What do you know about muslim languages ?

hehehehehe   Friday, June 10, 2005, 21:03 GMT
>Georgius Friday, June 10, 2005, 20:45 GMT
Bye! bye! I'm going to a club to pick up! <

Hope you have your credit card with you Georgius! You do know prostitutes cost money, don't you?
Chamonix   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 01:42 GMT
what do you actually call muslim language?
To my opinion not everyone who is muslim speak Arabic, or all Arabs are muslim.
One can be Muslim, which doesn't mean that he/she speaks a "muslim language"
Eylian   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 08:58 GMT
Hey Georgius,

I am new here. I was searching the web for the differences between American and British English. I came across your messages about Islam Arabic Language and Judaism. I was amazed by the things you mentioned about Jews and how every Jewish has two souls; a regular one and a Jewish soul. Very interesting. I would not consider such a thing-I mean having two souls-a fact, though. But rather religious beliefs. I don't really know much about Judaism. I know I can find loads of books and articles on Jews and Judaism in any library or even on the web. But how can I ever be sure that the things in those books or articles are true, facts and not fabricated. Well, my point is that I want you to be my source. Since you were Jewish but have converted to Islam, there must be a strong reason why you gave up your religion and embraced Islam. Could you tell me your story? And why have you been obstracized by your community?
Bertrand   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 09:02 GMT
To be a practicing muslim you must to speak Harabic.
Eylian   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 09:35 GMT

Hello Bernard,

I can see from your posts that you have a pretty good background about Arabic and languages. Are you majored in linguistics or something?

Generally, morrocan, Lybian, Tunisian and Algerian dialects are very difficult to understand because they are a mixture of French and broken Arabic. Besides, people in those countries( Morocco, Lybia, Tunisia and Algeria ) tends to speak too fast that you can hardly get one single arabic word pronounced correctly. That's why your Moroccan friend had a problem speaking Arabic when she came here to Dubai. Almost everyone speaks Arabic here; including hundrad thousands of Asians who live here and who speak a funny broken Arabic!

Do you speak Arabic, Bernard?
Mandy   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 10:28 GMT
Bosniac is a Slavic language (almost identical to Croatian and/or Serbian) with many Turcisms, like ''bujrum'' (booyroom) meaning welcome, 'raya' (rahyah) meaning crowd, and so on...It is spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina (together with Croatian and Serbian).
bernard   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 10:29 GMT
Eylian , no I don't speak arabic at all. But I live in a country were 10% of the population is muslim and has arab origins (we should better say north African - as long as north african are "racially" a mix of "arabized berbers"+arabs+non arabized berbers+other mediterranean and african peoples)
There is an ambiguity with the definition of the word "arab" - most people use it as a "race", while arabs, like all other people are a mix of different peoples. Originally arabs are the inhabitants of arabia peninsula, and now the term is applied to the peoples that speak arabic or arabic dialects.
I personnally canno't make the difference between arabic dialects, but for what I've heard some of them can be very difficult to interunderstand (maybe almost no intelligible).

Anyway, I was shooked to see that some people consider jews or muslisms as "races". they are not more races than "christians" are.
Some people tend to over-estimate the sense of brotherhood between muslims. some religious or polized religious people tend to create a "umma" (community of the muslisms wordwide) - but the problem is that beyond the religion they have not more in commum - and a lot of people don't put so much importance to the religion; There is not a commun language, not a common origin of the muslims people, not a common race ( there is white, black, asians muslims), not a common way of life, not common economic level (some muslism countries are the richest of the planet (Dubai, Quatar etc), some are the poorest (afganistan, Pakistan, sudan, etc..) - And some of them hate the other (or feel superior to them);
In the muslim world arabs generally tend to consider themselves to be the center of the muslim world, they think to be better than non-arab muslims (considered as cultural colonies) (see the situation of extreme racism in saudi arabia or emirates countries beetween the rich and powerfull arabic population that own the goods (oil) and the almost slaves Pakistanis or bengalis who have absolutly no rights. The invention of "umma " is just a tentative for arabs to re-create the cultural influence (and economical) they had in the past over the islamized peoples. A lot of non-arab countries quite suspicious over arabs and don't want to be misunderstood as arab (never call a kurd, turk, iranian, pakistani, bengali, indonesian, albanian... "arab" !)
Mandy   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 10:31 GMT
Bosniacs (one of three ethnicities from Bosnia&Herzegovina: the other two are Croatian and Serbian) are Muslim, but they are not Arab.
Ved   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 13:55 GMT
Bosniac, Serb and Croatian? Three languages? Yes, like British, American and Canadian English are three languages.

...

And just one thing to somebody from above: Copts are not Arabs. They are descendents of ancient Egyptians, although they do speak Arabic now and use Coptic (=Egyptian) for liturgical purposes only.
Sanja   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 15:42 GMT
Where are you from, Mandy?
Gabe   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 15:54 GMT
BERNARD said:
>>the huhe majority of muslisms don't speak and don't understand arabic.
It is true that in the "muslim world" arabic is the lingua franca - most educated muslisms understand arabic and speak a little of it.

>>We should not forget that the most populated muslism countries are Indonesia, Pakistan, Bengladesh, India (even if the majority is hindu, there is a huge muslism population), malasia, Iran, sub sharian Africa. INone of those countries are Arabic.
Most arabic countries are dersert regions, not as much populated that south-east asia.

>>In the "Arabic world", "arabic" is generally spoken only by educated people. The rest of the population speaks dialects of Arabic.

>>I have a franco-marrocan friend, when she went to Dibai she needed to speak in English or french to be understood - Her morrocan arabic was not understood !

Hm, very interesting! Thank you.
Sybille   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 16:22 GMT
Bernard,
What do you think about the 10% of muslims living in France? Soon it'll be 50%, no? And I'm sure you'll tell me: "oh you fuckin bastard, i'm not racist like you, i have a lot of arab friends, they're very nice people, blablabla"
Mandy   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 17:10 GMT
Yes, Bosniac, Croatian and Serbian are official languages, they have both different spelling and grammar norms, and different lexic, and are separate languages (see ethnologue.com), although they share SOME dialects

Croatian - official language of the republic of Croatia
Serbain - official language of Serbia and Montenegro

Bosniac, Serbian and Croatian - official languages of the republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina


Danish and Norwegian are much closer than Serbian and Croatian.
bernard   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 19:29 GMT

" What do you think about the 10% of muslims living in France? Soon it'll be 50%, no? And I'm sure you'll tell me: "oh you fuckin bastard, i'm not racist like you, i have a lot of arab friends, they're very nice people, blablabla" "

As long as it is modern and open-minded Islam it doesn't bother me ("islamism" in another thing that we should fight against). Each one have his right to choose his own religion. actually I'm not catholic. Most people here don't have any religion.

I don't think it the number of muslisms will be 50% one day. for three reasons : emigration from north africa is now low since 20 years.
Second it that the majority of girls of north african origins don't want to have 10 kids. most of them want to live a life, to have fun, like all the french.
the third thing is that when we say 10% of muslism, we mean in reality 10% of people of north African ancestry - most of them may have been educated in muslim traditions, some acare about it, but other don't care and don't really belive or practice islam. Most of them speak only french and know only few arabic words.

It is true that we have problems of integration of this community in the "main people"- and some of them fell in radical islam because they see no future for them and are easy targets for radical imams that want to put them in the dark side. It is mainly a sociological problem, and things are slowly changing? Anyway we will put our effort to keep the unity of our nation and will completly mix one day. That's the way our country integrate the different component of its soul since centuries.
Of course you'll may have heard about the "scarve" (I'm not sure of the word :foulard in french) affair. the porpose of the law is to put off all elements of differenciation of communities inside schoo and all other republican places - were we are french citizens before the different opinions we can have in terms of politics, religion, color or other..
It is very differnt from the American system that force the people to be in a community - with no (or not much) interaction with others.

Some people are afraid of muslisms - they thing them as a danger - We can understand it because the extremist islamists are very active in their tentative to convert the young from the poor suburbs. The extreme right parlies use this caricature to spread the fears and tring to appeal more votes.. It would be not a solution, and tend tol close the community over itself because they feel rejected by the "main people"..
bernard   Saturday, June 11, 2005, 19:32 GMT
sorry for mistakes - I write to quikly