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I have very limited knowledge on the topic so take what I say with some skepticism, but one thing is that most words are formed by a variation of a three or fou
by getcrunk 8y ago
I have very limited knowledge on the topic so take what I say with some skepticism, but one thing is that most words are formed by a variation of a three or four letter root word. So this gives a lot of flexibility and subtlety to the language. Context is everything. A root word for example made up of the letters d - r - b in its most basic form means to hit. But that same root can be used to mean depress (as in a pedal) or separate things (sort) or ring a bell or to agree on a time and place for a meeting, to be unrealistic, to make and example or analogy. The dictionary entry is multiple columns. And this is common in the language.
Further to the competent speaker this results in no difficulty understanding the language give the next point which is its grammer. Words and therefore phrases and scentences have their grammatical role signified by Vowels.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThis isn't exactly an unusual concept; you can see the same thing in earlier English, preserved in different forms like "rise" (present) / "rose" (past) / "raise" (causative). This was once considered significant enough that a distinction was drawn between "strong" irregular verbs that inflect through a vowel change (rise / rose; grow / grew; swim / swam...), and "weak" irregular verbs that derive their irregular past form from the regular one (bend / bent; sleep / slept...).
- getcrunk 8y agoYea it goes further than that in Arabic. In the example of r s e only vowels were modified for tense in Arabic you will add consonants to radically change the meaning. Same in hebrew as another commenter showed much better than I did
- thaumasiotes 8y agoChanging the vowel to form a causative verb from a base verb goes a little farther than "only vowels were modified for tense". It's a productive system in modern Arabic and a fossil of earlier times in modern English, but it's not different in kind.
- gumby 8y agoThe root properties of Arabic go far beyond the example you gave of schwache Verben in germanic languages or the historical PIE/PIG roots that give us names like Rhine/Rhône (i.e. Fluß). For example the word (as written) k-t-b (كتب) means "write" but could just as much mean letters, writer, books etc; these stems are really how you think of the word at a much deeper level than you get out of English etymology[+] or (IMHO) Hanzi radicals. Arabic has some limited case, but the grammar is quite different from PIE languages, lacking a "to be" verb and adjectival/adverbial distinctions (a fast car and a car that was swift are differentiated only by the article).
- gumby 8y agoOh I forgot my footnote [+] I really love that English is pretty conservative in spelling so that you can often tell the meaning of the word by looking at how it is written. Languages like German that reform their spelling periodically to match pronunciation shifts snip those connections away (while French goes the other way...there's a reason why a spelling bee can be prime time television in France).