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mōdgethanc wrote:Neither were Iraqi nor Yemen.
FTFYlinguoboy wrote:mōdgethanc wrote:Neither were Iraqi nor Yemeni.
This isn't really on topic but I got into a bit of an argument the other day with one of my friends (the one who wants me to study Arabic with him). He grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic and insists Arabic is one language while I was arguing it's more like a language family because not all its varieties are mutually intellgible. He claims they are but I highly doubt a Moroccan and a Lebanese person could converse in their dialects without using some words borrowed from MSA or maybe Egyptian Arabic. A Lebanese friend I used to talk to who taught me some Arabic also told me he can understand Egyptians thanks to movies but Moroccan is nearly impossible to understand.Meera wrote:Neither was Morrocan Lol
mōdgethanc wrote:This isn't really on topic but I got into a bit of an argument the other day with one of my friends (the one who wants me to study Arabic with him). He grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic and insists Arabic is one language while I was arguing it's more like a language family because not all its varieties are mutually intellgible. He claims they are but I highly doubt a Moroccan and a Lebanese person could converse in their dialects without using some words borrowed from MSA or maybe Egyptian Arabic. A Lebanese friend I used to talk to who taught me some Arabic also told me he can understand Egyptians thanks to movies but Moroccan is nearly impossible to understand.Meera wrote:Neither was Morrocan Lol
mōdgethanc wrote:He grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic and insists Arabic is one language while I was arguing it's more like a language family because not all its varieties are mutually intellgible.
Actually, no, I don't. Standard German is one language, sure. Swiss German and Low German are at the very least not the same language to me. I don't know much about the various High German dialects of Germany but I'm agnostic on whether they are or not until I see evidence for either side. If they have their own written forms and literature and (most importantly) their speakers feel they are not the same language, then they aren't. Besides, haven't a lot of German dialects been displaced by Standard German?linguoboy wrote:Don't we think of German as "one language"? Where's the substantial difference except that after a century and a half of universal education a higher percentage (i.e. nearly all) of "German-speakers" are fully conversant in the prestige variety?
mōdgethanc wrote:and (most importantly) their speakers feel they are not the same language
mōdgethanc wrote:He grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic and insists Arabic is one language
mōdgethanc wrote:This isn't really on topic but I got into a bit of an argument the other day with one of my friends (the one who wants me to study Arabic with him). He grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic and insists Arabic is one language while I was arguing it's more like a language family because not all its varieties are mutually intellgible. He claims they are but I highly doubt a Moroccan and a Lebanese person could converse in their dialects without using some words borrowed from MSA or maybe Egyptian Arabic. A Lebanese friend I used to talk to who taught me some Arabic also told me he can understand Egyptians thanks to movies but Moroccan is nearly impossible to understand.Meera wrote:Neither was Morrocan Lol
mōdgethanc wrote:Oh, so he represents all Arabic speakers?
mōdgethanc wrote:I have no problem seeing Arabic as a macrolanguage as long as we acknowledge that its varieties are quite distinct. The real issue is that he insisted all Arabic dialects are mutually intelligible. That's not what other natives have told me, and I highly doubt it's the case.
linguoboy wrote:So far, the only Arabic-speaking group I've come across which advocates this view is a nationalistic minority of Christian-identified Lebanese Arabic-speakers. (See for instance: http://www.lebaneselanguage.org/.)
I just looked at it and it just says "Egyptian", "Levantine" and "Sudanese". But that doesn't necessarily mean they're classified as different languages because there are also different pages for "Korean" and "North Korean" (wtf?).Meera wrote:Also mōdgethanc, I think the LDI classifies them as diffirent languages, on the GLOSS website they have diffirent sections for each Arabic. For example this is how they word it : "Arabic-MSA, Arabic-Egyptian, Arabic-Levantine, Arabic- Iraqi".
mōdgethanc wrote:The point I was trying to make to my friend was that they're about as different as the Romance languages are and just learning MSA (which is what he wanted me to do) wouldn't mean I could talk to any Arab in their native tongue. He said Arabic isn't any different from another language in terms of how much variety it has, which I disagree with since I've never come across an English accent I couldn't understand without a little work, except for English-based creoles (which are not really like English at all) and to some extent Scots.
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