am also a native speaker and given Arabic(s) has its quirks it can be extremely fluid especially when politics leave it alone.
- theprotocol 8y ago
  Well, that part is subjective.
nbvkkiauhvcr 8y ago
I am a native speaker. I have no idea what language you are describing. 1) Arabic is highly expressive, the number of ways a root word can be morphed is astonishing. In fact, I would guess it’s unmatched in expressiveness. 2) grammatically speaking, it’s very simple. A little kid can tell you when something is off in grammar. Why? Because Arabic is a language where the semi-vowels indicate the grammar. And because of this, a grammatically incorrect statement will just sound weird. This ease is why most (educated) native speakers have learned grammar at a young age. They will have poetry memorized and understand grammar in a fundamental way. You know, and I don’t mean to question the veracity of your statement, I don’t think you are a native speaker at all. I think you grew up hearing enough Arabic to understand it and speak it. I would bet you speak and think in English and not in Arabic.
unfocused 8y ago
Hmmm...not sure I agree with you. I also used to speak 4 languages, and native Arabic (Lebanese) being one of them. Terrible at Spanish now, Advanced French, Average Lebanese, but English is tops. I'll just put this out there, I find Arabic very descriptive. Think about the food! Lahm w Aajeen (Meat and Dough) is a meat pie that you have for breakfast. So many food items have names that are just the ingredients! Also, while yes, the written form differs from how you speak, I speak Lebanese to any other person whose dialect is is different, and they will understand me. Whether Syrian, Iraqi, etc. And for the record, I've been to Yorkshire, England and I had so much trouble understanding what the heck they said. I'm confident this problem occurs in many other languages, and not just Arabic. Also, depending on where you come from in the country, you will have a different accent e.g. North Lebanon vs. South Lebanon. In Canada, if you're from Newfoundland, you will definitely have an accent and people from anywhere in the Country would notice it. No language is perfect, you just have to roll with the dice.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Brockenstein 8y ago
I mean I guess I don't know, and some people have disagreed with you. But how do Arabic dialects compare to all the English dialects. I mean U.S., U.K. and Australians can all understand each other mostly, but there's all those little differences too (that I personally enjoy). And even within English speaking countries there are dialects. So are we talking almost different languages, or minor differences? As for your other criticisms, I mean they sound a lot like English criticisms. Because English has a lot of those problems too, at a greater or lower scale I can't say. But I wonder.
BeetleB 8y ago
I've dabbled in Arabic, Spanish and Urdu. When it comes to this: >But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. My experience was that English and Urdu are much worse grammarwise. In the latter, it's not so much that there are exceptions to rules - it's that the rules are the exception. Most of the language doesn't follow grammatical rules. It's not as bad in English, but the problem exists. When I used to help people learn English, I could see how frustrated they would get whenever they'd ask a question and they'd be told "yeah, this is just how it is". IIRC, most of formal Arabic is covered by first level grammar rules. The thing I found interesting about it is that the exceptions themselves have rules. So it wasn't a case of "just memorize that this is an exception" that you'd have for other languages. It was "Here's the exception to that bigger rule, and you know if a word/phrase should follow the exception based on these rules". I think the challenge you speak of is that sometimes even the exceptions had exceptions. I'm not a native speaker, so I may be wrong. Overall I found it the most structured language amongst all of these. It's not simple, but it's not haphazard. (Speaking only of formal Arabic).
- pknerd 8y ago
  Being a native Urdu speaker I second you.
  - selimthegrim 8y ago
    If everyone spoke Lakhnavi Urdu I’d get it, but my impression (heritage speaker) is that Urdu in Pakistan today at least is less grammatically demanding in comparison because people who don’t speak it as a home language have had to learn it. I would think reading and writing would be the problem compared to English. Can you give an example besides memorizing genders where there’s a noticeable lack of grammar that impedes learning?

Annatar 8y ago

All that aside, I find the script flowing and incredibly elegant and beautiful, purely from an aesthetic point of view.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Can't deny that; same with the eastern languages. Latin script on the other hand appeals more to the engineering side of me, simpler 'instructions' so to speak. RISC vs CISC?
umanwizard 8y ago
That script is used in several languages that are unrelated to Arabic though, like Urdu for example.

unhammer 8y ago

> knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly So just like every other language.

theprotocol 8y ago
I speak 4 languages and Arabic is by far the worst in this regard.
- Arnt 8y ago
  I too speak four languages (one of them very poorly). Each of them has its own infuriating challenges, but they all share one big characteristic: Native children learn to speak them well around the age of seven. After that age, most children just add advanced vocabulary. Each of the four languages is by far the worst in some regard, but in a real, practical sense all four exhibit the same overall difficulty for a comparable group of learners. I've heard that the age is the same for most languages, not just "my" four. For Arabic too, or is it one of the exceptions?
zeofig 8y ago
Except of course glorious English! /s
tralarpa 8y ago
Yep. First rule of languages: Languages are not logic. If somebody tells you that their mother tongue is more logical than language X, it's in most cases just bias of the native speaker who is not aware of the difficulties. Second rule of languages: There are no easy or hard languages. Whether a language is easy or difficult to learn, depends entirely on the languages you already speak (and, of course, the environment, e.g. whether you have access to learning material). (edit) Big exception: Writing systems. Learning 5000 Chinese characters is objectively harder than learning how to read Spanish. Unfortunately, a difficult writing system has also a negative impact on speaking skills because it hinders you from quickly extending your vocabulary by reading books etc.
- Tor3 8y ago
  > a difficult writing system has also a negative impact on speaking skills because it hinders you from quickly extending your vocabulary by reading books etc. True enough. I learned two of the languages I know by reading books (after starting with magazines etc). I never used a dictionary - not once. Because when you finally associate a word with its meaning, through understanding, you don't forget it, unlike with a dictionary (which can't give you the exact meaning either - just the nearest translation). But I can't use that method with languages with a different writing system, not in the beginning at least.

Uberphallus 8y ago

I'm a polyglot, and what keeps me from trying to learn Arabic is precisely that. Back in the day I worked in a very international environment, two Tunisian colleagues spoke Tunisian to each other, but when the Moroccan or Lebanese guys from the other teams came to ask some questions, everybody switched to French. If was small talk, they would stick to Arabic with the Moroccan though. It's pretty amazing that Arabic, technically spoken in a contiguous region from Morocco to Saudi Arabia isn't mutually intelligible with itself, whereas English, French or Spanish, separated by oceans for centuries, even if they grew different variants, stay intelligible.

curiousgal 8y ago
The fact that the Tunisian dialect is infused with French words doesn't help with communication either, especially with someone from the middle East.
navane 8y ago
Your anecdote is also mentioned in the article [0] linked somewhere in this thread: "The one thing not mentioned in the article is the idea of registers, which is the vertical transition between intermediate stages between full dialect and full MSA depending on the socio-lingiustic context of a conversation or other language production opportunity." [0] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40379
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Would it be comparable to, say, Dutch and Afrikaans? They sound similar and up to a point people from those countries can have a conversation in their respective languages, but there's just so many differences that it's easier to switch to English.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Dutch and Afrikaans is probably in the top three most similar language pairs among Indo-European languages along with Spanish-Portuguese-Italian (a three way) and Danish-Norwegian bokmål. The fact that people switch to English is more a reflection of how good English language education is than the difference between the languages. If you are in Italy and you speak Spanish and English you’ll get more benefit from your Spanish outside tourist traps.

afroboy 8y ago

> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages It could be correct in the opposite side too, there is many Arabic sentences that need longer words to translate to English.

ainiriand 8y ago

Sounds to me like arabic is an equivalent of evolved latin. It is kind of the situation that would have happened if no languages had evolved from latin and we would still have regional interpretations of latin. Am I correct? Is it possible that arabic continues to evolve into completely different languages with grammar, lexicon and all? Edit: typos.

rat87 8y ago

> I'd describe it as PHP ecosystem/stdlib/development practices פעמיים נקודתיים

quickthrower2 8y ago

At least it is phonetic though.

shodan666 8y ago

>: I also wanted to mention that written Arabic differs from spoken Arabic, and the dialect factor multiplies this problem. This is true only for English. When it comes to eastern European languages: written arabic is the same as spoken arabic. Arab people can read Polish, Slovakian, Belarusan language without any problems whatsoever with perfect pronunciation. English is an exception - its very rare case of language in which you write differently then you speak.

kissickas 8y ago

> It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages I definitely disagree on this. Sure, for some concepts, that might be true, but Arabic vocabulary and verbs are so diverse that there are many things that are much easier to say in Arabic. Combined with the fact that written words are much shorter, you can easily see why Arabic Twitter is thriving so well. Before the tweet limit was raised, Arabic tweets could hold about the equivalent of a paragraph of information. Now that it's been increased they're essentially blog posts.

smel 8y ago

I'm native arabic speaker too, and can tell you that your statement is far from the truth. Arabic is far more simple language with fewer exceptions than english or french (I love/speak french :D). There are only 3 tenses: Also it's derivational language which mean once you learn about a verb you actually learn about the whole lexical family of the verb. In english for example you have : Book, Author, Library In Arabic (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba) which is the same root (k,t,b) and with simple rules you can discover all those words or even invent them if not used previously The big problem of arabic as language is arabic societies/people/... but the language itself is a gem. https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/the-arabic-morphological-measure/ https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/the-arabic-morphologica...

namanyayg 8y ago
The translation is Book, Author, Library; (kitaab, kaatib, maktaba); respectively.
- smel 8y ago
  Good catch ! Thank you
avaika 8y ago
I'd argue that Arabic is simpler than English. It might have been simpler for you as your were the native :) For me Arabic and English both are foreign and I can definitely tell you that English was much simpler to learn. While words "transformation" might seem cool and convenient, there is no common rule on how to predict final meaning. Also the pronunciation is very (VERY) important. One tiny mistake and you will end up telling your girlfriend that you have a gift from deep of your dog (كلب/ Kalb) instead of deep of your heart (قلب / K'alb).
- smel 8y ago
  you're right ! and a little bit biased because pronunciation is important for all languages out there I see the same issue with french foreign speakers too. In Arabic pronunciation is straight forward, in english pronunciation depends on each word (a,u,o) can have a different sounds (depends in which word used) and the emphasis also is a dark magic :D there are no such exceptions in Arabic Arabic can be difficult but simple. English can be easy but complex.

mrhichem 8y ago

I'm also a native arabic speaker. I also speak french and English fluently. What you say is utterly false. I think that trying to evaluate a language based on it being similar to western languages simplicity for it to be good/bad is plain nonsense. Arabic having many variant local dialects is not an awful thing but a richness. I will not fall into the trap of saying such language is better or worse. What I can say is that Arabic as a language is complexe and that is why it is a very much powerful language to express ideas an emotions then other languages I know.

616c 8y ago

You might think that but I decided to major in it in college and it led to many crazy life choices I sometimes regret, but I go to the Arab world often as a result of them. I'll never regret what Arabic has taught me directly and indirectly about the world. I have seen a lot of the contrast of the myopic sheltered culture of middle class Northeast US I grew up in. And I learned Europeans borrowed and saved a lot of important knowledge for safe keeping with the Arabs in Arabic. I see certain artistic themes go so far back even beyond classical Arab history and they give evidence of that. Ditto for math and science. Ugly is beautiful too, man. من يعلمني حرفا فصرت له عبدا! For he who teaches me a letter, for him I become a slave. I saw this old trope on a classroom board studying in Cairo and it has stayed with me all my life.

appleflaxen 8y ago
What is the meaning of the quote? that when someone teaches you to read, that you have a huge philosophical debt to them (that can never be repayed)?
- Koshkin 8y ago
  > philosophical debt Perhaps, not so much philosophical...

kranner 8y ago

> 1. It's very convoluted and it takes many more words to describe things accurately than latin and/or germanic languages; 2. Due to geographical and cultural separation from the West, the vocabulary is just not adapted to modern life, so "workarounds" need to be used to refer things that have become common in our daily lives. This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The colloquial (or at least urban) vocabulary seems so much smaller than English that it's just faster to code-mix in English words and phrases in a lot of situations. And insisting on speaking in Hindi would require a lot more metaphors and indirect expression than seemingly how the same thing would be said in English. Even if a Hindi word exists for a very specific concept, and the speaker knows the listener probably knows it, it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.

jki275 8y ago
I've noticed that in Tagalog and Japanese as well.
dorfsmay 8y ago
> it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word. Why is that? Reverse snobism towards the upper or more educated classes? As an outsider who knows very little about Indian culture, it feels wrong and sad.
- kranner 8y ago
  No it's not anti-intellectualism of any kind. If anything, Indians have a high regard for education. It just comes across as artificial because usage of those words is now mostly limited to literary contexts. These days using a difficult Hindi word (especially one derived from Sanskrit, or one that sounds Sanskrit-ish) in place of a common English term also signals that the speaker supports the political right wing.

mega_behemoth 8y ago

Nonsense. Arabic is Arabic. It is not convoluted. It is sophisticated and powerful. You are mixing dialicts with languages. Go to rural -middle of nowhere- villages in Scotland. Good luck understanding a single word.

int_19h 8y ago
There's no hard line between dialects and languages. As they say, "language is a dialect with an army".

zouhair 8y ago

> It is an awful language. Well that's a stretch. I am also a native speaker and given Arabic(s) has its quirks it can be extremely fluid especially when politics leave it alone.

theprotocol 8y ago
Well, that part is subjective.

nbvkkiauhvcr 8y ago

I am a native speaker. I have no idea what language you are describing. 1) Arabic is highly expressive, the number of ways a root word can be morphed is astonishing. In fact, I would guess it’s unmatched in expressiveness. 2) grammatically speaking, it’s very simple. A little kid can tell you when something is off in grammar. Why? Because Arabic is a language where the semi-vowels indicate the grammar. And because of this, a grammatically incorrect statement will just sound weird. This ease is why most (educated) native speakers have learned grammar at a young age. They will have poetry memorized and understand grammar in a fundamental way. You know, and I don’t mean to question the veracity of your statement, I don’t think you are a native speaker at all. I think you grew up hearing enough Arabic to understand it and speak it. I would bet you speak and think in English and not in Arabic.

unfocused 8y ago

Hmmm...not sure I agree with you. I also used to speak 4 languages, and native Arabic (Lebanese) being one of them. Terrible at Spanish now, Advanced French, Average Lebanese, but English is tops. I'll just put this out there, I find Arabic very descriptive. Think about the food! Lahm w Aajeen (Meat and Dough) is a meat pie that you have for breakfast. So many food items have names that are just the ingredients! Also, while yes, the written form differs from how you speak, I speak Lebanese to any other person whose dialect is is different, and they will understand me. Whether Syrian, Iraqi, etc. And for the record, I've been to Yorkshire, England and I had so much trouble understanding what the heck they said. I'm confident this problem occurs in many other languages, and not just Arabic. Also, depending on where you come from in the country, you will have a different accent e.g. North Lebanon vs. South Lebanon. In Canada, if you're from Newfoundland, you will definitely have an accent and people from anywhere in the Country would notice it. No language is perfect, you just have to roll with the dice.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Brockenstein 8y ago

I mean I guess I don't know, and some people have disagreed with you. But how do Arabic dialects compare to all the English dialects. I mean U.S., U.K. and Australians can all understand each other mostly, but there's all those little differences too (that I personally enjoy). And even within English speaking countries there are dialects. So are we talking almost different languages, or minor differences? As for your other criticisms, I mean they sound a lot like English criticisms. Because English has a lot of those problems too, at a greater or lower scale I can't say. But I wonder.

BeetleB 8y ago

I've dabbled in Arabic, Spanish and Urdu. When it comes to this: >But beyond that, I'd say the biggest problem with it is that there are just so many exceptions that knowing the rules of grammar is nowhere near enough to speak it correctly. My experience was that English and Urdu are much worse grammarwise. In the latter, it's not so much that there are exceptions to rules - it's that the rules are the exception. Most of the language doesn't follow grammatical rules. It's not as bad in English, but the problem exists. When I used to help people learn English, I could see how frustrated they would get whenever they'd ask a question and they'd be told "yeah, this is just how it is". IIRC, most of formal Arabic is covered by first level grammar rules. The thing I found interesting about it is that the exceptions themselves have rules. So it wasn't a case of "just memorize that this is an exception" that you'd have for other languages. It was "Here's the exception to that bigger rule, and you know if a word/phrase should follow the exception based on these rules". I think the challenge you speak of is that sometimes even the exceptions had exceptions. I'm not a native speaker, so I may be wrong. Overall I found it the most structured language amongst all of these. It's not simple, but it's not haphazard. (Speaking only of formal Arabic).

pknerd 8y ago
Being a native Urdu speaker I second you.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  If everyone spoke Lakhnavi Urdu I’d get it, but my impression (heritage speaker) is that Urdu in Pakistan today at least is less grammatically demanding in comparison because people who don’t speak it as a home language have had to learn it. I would think reading and writing would be the problem compared to English. Can you give an example besides memorizing genders where there’s a noticeable lack of grammar that impedes learning?