TAC 2018 - Antea (Finnish, Swedish)

[Antea]

I like this program a lot. They pick a traditional song from a different Arab country, and they make like a remix to transform it in a more modern song, making like a fusion of musics and cultures. And then, they play it live. In the program, they also explain the history of the original song, the circumstances when it was originally created and more details, explained by local artists. This is the second episode. The first one, which is also posted in my TAC, I liked very much because of the fusion with the Tuareg band and music. It was great
https://youtu.be/ZU7Aw9y8WOs

[Antea]

I am posting two videos from the BBC Arabic documentaries. One is about the situation in Hebron, and from a linguistic point of view, I find it interesting, because at some point in the video (about the middle of the video) they start to speak in Hebrew, and they provide Arabic subtitles. It’s difficult for me to read the Arabic subtitles, so I don’t get the full meaning of it, but I am still trying. Just for saying, that I don’t intend to make politics.

The second one is another documentary, also with Arabic subtitles, because I think most of the interviewed people speak in Kurdish. This one is about the situation of Assyrian Christians in the region. It’s also difficult for me to understand it all, so once more, it’s not for politics, but more for a linguistic interest.

https://youtu.be/0i_Q55zC6jE

https://youtu.be/KDX79-wy-KQ

[dEhiN]

Just for saying, that I don’t intend to make politics.

This sentence doesn't make sense in English. At least, I'm not sure what you mean by "make politics". (Ou, dirais-tu en français?)

[Antea]

Just for saying, that I don’t intend to make politics.

This sentence doesn't make sense in English. At least, I'm not sure what you mean by "make politics". (Ou, dirais-tu en français?)

En español: “no pretendo hacer política”
En français: « je n’ai aucune intention de faire de la politique »

[dEhiN]

Just for saying, that I don’t intend to make politics.

This sentence doesn't make sense in English. At least, I'm not sure what you mean by "make politics". (Ou, dirais-tu en français?)

En español: “no pretendo hacer política”
En français: « je n’ai aucune intention de faire de la politique »

You could say "to do politics", which would be the other translation of faire/hacer. Another phrase that works in English is "to get into politics". A third way of saying that that I can think of would be "to become political".

[Antea]

Thanks, David!

My yesterday lesson (of Egyptian dialect) was frustrating, my level is frustrating I don’t even know why I am trying Would I ever get somewhere?

[Antea]

Ok, maybe this was not a very positive comment. But I am trying hard, and sometimes I have the feeling that I am not even able to hold a normal conversation. I stick all the time to Standard Arabic, I am not able to use the dialectal vocabulary that I know...My teacher says it’s not bad, but I would like to know the “real truth”, my real level, what I really sound like for a native...

[Saim]

I don't think you should feel so bad about that. Arabic is honestly hard enough for Turks and Pakistanis and such; it's a pretty massive undertaking for someone who doesn't know any language with a substantial layer of Arabic vocabulary. Just keep at it and you'll get there! Maybe to make Egyptian class less frustrating you could try and memorise certain sentences that you can anchor to so you're not always thinking faster than you can speak?

[voron]

I don't think you should feel so bad about that. Arabic is honestly hard enough for Turks and Pakistanis and such;

I am in the same boat; I have been learning Arabic on and off for years and I'm at B1 at most.

And I'm having a problem identifying what exactly it is which is so hard in Arabic.

Grammar? Nah. If you aim to speak in MSA with a dialect-like grammar with no case endings, the grammar is quite straightforward. Even with cases it's not rocket science.

Pronunciation? Not really, you can manage all the sounds after some practice.

Vocabulary? Yeah, the vocabulary is extensive, and there are lots of synonyms for many words, but many languages are like that (English, Russian), so is it really such a big deal?

Is it diglossia? Or scarcity of high quality and fun learning materials? Or anything else?

[Saim]

Personally I think the two main difficulties are the diglossia and the vocabulary. I think the diglossia makes it hard to use the sort of fun-ish media-based 'acquisition' approach that many autodidacts are used to. It also means you need much more input to be able to properly differentiate the two codes and use them actively, which is difficult to get when you're starting at such a low level of comprehension (which is the case if you don't already speak a Semitic language or a language with a massive amount of Arabic loanwords).

I don't think that the issue with the vocabulary is that it's extensive or that there are lots of synonyms. Even if the dictionary is full of different words, I think in general every language will show a similar lexical/grammatical load when it comes to actual texts/speech. It's just that the vocabulary is very distant from European languages, and the foreign script also makes remembering new word roots more difficult at least at the beginning stages. Russian may be fairly lexically distant from English for example but it still has plenty of Greek, Latin and French loans, as well as some common Indo-European vocabulary and a somewhat more familiar syllable structure, that makes Russian simpler for speakers of Western European languages than Arabic. Already recognising some words goes a long way towards making input comprehensible enough so that you can learn from it, whereas if you recognise literally nothing you have to try much harder to pick anything up.

Honestly I don't think many languages of Asia, Africa or the Americas would be particularly easy for speakers of languages within the orbit of Standard Average European. Hell, even Basque and Finno-Ugric can be quite a challenge. It's just that Arabic has a lot of us complaining about it because it's big enough and visible enough that it draws quite a lot of interest, or at least more than Somali or Tamil.

That said, I think we should all just keep plugging along and do what we can given our level of motivation and need. Eventually we'll get there, it just takes more hours than we're used to from other languages.