First of all, for those who don't know what is Diacritics, diacritics are marks that are added to letters and have pronunciation- and/or meaning-related values as well as grammatical values, so we can consider it as the vowels in English. I've met and spoke with a lot of Arabic learners and even Arabic native speakers who think that diacritics are something they can't understand. Even though Diacritics are being ignored by a lot of people in their writings, but it's very important to understand and pronounce Arabic in the right way. You may find a word with the same letters, but changing Diacritics will give you a whole different meaning. In Arabic, diacritical marks are:
1) the fatHah (َ ), a semi-flat hyphen-like added on top of the letter,
2) the kasrah (ِ ), similar to fatHah, but put below the letter,
3) the Dhammah (ُ ), a mark somewhat like the letter wow و in Arabic, placed on top of the letter,
4) the shaddah ( ّ), a mark like the letter seen سـ when it occurs word-initially, and
5) the sukoon (ْ ), a mark similar to, and smaller in shape than, the letter ‘o’ in English, added on top of the letter.
Anyone interested can find more details in these links:
- https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/arabic-diacritics-important-but-neglected/
- http://www.softschools.com/languages/arabic/all_of_the_diacritics_in_arabic/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics
Quote from Mohamed Allam: “From my humble point of view, anyone wants to learn Arabic should start with the origin, which is the (Fusha), because all the grammar rules and language rules were made in accordance with it. After that, in order to be able to speak with people in the same way they speak to each other you may learn any of the dialects which I think would be very easy if you learned the (Fusha) first. I'm also sure that all Arabs can understand you if you spoke with them in (Fusha).”
thats exactly what they tell us at the university. Two good years to read and write in Fus’ha and then choose a dialect to speak with people.
Hi <a ui-sref="user({id:comment.commenter_obj.id})" href="https://www.italki.com/user/5122775" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(149, 149, 149); outline: 0px;">Terecia</a>!
Thanks for what you said about Arabic. Of course, as you said learning Arabic could be very helpful to anyone wants to understand Arabic and Islamic cultures.
Answering to your question, There is only one Arabic language which is Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha), but what are you talking about are dialects not languages, and these dialects are ramified from the original language recently in the past 100 to 150 years only to make it easier for people to speak to each other. So, we are learning the modern standard Arabic at schools but when we talk to each other in our daily life we use the other dialects, but all the newspapers, books, formal letters are being written in Modern Standard Arabic.
From my humble point of view, anyone wants to learn Arabic should start with the origin, which is the (Fusha), because all the grammar rules and language rules were made in accordance with it. After that, in order to be able to speak with people in the same way they speak to each other you may learn any of the dialects which I think would be very easy if you learned the (Fusha) first. I'm also sure that all Arabs can understand you if you spoke with them in (Fusha).
One more thing, there is anumber of dialects in Arabic, maybe the famous ones are Egyptian, Levantine, Maghrabi and Gulf dialects, but there is a way more. for instance, in Egypt, we have about 10 dialects.
Thanks for the lesson about Arabic. I haven't tried learning Arabic. But I'm always fascinated by the calligraphy and the architecture. I live in the largest Moslem population country in the world. I think learning Arabic would be good for me to understand the Islamic culture.
I often heared the prayer sounded from a mosque near my house since I was little.
Ever since I joined this platform, I just realised that there are several Arabic languages, I noticed that there are Egyptian Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.
Are there more than that? Which one would you recommend me to learn as a beginner? I could put it in my language list to learn in the future.
Many thanks,
Tere
(Edited for adding words)
Terecia, Mohammed,
Sometimes Arabs themselves dont' understand some dialects. It depends on how similar a dialect is and how much they were exposed to it. "Everyone" knows some Egyptian, because "everyone" is watching some Egyptian TV. Since childhood.
Egyptian (Cairene) is considered more similar to MSA than Maghrebian Arabic (Maghrebian Arabic was considered "unusual" even in Middle Ages), but being already familiar with it matters a lot! I heard for example, about a Tunisian lady in Morocco who was completely lost and needed help. Of course it is partly psychological, and of course with time she'd learn to communicate. But at the first contact she could understand nothign and felt lost, and it is two Maghrebi dialects!
I don't think that Terecia will be able to understand dialects if she only learns Fus·ha. They are languages too:) They're just as different as Romance languages. I think, if she comes to an Arabic speaking country, that would be like when I come to a Slavic speaking country: when I read Czech I can udnerstand (slowly) some 70% of the text, but of course I won't understand a conversation of two Czech guys.
But certainly Fus·ha is a good base for understanding them. Also it has more to do with "Islamic culture" than spoken language. Dialects (alongside with Fus·ha, of course) have to do with "Arab culture".
