Which language for Arabic World?

Shumacher   Mon May 25, 2009 10:41 am GMT
I don't know which language is more useful. Perhaps, Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic or simply English?

I want to go to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt...


Thanks in advance.
Mohammed   Mon May 25, 2009 1:27 pm GMT
French or Classical Arabic I'm learning both
Art   Mon May 25, 2009 1:51 pm GMT
The Middle East is one of the few areas of the world that doesn't have an artificial language that you can use. For example, Latin Europe has Interlingua, Slavic Europe has Slovio, and continental Western Germanic Europe has Intergermania. Someone needs to invent an artificial language for the Middle East, that is intelligible to the peopple there.
fraz   Mon May 25, 2009 1:53 pm GMT
Arabic is spoken over a vast area. Can someone from, say, Morocco understand a fellow Arabic speaker from Iraq? Or are there many impenetrable dialects involved?
pannic   Mon May 25, 2009 3:12 pm GMT
<<The Middle East is one of the few areas of the world that doesn't have an artificial language that you can use. For example, Latin Europe has Interlingua, Slavic Europe has Slovio, and continental Western Germanic Europe has Intergermania. Someone needs to invent an artificial language for the Middle East, that is intelligible to the peopple there. >>

Do lots of prople in these areas really speak these artifcial languages?

How hard would it be to come up something like "Interarabic" or "Panarabian".
EUan   Mon May 25, 2009 3:21 pm GMT
I've never heard of interlingua, intergermania or slovio in my life, outside this forum.
Commonaswhole   Mon May 25, 2009 3:31 pm GMT
They should all speak Hebrew.
Ahmad in a Jug   Mon May 25, 2009 4:04 pm GMT
They should all speak Farsi.
K. t.   Mon May 25, 2009 4:07 pm GMT
I'd heard of interlingua (I think), but not the other artificial languages before coming to Antimoon.

There is a video on the internet where everyone is speaking Esperanto
during a meal. Suddenly a causasian woman who is lost shows up outside. She doesn't speak English or any of the other languages they try with her. Guess what, she speaks Esperanto!

How likely is that? Probably as likely as finding a someone who speaks one of these other languages by chance. If I were going to learn one of them, I would see if there is an association with an internet site, so I'd be sure to "run into/across" people who speak the conlang when visiting another country.

In more practical terms...

I find that a lot of people from the Malgreb/Northern Africa speak French in addition to Arabic and possibly Berber. Egyptians seem to know English if they speak an additional language, but some probably know French as well.

I wonder about these requests for language suggestions. If it's just for a two week trip, why not get something like "101 Languages of the World" or "31 Languages of the World" (not "102 Languages" as it only teaches a small amount of words for each language and seems more like a game for kids and teenagers) and go over both French and Arabic for a couple of months everyday before you take the trip. You can probably find all of them (even 102, if you want it), for very little on the internet or in some discount book stores. These are computer programs.
Art   Mon May 25, 2009 4:20 pm GMT
Well, Esperanto is completely useless unless both parties know the language. But Interlingua, Slovio, and Intergermania are very useful languages to know when travelling. When I went to Spain, I was able to communicate with the people quite easily by speaking Interlingua. They thought I was speaking Italian, but they could understand it very easily. The three languages I mentioned are very easy to learn, and can be augmented greatly by knowing just a little of the target language. And since you are technically speaking a different language, that is unfamiliar, but completely understandable, you don't have to worry or get tongue-tied over the grammar. Thus you can speak faster. If everyone knew those three languages, communication would become much easier in Latin, Germanic, and Slavic Europe. So I think that the Middle East also needs such a thing, because there are too many mutually unintelligible dialects.
K. T.   Mon May 25, 2009 4:40 pm GMT
I think Interlingua sounds better than Esperanto, btw, but since such a Middle East blend/solution doesn't exist afaik, it won't help the thread starter.

If such a blend existed, would it use Hebrew and Farsi (not the same family) too? It's an interesting, but dangerous idea.

So, do you know all three conlangs? If so, that would be something.

For me, I'm not sure they would be helpful. Oh sure, I'd understand an Interlingua speaker, but that's because I can speak French and Spanish in addition to some Italian and uh, Portunol.

With conlangs we create different categories of "neutral" speakers, it seems. Since I study Russian and BCS, I don't think Slovio would be a good addition, but I can see how it would help the person on another thread who wanted an additional language for travel in Eastern (or was it "Central" Europe?)
Blank   Mon May 25, 2009 4:47 pm GMT
Everyone in the Arab world understands Modern Standard Arabic as it is used on radios and TVs, but not everybody is able to speak it in an understandable way.

Same thing for French in Morocco and Tunisia: everybody understands, but it's often a passive knowledge.

In Egypt, French is only practiced by the upper class within (mainly) the Christian community. English is much more widespread.

So, learn a basic set of Standard Arabic expressions, resort to French in Morocco and Tunisia, and to English in Egypt.

In Lybia, a little Italian will prove useful.
Shuimo   Mon May 25, 2009 5:03 pm GMT
Arabic language should have just one word: Allah, because only Allah is important. You don't need to express other things. So Arabic would be understood by the whole Arabic world no matter the dialect they speak. For example typical cases of usage in RA (Reformed Arabic):

Osama: Allah, allah, allah. Allah Allah (I'm hungry, I'm gonna pray to Allah )

Mustapha: allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah allah allah allah (my wife is pregnant again thanks to Allah).
Hoo   Mon May 25, 2009 5:37 pm GMT
Modern Standard Arabic is the Slovio of the Middle East, as in some ways it is sort of artificial itself. It also functions in a similar manner. Knowing Slovio will let you be understood by Russians, but you won't be able to understand their responses, without knowing at least some Russian. The same is true with knowing Modern Standard Arabic. Creating a conlang for the Middle East would be sort of pointless, as Modern Standard Arabic would do just fine. As for making a hybrid language with Farsi--I don't think that would work since it's a totally different language family. That would be going the way of Esperanto--and Esperanto only works if both people speak it. I think if you were to make a conlang, do it the way that Interlingua does it. Even though English is not a Romance language, it has many technical and scientific terms in it from Latin, and thus Interlingua is already partially intelligible to monolingual English speakers. I believe that Farsi has a lot of Arabic words in it, in much the same way English has Latin words in it. So perhaps choosing from Arabic with a preference for those words that also exist in Farsi would be the best idea.
Hoo   Mon May 25, 2009 5:42 pm GMT
As for adding Hebrew to the language, it might work, but is it really necessary? I think that Arabic is taught as a second language in Isreal, but I might be wrong. If they can understand Arabic, then they would also be able to understand a simplified artifical language based on it. I think that Arabic and Hebrew are too different--far less intelligible than French vs. Italian, so it would be more difficult to add. Perhaps, creatig a language based on Proto-Semitic, or a very archaic Semitic language would work, if you modernized it and put in many Arabic and Hebrew loan-words.