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Why does it say in an article about Arabic, "In Afghanistan, where hate speech is reportedly one of the top 'abuse categories.'..." Arabic is not spoke in Afgh

Why does it say in an article about Arabic, "In Afghanistan, where hate speech is reportedly one of the top 'abuse categories.'..." Arabic is not spoke in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there is common ignorant generalization that Arabic is the language of Iran, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries. To those who live there, the distinction is not insignificant. This also casts doubt on the veracity of everything else in this article.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Some language nerdiness: Persian (Farsi), and main languages of Afghanistan (Pashto and Tajik) are all indo-european, so the same language family as Indian Subcontinent and (most) European languages. Arabic is from a whole different family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes Hebrew and Maltese (go figure). They are totally different to indo-european languages.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  >...family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes...Maltese Okay. I did NOT see that one coming. In retrospect they're not exactly far from other Arabic-speaking countries, but I'm curious what the history is. I've also heard that Sicilian retains some features that differentiates it from Italian and suggests different roots, so I wonder if there's a connection there with Maltese.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    Malta was conquered by North African Islamic caliphate around ~800AD, and then 200 years later the Normans(yes, those normans weren't just invading England around the year 1000) came in and took it, and then 200 years after that they kicked the Muslims out. By that point the Arabic that the original invaders brought was the common language, and it developed independently from the Arabic spoken in North Africa, slowly becoming latinized by the Christian Normans.
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      Gotcha, so it does parallel Sicily pretty closely but I don't think Arabic took hold as a common language quite how it did in Malta, but this is definitely something I need to look into more deeply. Thanks!
      - oh_sigh 5y ago
        That's exactly right...the Arabs also invaded sicily around the same time, but didn't get as much as a foothold as they did on Malta...maybe just because of population sizes, or the fact that mainland Italy down by current day calabria were also speaking the same language as the Sicilians, so there was a reserve for the language to continue on. So Sicilian (the language) has a lot of borrowing from Arabic (as well as greek) instead of being a dialect of arabic.
- ewmiller 5y ago
  That's fascinating, thanks for the insight.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
Follow the link to the WSJ article in the text you've quoted. [0] You'll see a similar conflation of "issues with automated Arabic moderation" and "Afghanistan". In context, though, it appears to be less a confusion about which language is spoken there and more a narrative lift from the WSJ article. Said article's structure places more emphasis on the facticity of Facebook's AI-based moderation, which only successfully classifies and removes an estimate of 2% of viewed hate speech in any language, then introduces Afghanistan's lower rate as an (imperfect and frankly kinda silly) example of Facebook deprioritizing other languages' AI moderation. [0] https://archive.md/6WXq4 https://archive.md/6WXq4 due to paywall
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Welcome to the black-pilled media distrust group. Most of the time it's ignorance. Sometimes it's outright lies.
hyperxy 5y ago
Josh, please read the sentence in context and don't make boring and wrong "gotchas".
Banana699 5y ago
A charitable interpretation would be to understand the "arabic" as in "The arabic script", that is: the alphabet. This is indeed the written representation of Persian and Urdu. It's a common confusion for some people to conflate a natural language with it's script. Compare with the similar confusion that conflates a programming language with either it's implementation or the snytax used to write it in text files.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  It’s not a common confusion at all though. No one would ever confuse Italian for English because they use the same script. It’s only “common” wrt Arabic script languages.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    I imagine eastern cultures would find Italian and English rather similar.
    - naturalauction 5y ago
      Pashto, Dari, Italian, and English are all Indo-European languages. Arabic is not. In other words Afghan languages are closer to English than they are to Arabic.
      - Banana699 5y ago
        You're conflating two fundamentally different notions of similarity. The similarity among the Indo-European languages are extremely deep linguistic and structural similarities only appreciated by people who study languages and their history for a living, and known by people who are interested in languages and read about them. The similarity between same-script languages is a superficial geometric symmetry that can be seen by anyone with functioning eyes. Most people are in the second category while not being in the first.
  - marci 5y ago
    "Facebook is bad at moderating the Latin alphabet. For the Arabic script, it’s a disaster."
selimthegrim 5y ago
There are large Arab communities in the north near Kunduz. Not all of them have retained their ancestral language but some have.
torstenvl 5y ago
Arabic is a lingua franca across the Islamic world. Even in Indonesia, they study the Koran in Arabic, they discuss religion in Arabic. Are you quite sure about the conclusions you're jumping to?

rich_sasha 5y ago

Some language nerdiness: Persian (Farsi), and main languages of Afghanistan (Pashto and Tajik) are all indo-european, so the same language family as Indian Subcontinent and (most) European languages. Arabic is from a whole different family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes Hebrew and Maltese (go figure). They are totally different to indo-european languages.

GravitasFailure 5y ago
>...family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes...Maltese Okay. I did NOT see that one coming. In retrospect they're not exactly far from other Arabic-speaking countries, but I'm curious what the history is. I've also heard that Sicilian retains some features that differentiates it from Italian and suggests different roots, so I wonder if there's a connection there with Maltese.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Malta was conquered by North African Islamic caliphate around ~800AD, and then 200 years later the Normans(yes, those normans weren't just invading England around the year 1000) came in and took it, and then 200 years after that they kicked the Muslims out. By that point the Arabic that the original invaders brought was the common language, and it developed independently from the Arabic spoken in North Africa, slowly becoming latinized by the Christian Normans.
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    Gotcha, so it does parallel Sicily pretty closely but I don't think Arabic took hold as a common language quite how it did in Malta, but this is definitely something I need to look into more deeply. Thanks!
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      That's exactly right...the Arabs also invaded sicily around the same time, but didn't get as much as a foothold as they did on Malta...maybe just because of population sizes, or the fact that mainland Italy down by current day calabria were also speaking the same language as the Sicilians, so there was a reserve for the language to continue on. So Sicilian (the language) has a lot of borrowing from Arabic (as well as greek) instead of being a dialect of arabic.
ewmiller 5y ago
That's fascinating, thanks for the insight.

revolvingocelot 5y ago

Follow the link to the WSJ article in the text you've quoted. [0] You'll see a similar conflation of "issues with automated Arabic moderation" and "Afghanistan". In context, though, it appears to be less a confusion about which language is spoken there and more a narrative lift from the WSJ article. Said article's structure places more emphasis on the facticity of Facebook's AI-based moderation, which only successfully classifies and removes an estimate of 2% of viewed hate speech in any language, then introduces Afghanistan's lower rate as an (imperfect and frankly kinda silly) example of Facebook deprioritizing other languages' AI moderation. [0] https://archive.md/6WXq4 https://archive.md/6WXq4 due to paywall

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

Welcome to the black-pilled media distrust group. Most of the time it's ignorance. Sometimes it's outright lies.

hyperxy 5y ago

Josh, please read the sentence in context and don't make boring and wrong "gotchas".

Banana699 5y ago

A charitable interpretation would be to understand the "arabic" as in "The arabic script", that is: the alphabet. This is indeed the written representation of Persian and Urdu. It's a common confusion for some people to conflate a natural language with it's script. Compare with the similar confusion that conflates a programming language with either it's implementation or the snytax used to write it in text files.

uncomputation 5y ago
It’s not a common confusion at all though. No one would ever confuse Italian for English because they use the same script. It’s only “common” wrt Arabic script languages.
- treeman79 5y ago
  I imagine eastern cultures would find Italian and English rather similar.
  - naturalauction 5y ago
    Pashto, Dari, Italian, and English are all Indo-European languages. Arabic is not. In other words Afghan languages are closer to English than they are to Arabic.
    - Banana699 5y ago
      You're conflating two fundamentally different notions of similarity. The similarity among the Indo-European languages are extremely deep linguistic and structural similarities only appreciated by people who study languages and their history for a living, and known by people who are interested in languages and read about them. The similarity between same-script languages is a superficial geometric symmetry that can be seen by anyone with functioning eyes. Most people are in the second category while not being in the first.
- marci 5y ago
  "Facebook is bad at moderating the Latin alphabet. For the Arabic script, it’s a disaster."

selimthegrim 5y ago

There are large Arab communities in the north near Kunduz. Not all of them have retained their ancestral language but some have.

torstenvl 5y ago

Arabic is a lingua franca across the Islamic world. Even in Indonesia, they study the Koran in Arabic, they discuss religion in Arabic. Are you quite sure about the conclusions you're jumping to?