How many languages can you speak?

[Sophia]

I'm only fluent in English and (Egyptian) Arabic.
I understand Standard Arabic (written and spoken) almost perfectly, but can't really speak it without making more grammatical mistakes than actual words in a given sentence. I also can't help but giggle whenever I have to speak it, it sounds as if I'm giving a speech in the parliament.

I tried learning German for 2 years but we didn't get along too well. I was alright with the pronunciation but the cases and the three genders proved too challenging for my simple mind. I learned French for most of my childhood to the extent that I studied science and maths in French but sadly I can't remember much of it. I can still read it with an acceptable accent though whenever I want to sound a bit of a snob

So is Arabic easier for you to understand than German (if we forget about speaking)? That's interesting considering the fact that Arabic is from a different language family and uses different alphabet than English. German genders and cases are truly difficult! We have genders too, but the problem is that German genders are different than ours (eg their das Buch is neuter, but ours is female) so it gets sooo confusing :)
I just read an interesting post on another site today and one guy who speaks many languages said that for him, German and Arabic are the most beautiful and deep languages in the world.

 

[HossamCFD]

So is Arabic easier for you to understand than German (if we forget about speaking)? That's interesting considering the fact that Arabic is from a different language family and uses different alphabet than English.

I imagine Arabic would be a lot more difficult than German if you try to learn it as a foreign language. I wouldn't know for sure, Arabic is my native language. I would say that the Alphabet isn't the hardest part. It's almost as long as the English Alphabet and you could probably get used to it in a couple of days. You can also train your hand to write from right to left rather than the other way around relatively easily. Everything else is quite different from any European language though. The grammar is quite challenging, sentences tend to be very long, and you can have whole sentences without any verb.

The situation is actually a bit more complicated and requires some explaining. Standard Arabic* is the official and written language in almost all 22 Arabic countries (not sure about Somalia and Comoros). However, you can hardly find anyone who speaks it natively. People speak local dialects (there's about 5 families of them) in their everyday use and you can hear standard Arabic only in prepared speech such as presidential appearances and what not. For political and religious reasons none of the dialects has been standardised in written format or adopted as an official language. So you end up with the bizarre situation that you speak a language that you can't write and you write in a language that you're not native in.

I just read an interesting post on another site today and one guy who speaks many languages said that for him, German and Arabic are the most beautiful and deep languages in the world.

That's very interesting. I tried before to form an opinion on what's the most beautiful language I know but couldn't really work out how to do so. I'm not great with languages in general and I can barely express my thoughts in an intelligible way. I would say though that standard Arabic can be vague and playful which makes it an ideal language for poetry, but a nightmare if you want to use it to be precise, for instance in scientific discourse.

*By standard Arabic I mean both Modern Standard Arabic and Classical (Quranic) Arabic. Arabs in general don't recognise a difference between the two and they're both referred to as Al-Fusha (the eloquent). The distinction is almost exclusive to western linguists.

 

[Sophia]

The situation is actually a bit more complicated and requires some explaining. Standard Arabic* is the official and written language in almost all 22 Arabic countries (not sure about Somalia and Comoros). However, you can hardly find anyone who speaks it natively. People speak local dialects (there's about 5 families of them) in their everyday use and you can hear standard Arabic only in prepared speech such as presidential appearances and what not. For political and religious reasons none of the dialects has been standardised in written format or adopted as an official language. So you end up with the bizarre situation that you speak a language that you can't write and you write in a language that you're not native in.

I didn't know about this, it's very interesting. When people speak in dialects, how much can they understand each other, if they don't use standard Arabic?

The grammar is quite challenging, sentences tend to be very long, and you can have whole sentences without any verb.

I can't imagine a long sentence without a verb. is it possible to somehow give an example of such sentence?

I would say though that standard Arabic can be vague and playful which makes it an ideal language for poetry, but a nightmare if you want to use it to be precise, for instance in scientific discourse.
.

Maybe because German is such a systematic language it has produced so many scientific minds. But on the other hand, you say that Arabic is more poetical, but there have been many Arab scholars as well. So even if they say that language forms thought processes, it is not the only variable. Or, Arabic stimulates brain as well, but in another form than German.

 

[HossamCFD]

I didn't know about this, it's very interesting. When people speak in dialects, how much can they understand each other, if they don't use standard Arabic?

Yeah people mostly understand each others dialects to varying degrees but there's almost never any need to use standard Arabic. This is mostly due to cultural interactions like music and TV etc... To my ears, Levantine Arabic (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories) is the easiest and the one I struggle with the most is the north African (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) dialect.

I can't imagine a long sentence without a verb. is it possible to somehow give an example of such sentence?

Well the main thing is just that verb 'to be' in the present tense is normally implied. So if I'm writing Arabic, the very last sentence would be an example for a sentence without a verb. Long sentences tend to have verbs though, unless the author is being deliberately opaque.