Arabic is seven different languages!

LIES!   Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:33 am GMT
This bullshit about Arabic dialects, and all being the same language is pan-Arabic propaganda. The Arabic languages are better described as a group, like Germanic, Romance or Slavic, of which the so called "dialects" are actually different languages that branch off.

The seven Arabic languages are MSA/Qur'anic Arabic, Maghrebi, Egyptian, Laventine (Lebanon, Syria, etc), Iraqi, Saudi (Arabian peninsula in general), and Gulf. Within these seven languages exist dialects, but these seven forms of Arabic in my opinion are no more mutually intelligible with each other than Spanish and Portuguese at an absolute minimum, and in the extreme cases the difference is as wide as German and English, or Bulgarian and Russian.

Arabic is no more of a unified language than any other major language group.
Friggo   Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:26 am GMT
Same with "Chinese".
789   Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:00 am GMT
relax !!
South Korean   Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:37 am GMT
I'm curious; when a Moroccan and an Algerian converse, do they use more often Arabic or French?
Fuckdjazeera   Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:35 am GMT
They use English.
Qu'ran   Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:45 am GMT
When a Moroccan and an Algerian converse use Arabic, because both speak a similar Maghrebi Arabic.

When a person from Morocco and another one from Iraq speak, they use MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or Egyptian Arabic, the most prestigious of all dialects. All of them know Egyptian thanks to the soap operas in this dialect.
?   Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:48 pm GMT
In a very broad sense could it be argued that the use of MSA as a pan-Arabic language is similar to the fact many people from the Germanic nations have a good grasp of English, with English being as related to their native languages as MSA is to most Arab's native "dialects" of Arabic?
Kendra   Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:43 pm GMT
Yes, that's right.
Franco   Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:47 pm GMT
Few people in Arabic countries know MSA.
FuckHispaneek   Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:02 pm GMT
<< They use English. >>

Keep on dreaming anglo fanatic or hispanic loser but even Egyptians switch to French when they talk with Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, and even Lebanese.
Vinlander   Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:26 pm GMT
FuckHispaneek Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:02 pm GMT

you have no clue.

They speak in MSA, atleast the ones that are most likely to have access to travel. It's kinda like us talking like shakespear. I mean if we had to use words like doth or art or thee, we would find the conversation very akward, but possible. My friend is from libya, and knows people from saudi arabia to morroco he's in the middle so he can understand both ends.
Baldewin   Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:36 pm GMT
MSA is a modern form of Qur'anic Arabic (in term of vocabulary), but it's used in newspapers. I wonder what actually makes a language 'archaic'. Can't they accept an archaic tongue as their global standard tongue? When does a language become 'awkward' or 'artificial'?
I mean, when the languages in Europe become standardized and people were educated en masse, standard language became true spoken languages more or less. Why is it that they couldn't teach Shakespearean English to dialect spoken children?

When looking at my native language I also notice this. The written Dutch of a century ago was WAY more archaic than the one of today. It changed rapidly with the increase of the literacy rate.
Baldewin   Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:38 pm GMT
*became
*dialect-speaking
Baldewin   Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:58 pm GMT
If you go further back in time, the erudites nearly all used Latin as a pan-European language. I don't think you can teach entire population to became latinophonic, not even among Romance speakers.
MSA is based on the liturgical language in Islam, like Latin has been before the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church (which many Catholics see as the reason for the loss of influence of their church, in Europe at least).

The only people that have successfully revived their liturgical language are the Jews, but that's because they come from all corners of the world and were packed on a tiny strip of land.