Why is Arabic so difficult to learn?

[@colly6022]

"non-standard Arabic dialects are never written, except x, y, z..." sounds an awful like if you were trying to learn zoology, and were told "english, non-scientific names of animals are never used in literature, except...", and then list a thousand different casual ways saying "cat" is acceptable over "cattus felis".

[@alexxxO_O]

Cat? Oh, you mean cattus felis. Sorry - I hadn't heard that abbreviature.

[@rursus8354]

Felis catus.

[@slightlyopinionated8107]

Arabic actually has easy grammar to get started in normal conversations. Arabic at its higher levels though, is absolutely insane in complexity and I don’t think I have seen any language with a higher learning ceiling for advanced learners than Arabic.

[@drkshdw7]

The Qur'an isn't the only reason the Arab world holds on to MSA, nor does Islam look down on other languages. Arabs have centuries of rich literary and poetic tradition in Classical Arabic that's been a key feature of Arab culture. The Qur'an is the biggest example of that

[@gregorshepherd3561]

Yeah, it's sad that people keep perpetuating the myth that 'it's the quran'. Arabic language history is MUCH older and broader than the Quran, but sadly so much misinformation out there.

[@معرفةوترفيه-ت2ظ]

Yea in fact the revival of Classical Arabic (and creation of modern standard Arabic) was largely done by Arab Christians in the 19th century who (as you can guess) didn't see the Quran as something uniquely holy or sacred but just a piece of Arabic literature like any other.

[@Kuzamori]

@@somebody700 bro I was so confused because I thought I wrote this but we just have similar names lol.

[@深夜-l9f]

it says it is not poem and criticizes being called poem. i have doubts you even read. وَمَا عَلَّمْنَـٰهُ ٱلشِّعْرَ وَمَا يَنۢبَغِى لَهُۥٓ ۚ إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا ذِكْرٌۭ وَقُرْءَانٌۭ مُّبِينٌۭ أَمْ يَقُولُونَ شَاعِرٌۭ نَّتَرَبَّصُ بِهِۦ رَيْبَ ٱلْمَنُونِ بَلْ قَالُوٓا۟ أَضْغَـٰثُ أَحْلَـٰمٍۭ بَلِ ٱفْتَرَىٰهُ بَلْ هُوَ شَاعِرٌۭ فَلْيَأْتِنَا بِـَٔايَةٍۢ كَمَآ أُرْسِلَ ٱلْأَوَّلُونَ

[@kkuwura]

Yeah I thought it was a bit too simplistic to conclude that Qur’an is to blame for the prevalence of MSA, and your point hit me like a truck. Of course! How could I have forgotten about so many influential writers of the past who wrote in Classical Arabic or slightly older versions of Arabic

[@nathanwycoff4627]

9 minutes and 56 seconds into a video about linguistic aspects of arab dialects: "Now, for the nerds here." Optimistic that anyone else is still watching :)

[@probium2832]

I have no idea whatever the fuck my neighbour is saying but we all speak the same language trust me bro.

[@arribalaschivas91]

Oooof, I felt this video in my soul. I studied Arabic back in 2010 and it was a struggle. The material for dialect felt a lot less available back then so I mostly know Fusha with minimal Iraqi

[@belalabusultan5911]

as an Atheist Arab who does not care about QUran, I still think MSA is important, if you understand MSA you can learn any Arabic dialect easilly, because dialects cange and evolve around the standard (MSA) and keep borrowing from it, and reverting to it. my grandma once talked to me in the dialect of her village, with politics out of the way it would be like 2-3 hours car ride to her village, and I did not understand her dialect at all, because the dialects die. each region has a dialect, each part of the region has an accent, each city/village have their own quirk on the accent, each group of people have some (inside) words, and all these differences evolve and die in few generations, and keep revolving around MSA. one final note, MSA sounds more Shakespearean than middle English, people will look at you like (Thor) from his first movie when he spoke with a shakespeare-like accent in an American diner.... weird and funny, but I remember learning that dialect in English classes at school, and it helpe me understand differennt dialects and accents of English much better.

[@TheDeadOfNight37]

So it's like British English vs US English (honestly can be subdivided even further (I'm sure other countries' English can be too but I'm most familiar with variations in English across the US and inter-country)) vs Canadian English vs Australian English vs Kiwi English But all in one country

[@belalabusultan5911]

@@TheDeadOfNight37 Add scottish English and we'd be there... the people from my city who visited countries with (hard) accents, said they mastered it in like 2 months.

[@positive2772]

agreed, msa is important

[@abu-karz]

@@belalabusultan5911 Humans did not come from monkeys. It's scientifically proven

[@belalabusultan5911]

@@abu-karz I am not discussin religion on this thread.

[@PotionsMaster007]

I’m a native Arabic speaker (Egyptian) and I was actually born in the west so having both Arabic and English as native languages means my brain thinks in both. I’m now trying to teach my Italian husband hahaha

[@skelkankaos]

Having a common language that goes along with one's native language and lets them communicate with people in other countries is nifty , but it certainly must be difficult when so many people who aren't familiar with this specific system conflate that common (and additionally archaic and formal) language with the ones people use for communication.

[@somarriba333]

It's like if you are embarrassed and you try to say that in Spanish thinking is the same word and you say, "Estoy embarazada." Say that and you WILL be embarrassed.

[@athousandplateaus6598]

That actually happened to one of my Spanish teachers. She said it to her boyfriend and his parents.

[@malazkarar1171]

Neat video! About the cases, you are right about them not being written often, that doesn't mean phrases are not read as if the cases are there. In fact, you learn to read with them and then intuitively place them correctly without them being there. I honestly wish the use of cases in literature would go mainstream since it preserves proper parsing; a quality that's withering by the day.

[@jordanp5469]

Damn what are the odds of finding another Pitt ling student on youtube? We probably crossed paths, I graduated in 2021. Great videos keep it up

[@sergeychistov8162]

Criminally underrated. This channel is a gem!

[@alaaranga2765]

Very informational video. I am a half-Yemeni who was born in Qatar, and I rarely talked to my dad in Arabic. I had very little chance to pick up the Yemeni dialect from him, and instead I picked up a lot of features of different dialects from different people in different schools. Up until like a year ago, when I started trying to learn MSA using Rosetta Stone (it worked but I don't practice enough nowadays unfortunately), I would use a mix of different dialects that would be incomprehensible to almost anyone when I tried to speak Arabic. The result nowadays is that I have basic understanding of some dialects, but I can only speak in Modern Standard with some of the more archaic features thrown away and maybe a common word from a dialect here and there.

[@aliabdallah4286]

Don't they teach MSA in qatari schools?

[@alaaranga2765]

@@aliabdallah4286 i go to a private american school; all schools are required to teach MSA by law to first language students, but my school has very little support for people in first language arabic classes (i take first language arabic)

[@sktrid]

You should have way more views!

[@ahmedharajli189]

I just stumbled on your channel and I’m loving it, thank you so much I’m so glad the algorithm worked

[@SolarLingua]

Stupid me... Having learned Moroccan Arabic a few years ago, I thought that I would be able to communicate with Arabs. I absolutely wasn't...

[@iCrimzon]

Isnt moroccan arabic the one dialect that can understand others but no one else can understand

[@fractal_gate]

Wow this makes me feel better about Chinese's dialect situation, which is not nearly as discouraging.

[@roadman_hanzi]

As an Arab, yeah our accents aren't that different , I mean we have alot of local difference but over all unlike what the guy said accents are accents , arabic accents aren't even that bad , everyone can understand everyone except if you were morrocan

[@DerekSpeareDSD]

I had a friend from Persia. He got a good grasp of Arabic in about six weeks since the two writing systems are the same.

[@FarfettilLejl]

Congratulations, you basically already speak Lithuanian since you know the Latin alphabet 😂

[@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p]

Some letters or sounds in Iraqi are not even found in MSA so i use some Persian letters instead like گ پ چ

[@enricobianchi4499]

And they're not just different pronounciations of the same phonemes but actual different phonemes? Or do you just prefer to write in a way that makes the actual pronunciation clearer?

[@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p]

@@enricobianchi4499 okay how can I explain this, the letter g as in game is not found in the alphabet so some arabs use the closest letter which is ك (k) to write it and the same applies for other letters but in the recent years the use of persian letters became more popular so u can see shop signs using persian letters. Sorry for my english i know it isn’t great 😅

[@enricobianchi4499]

@@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p no of course i know that but i was just asking if Iraqi makes a difference between k and g, or if all "k"s are just pronounced "g"

[@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p]

@@enricobianchi4499 when pronounced yes we distinguish between them but when written it is usually written as k

[@enricobianchi4499]

@@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p so in Iraqi there are pairs of words whose only difference is that one has a k and one has a g? your english is perfect btw :)

[@OmnipresentPotato]

You'll find that the language used by deeply religious or learned people is usually a mix between their dialectal Arabic and MSA, if not totally MSA (which is always something non-religious or slightly anti-religious media likes to poke fun at). And besides that, you'll often find people who read a lot quoting poetry/Quran/Hadith or just anything in MSA, and incorporating MSA words and structure into their speech, sometimes even tl be humorous.

[@dominicdoherty7208]

High quality videos, i love your channel already. Do you have any resources for learning Levantine besides college? I work for a lovely Lebanese family and would like to learn some of their language

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

Unfortunately not much, but back before college, I learned a lot on the KZbin channel LearnArabicwithMaha (although she’s not Lebanese, but it could work). There’s also the Wikipedia page on Levantine Arabic, but of course, you can trust or not trust that as much as you want. Specifically Levantine vocab will be especially hard to find, all the dictionaries I tried using have been somewhat… inaccurate. But good luck!

[@hsjoihs_linguistic]

I would love to see the 1500-word list that you've used to calculate the lexical similarity!

[@isabellacatolica5594]

Euskera is literally so alike to what you say. Euskara batua is the oficial and standard version, but every town, city and village has its own dialect. For example there are Bizkaiera, Gipuzkera, Zuberoera, Behe Nafarrera, Goi Nafarrera and Arabera (extinct). In every one of those there are at least 20-50 different dialect zones and many more not contacted/examinated/studied. Euskera is so rich that we have a especific word for our dialects: euskalki.

[@omp199]

Are the dialects mutually intelligible, though?

[@深夜-l9f]

its not because msa is old but because it's intellectual and formal. think of it like speaking classical latin like cicero while ordering coffee

[@tomaikenhead]

great content my dude. i know this has been mentioned by another commenter, but wanted to say that it would probably be helpful to viewers if your verbal pacing were slowed a bit. i usually increase the playback speed on youtube but i have to slow it down for your videos. you've got a ton of interesting stuff to say! let it breathe :)

[@ugiswrong]

0.75X and then he is speaking normally inside a tin can

[@SynthwaveDuck]

I love the fast clip of his speech

[@pointteaboy7113]

Hello. Thanks for the video :) I just wanted to point out that it would be easier to listen to if you could just put a bit more pause between your sentences or try to speak a little bit slower. Great content and keep going :)

[@jeongbun2386]

It really annoys me when other Muslims act as if Classical Arabic is the only ‘pure’ one. We have MSA just so we can keep the Quran in its original form, I don’t know why we act like it’s somehow superior.

[@默-c1r]

super helpful video, I think I'm too scared to try this at all

[@TaiFerret]

I always imagined it to be similar to the situation of Medieval Europe where Latin was used as a standard formal / written language, while the every day spoken Latin is just Romance languages as they existed at the time. Would that be a fair comparison?

[@roadman_hanzi]

Nope , this guy is exaggerating , modern standard arabic is just like Mandarin to chinese or French in a colonial meeting between French colonies whom all speak different accents

[@roadman_hanzi]

@YouDontDreamInCryo thank you

[@theidioticbgilson1466]

the mimation in 7:00 remeinds me of akkadian lol semitic family resemblance or luck?

[@MikeIsCannonFodder]

I wonder if that bread vs meat thing is at all related to something I got out of a recent RobWords video where he explained that in Old English, the word that became meat just meant food.

[@Honest_Question]

The explanation I heard (as an Arab) was that Lahm used to convey the meaning of "essential food" and for Jews that was bread whereas for Arabs that was meat. But of course I'm not sure how true that is and I don't know the source.

[@hishamawartani9213]

Actually using the -و suffix is used in Jordan and southern Palestine by some people. Not uncommon. Also in defense of teaching MSA is that the fact that dialects have not been officially codified leads to a very large degree of fluidity even between speakers of the same dialect. It’s much harder to tell if something is “wrong” or “right” in dialects because usually you have to just rely on your gut sense, which can be different for different people. One example was that I wanted to see if Palestinian Arabic had the same distinction between animate and inanimate objects in the plural and I came up with three different formulations depending on who I asked. It’s not that you can make more mistakes in dialect it’s more that you can make certain kinds of mistakes but not others.

[@hishamawartani9213]

If you’re curious on what the formulations were: Some people just use the masculine for all plurals Some people use feminine for everything except masculine animate plurals Some people use feminine for everything

[@gamermapper]

It kinda seems that the different Arabic "dialects" are like the entire Slavic language family. They are mutually understandable to some extent but many things are very different and not the same. And MSA would be as if everyone still used Old Church Slavonic

[@linaelhabashy4608]

As a native Arabic speaker, I think that is an apt comparison for where the dialect are now some dialects are closer to others like Czech and Slovak and some dialects are further from each other like Croatian or Russian, but I would say the dialects have more mutual intelligibility in general then the Slavic languages, but it’s still a very good comparison

[@raya74]

Im 100% arabic -Lebanese and i still cant speak arabic so dont feel bad lol i can understand it very well but i need to learn to speak it

[@fearmor3855]

Irish has a similar system to Arabic with dialects and the standard, the standard is a much more strictly regulated entity that's reserved for formal writing and mayhaps school but it has no official pronunciation at least. The difference between it and the dialects isn't so huge but like at the same time it's a pain in the ass sometimes

[@lexohey4718]

10:09 Pretty sure u meantحريق there which means fire, (حريف)usually means someone who’s good at something

[@madbruh123]

Very decent video, for your comment about cases and them being necessary, in fact are very necessary and important to pronounce right because even if they dont matter that much when written, they matter a lot when spoken and heard, the whole meaning of a sentence can become awkward or even reversed if you mistake cases when you speak, also, cases exist in every dialect, they're just not written, you just pronounce them. Also concerning dialects, a lot of the regional dialects are affected during the occupation of these regions by europe, for example, Tunisia and algeria use french a lot in their dialect, Egyptians use english etc.. which is why regional dialects are so hard to master if you havent grown in said region.

[@Kikkerv11]

I am surprised you find Slavic grammar harder than Icelandic grammar! Masculine noun declension is super irregular in Icelandic. Russian case endings look relatively straight-forward in comparison, no? Is it the Slavic verb conjugation that trips you off then?

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

They were very close, but ultimately ya, I decided that two verbs per verb is a killer (also, Russian may have regularized their cases, but Polish has a couple cases with Icelandic-type declension)

[@adoberoots]

Very informative and interesting video! Subscribed

[@laithnouraldin3466]

That's what you get when you refuse to standardize your dialects which have become languages of their own since 1300 years.

[@roadman_hanzi]

I mean at least we can understand each other by 94%...except morroco nobody understands morroco---

[@laithnouraldin3466]

@@roadman_hanzi True, but anyone trying to learn Arabic wouldn't agree at alll. Even if we made multiple standard Languages we would still understand each other. Most Arabs are terrible in Fusha because it's almost a different language to them and they don't really use it.

[@roadman_hanzi]

@@laithnouraldin3466 you know I am an Arab, most people in the gulf speak it + Sudanese people regardless of region understand it...except South sudan ,cuz South sudan speaks Juba, (Eygpt to a degree does speak it too)

[@lucyadam9128]

@@roadman_hanzi ya , but we Moroccan do understand you guys So we always find it funny

[@roadman_hanzi]

@@lucyadam9128 yeah sure.. ..HMPF!! Ò//Ó,I am totally not offended

[@katakana1]

Toki Pona is easy.

[@GrayDaDolf]

And water is wet. Though, I don't wanna find 15 words just to say coffee, but have an actually useful language.

[@رزيئة]

Technically, fusha existed way before islam, it was the language of pre-islamic arabia as well. And it was even more complex. Quran is actually grammatically incorrect and has misspellings because it was written by common uneducated people. But since it's a religious book people deny or even hide that and try to force it on others. Fusha is now just a status thing at this point and lots of people make it their personality or identity. In other words it has been politicized to an extent. So that's why it's stressed, it's a propaganda kind of thing you could say. It's a complicated matter tbh that could only be understood when one is part of the culture. I say learning a dialect is useful and better, but you still need msa as a bases. Also, Saudi arabia has way more dialects, hijaz dialect and the dialects of southern people are too different. Due to hijza people being immigrants mostly and people whose origin and mother languages aren't arabic (some are turks, some are east asian, some are African and so on) and them mixing it up with arabic to make it easier for them to communicate amongst themselves and with each other, so it's softer and smoother than other saudi dialects. While southern dialects (which are usually tribal) are thicker and stronger and closer to fusha. Yet for some reasons they insist that the south is part of hijaz even though the people there are natives and indigenous 🗿 (except one tribe that bred with turks)

[@dizzyrjl3713]

I don't think that the late middle English comparison you offered is fair, since MSA is heard much more often in an average Arab's life via cartoons, school, the news and documentaries, historical TV programs and then the Quran. The closest comparison in regards to exposure would be Shakespearean English since we all have to endure his literature at some point in high school, although much less than MSA. After all, most of us are not watching TV in Shakespearean English. Spongebob in fus7a, however, was the most popular cartoon in the Middle East at one point.

[@janboreczek3045]

Well, about the pre-Hebrew and pre-Arabic languages being split, it is worth to mention that Hebrew ceased being used as a spoken language ~2500 years ago, and until fairly recently it was "frozen in time", so to speak, and did not really evolve that much during that time

[@whym6438]

Hebrew was used continually in a religious context for that entire time, and while some aspects of the language didn't evolve, the sounds certainly did. For example, the Hebrew names Jonathan and Isaac started out being pronounced something like [jonɔθɔn] and [jisˤħɔq] and ended up being [jonatan] and [jit͡sχak] in modern Israeli Hebrew.

[@janboreczek3045]

@@whym6438 Still, it barely changed in that time, far from the extent to which a naturally spoken language would have

[@shada9324]

@@janboreczek3045 it didn't "change" in the traditional way but it did change. different jewish diaspora had/have different ways of pronouncing it influenced along with other languages they were surrounded by as well as natural evolutions over time. koine greek/latin/classical arabic aren't "frozen in time" either, orthodox and atin catholic priests/imams don't pronounce it like how they did in ancient times.

[@Thatguyoverther3]

صارلي تقريباً سنة ونص ادرس اللهجة الخليجية وان شاء الله رح اتخرج بكانون الثاني الجاي. بنسبة اللي خبرتي خلال دراستي استمتعت هواية وگدرت اتعلم الثقافة والتقاليد العربية من اساتذة عراقية ملهمة. اعتبر نفسي محظوظ.

[@empty2757]

خبرتي means my expertise try بالنسبة لتجربتي it sounds more natural

[@positive2772]

@@empty2757 خبرتي fits the dialect

[@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p]

والله چنك عراقي من تحچي، انته منين؟

[@Thatguyoverther3]

@@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p والله اني من المملكة المتحدة يا اخوية

[@Hussein_Al_Enezi-w4p]

@@Thatguyoverther3 عفيه عليك حچيك كلش حلو لو ماگايل اته مو عربي چان ما شكيت 😅😂

[@ldelgg]

Your videos are great but could you please talk a hit more paused and slower

[@AetosGuardi]

As someone who loves learning languages I understand the difficulty you feel to understand why people say it is a one language. I can surly tell you that arabs do not pretend that, yes maybe Arabic dialects are the most far dialects from each others when compared to other languages, but to us, we can understand each other pretty much; not because of social media today, even before people would understand each other easily, unlike the case with Romance languages that people cannot understand each other easily. Why? Because 1- arabic was perserved through the Quran; even today people are losing unique words that their grandparents used to use before and using MSA (fusha) vocabulary and conjugation unconsciously because it is fusha “the correct way” And 2- the root and pattern system, the root helps us know the meaning of a word that the other person uses, because we have the root in our mind, and the pattern helps us know in which way he forms the word - gender, number, tense, voice… etc- so it becomes pretty much easy. So compared to other languages we have a kind of a perk (root and pattern system) over other languages that makes us understand each other without difficulty. And above all of that Arabic is still mutual as Quran as I said helped us stay close unlike Romance languages that insanely broke away, the change between Arabic dialects isn’t big. 3- last thing is that like classical latin and vulgar latin the verbs (especially the auxiliary verbs) are similar to each other more than to MSA for example: 1-the verb “to go”: In MSA, it is ذهب “dhahab” But in all other dialects today, it is راح "rah” all the way from Yemen to Iraq to Morocco 2- “to see”: In MSA, it is رأى “ra’a” While in all other dialects from (as before from Yemen to Morocco) is شاف “shaf” So when you compare a word form a specific dialect you will see a big difference, but when you compare this specific dialect to other modern dialects you will see how more related they are to each other than to MSA. I’m not saying that because I am like one of those who pretends, no, I really feel you because I tried to learn many languages and had the same difficulty even though I’m not as knowledgeable as you but from a native Arabic speaker perspective, when I see you facing the difficulty I immediately remember myself talking to other native speakers of other languages and getting frustrated over things that they will tell me from their language that seem completely ridiculous to me. Maybe this is why there is a distinction between “C2” level and “native” level something that languages decreed on us to make languages the spirits of people that they only can understand and grasp :)

[@ladybugred5641]

I need your help. I'm a native English speaker who has only ever studied Spanish in a classroom setting and I'm torn between choosing to learn Russian or Arabic for a year abroad. I'm equally drawn to both, but I think I might be drawn more to Russian now because it seems less complex to learn. What should I do? (For context I'd be learning part Moroccan Arabic and MSA)

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

Obviously I can’t comment on your future aspiration and/or goals with the language you choose except to say “follow your heart”, but interestingly, I also started college in Russian classes. However, I then had to pause it for a year bc it conflicted with Arabic, and when I got back into it, I had to drop the class bc I was too rusty and being asked to “solve the Russian housing crisis in a minute and a half” lol. Also, at least in my college, Russian classes demanded a lot more (probably due to harder grammar), while Arabic classes were more chill. Basically, it depends on your personality and career goals and such, and it’s your decision, but I would recommend Arabic more based on my experience. And Darija is super cool. Good luck!

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

Also plz don’t let me scare you into not taking a language lol

[@benji272]

@@watchyourlanguage3870 Same in my college; but on the flip side Arabic learners need to take 5 courses instead of 3 to fulfill the language requirement. I wonder if it's the same in your case

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

@@benji272 nah, for my college it’s five for both

[@Ptaku93]

do you plan to make a video on Polish? what you've found interesting, what you particularly struggled with etc.

[@richardwaugaman1505]

How does the relative difference among Arabic dialects compare with the relative difference among Romance languages?

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

I’d say the degree of difference is pretty similar

[@richardwaugaman1505]

@@watchyourlanguage3870 Thanks!

[@fredrickcampbell8198]

Chinese in the 1900s, essentially, without standardisation of any spoken variety. The situation after one spoken variety was made standard is complicated.

[@mikemiddleton1240]

Even within Levantine, people from different areas use different words and pronounce the ق differently and use the same verbs to mean different things in different context. Lebanese is often considered it's own dialect because of how much French is in it. And in Palestinian, there's two dialects, with the Ghazan dialect being more similar to Egyptian and the West Bank dialect being more like Jorandian, But knowing Hebrew did help, but I'm a religious Jew that uses biblical Hebrew every single day so that's probably why. I was able to have basic conversational and go shopping within a month or two. Farsi is supposed to be easier, and there's a TON more resources, but I still picked up Palestinian Arabic way faster than Farsi.

[@user-id9bn1ic9v]

Omg, I’m trying to get an Arabic certificate at Pitt!!

[@lols12169]

When it comes to the time divergence between Arabic and Hebrew, wouldn't they actually be closer than you had implied in the video? Modern Hebrew didn't evolve from old Hebrew over time, but was rather suddenly revived using Biblical Hebrew in a very short amount of time. Obviously, modern Hebrew does diverge from Biblical Hebrew quite a bit, but that is more due to influences from Yiddish and other languages that Israelis would have spoken before learning Hebrew. Also, assuming we are comparing Hebrew to MSA, MSA is intentionally conservative, being quite close to the classical Arabic of the Quran. Again, I'm aware it is not the same but it is a lot closer than the dialects are to the Arabic of the Quran.

[@Asterism_Desmos]

I am actually learning Russian right now, so I’m a bit worried about that grammatical warning lol

[@jakubk.417]

Imagine having this distinction (between formal and informal speech) in a langauge with the grammar of Polsih. Yeah... speaking Czech is just something different

[@SynthwaveDuck]

You have an occassional or near sibilance. I really enjoy the way you express yourself however so simply note. Do you have a Discord or email or something? I might like to talk languages with you sometime.

[@popularmisconception1]

oh how I hate those red letters on green background... it just hurts my eyes and takes several seconds to read since all I see at first is just this strong psychedelic contrast between ... the ... well ... it's probably letters. maybe you see a strong color contrast there but I have to stop the video, consciously suppress the eerie psychedelic and distortive aura and then decipher the letters which are of too similar color to the background, yet somehow strangely strongly different, and it takes serious concentration on my side to read it. I'm somewhat colorblind (deuteranomalic if you want to test what I see on some website, however those sites don't simulate the strange otherworldly aura perception that I have there). anyway, great video. one of those I don't have to play on higher speed.

[@Sveccha93]

The perfect of سمع has a kasra, not fat7a: sami3tum.

[@rursus8354]

4:21 _"in Christianity, you generally pray in the local vernacular"_ - this only became true with the emergence of Protestant Christianity in the 16th century, before that the prayers were said in Latin by the local priest, or in the Greek Orthodoxy: in Greek or in Old Church Slavonic. Besides الفصحى is one of the ugliest words I've heard.

[@icicleghost]

your channel name is absolutely genius

[@TropTrevTv]

This whole things trippy to me, how could we learn both at the same time

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

@@TropTrevTv That’s what I’m saying❗️❗️

[@SonicBoom474]

6:43 I don't think this has anything do with any missing part, even if you tried to write in MSA/classical the way you did it feels very. You need to rephrase the whole thing rather than thinking in English and translating every word. I am not sure about the exact context of the "intended meaning" but I feel like you should replace hear you by ~ see you (أراكم شايفكم ). Then the sentence you used sounds incomplete in arabic without an object. Lastly I am not sure if the verb you want for "ask" is سأل or تساءل. Did you mean شايفكم عم تسألوا / شايفكم بتسألوا / شايفكم عم تتساءلوا ? Btw تساءل is more like to ask oneself / to wonder

[@Hampter-m7r]

We need the New MSArabic based on real arabic.

[@gtc239]

Nice video! What dialect would you recommend? I'm learning MSA but also want to learn at least 1 (god save my brain).

[@gxnitrotype]

i dare you to learn the moroccan dialect darija

[@gtc239]

@@gxnitrotype Any source on that? From what i know it's hard to found one

[@whytho9350]

i think it's safe to assume most arabs regardless of where they come from know levantine and egyptian to an extent, while iraqi and north west african dialects are only known by their native speakers

[@roadman_hanzi]

Sudanese as it is the closest to modern standard arabic , 93% of the words in Sudanese are pure fus-ha arabic words Even our most famous word زول (zool) comes from an old term meaning human in fus ha arabic so yeah

[@mustafaLY2631]

@@whytho9350 As a north African this's 100% true

[@Alaedious]

I would love to see your take on Icelandic! 🇮🇸 🇮🇸 🇮🇸

[@patrickandries7412]

Why is this speeded up ?

[@magnusbrzenk447]

Not enough credit as to how much knowing Hebrew helps with Arabic. Huge. Lexical overlap ain’t nearly as important as grammatical concepts

[@fredericjanelle]

Je me demandais si je devais apprendre le russe ou l'arabe comme prochaine langue...je commence à avoir ma réponse ;)

[@dizzyrjl3713]

كو suffix also used in Egypt

[@kitcutting]

MSA, the standard language of Islam: I highly encourage you to learn me, the holy language of the Qur’an The world’s largest Islamic country (in Indonesian): mmmmm… *no*

[@WannzKaswan]

what is this even meming lol situ waras

[@amj.composer]

Idk if I should quit learning Arabic or not 😭😭

[@SPVRINNA]

This is kinda my problem with arabic. I'd love to learn moroccan or levantine arabic for travel/historical reasons, but it'd be like studying latin to prepare for my trip to Mexico. The situation honestly seems pretty analogous to that of the romance languages a thousand years ago, each having a regional variation of the standard language that no one speaks anymore natively, that lost its case system almost entirely, and that's used for mostly religious and political reasons.

[@Novumvir]

Although romance and arabic dialects are comparable in terms of grammatical change, they are not in terms of vocabulary and phonology. Arabic "dialects" are way more conservative on that side.

[@SPVRINNA]

@@Novumvir Hmm, that's interesting. Even the most conservative romance languages, like Italian or even Sardinian? Regardless, I think most native romance speakers would say the grammar is the hardest part, even if their languages are phonologically/lexically much further from the precursor language than Arabic dialects are from MSA.

[@Novumvir]

@@SPVRINNA Sardinian is the big exception, it retains about as much latin vocabulary and phonology as do dialects of arabic. The romance languages borrowed a lot from germanic, slavic and greek which made them lose a lot of latin vocabulary, while arabic dialects seem to be so influenced by classical arabic even to this day that they kept most arabic words more or less intact. But not the grammar though which almost completely collapsed.

[@esti-od1mz]

@@Novumvir i don't think so, many arabic dialects evolved phonologycal innovations: for example "q" is lost in most of them...

[@Novumvir]

@@esti-od1mz compared to changes like fronting of k and g as well as loss of long vowels, arabic hasn't changed that much.

[@Ahmed-pf3lg]

Dialects are written, but there is no standard form of writing them. Basically you can just write it anyway... so it's not "really" written.. it's not standard or taught. And, moreover, it's only written in Social Media really... like in chats between friends, etc.

[@Fummy007]

Still trying to make "yall" a thing in standard English I see.

[@cander6751]

What flag was that that you used for Spanish in the Italian Spanish split?

[@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226]

Bolivia

[@cander6751]

@@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226 Why would you use Bolivia as the symbol of Spanish? That's like using South Africa as the symbol for English or something

[@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226]

@@cander6751 Why are you asking me? I’m not the creator of this video.

[@cander6751]

@@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226 In English sometimes we use "You" in a general sense meaning "a person" I wasn't asking you personally but rather "Why would (a person) use the Bolivian flag as a symbol of the Spanish language."

[@sabbe_satta_bhavantu_sukhi7226]

@@cander6751 You’re responding to me directly about someone else. Why would he use…..would make more sense, but it isn’t a big deal to me. I have no idea why he used the Bolivian flag. He has Bolivian heritage or he thought it would be edgy. Who cares about Spain or Mexico, right?

[@spaghettiisyummy.3623]

Do Hindi and or Indonesian next!

[@wookie2222]

So... It's basically like being able to study 'Romance' as a language, where everything that is written is in classical Latin but the people who speak the language do speak Italian, Spanish, Portugese or any other romance language and those languages usually don't have a written form? That's tough.

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

On a shorter timescale ya that’s not a terrible way to look at it

[@wisejackproject]

1000th like :)

[@stevenschilizzi4104]

Well, that was quite informative, thank you. My take on it is this, after having lived eight years in Masr, or Egypt. Unless you have a particular connection to an Arabic speaking country or plan to go live or work there, then of course choose that country’s dialect. If however you are in neither of these two cases, my advice would be to go for Egyptian Arabic, because by and large most people in most Arabic speaking places understand that dialect. As is said in the video, this is because the vast majority of films and TV programs in Arabic are produced in Egypt, where that dialect is used. The only drawback to this is that Egyptians are (I think) the only ones to pronounce ‘g’ where everyone else says ‘dj’. So Egyptian ‘gabal’ (mountain) is in other dialects ‘djabal’ or ‘djebel’. And likewise ragel vs radjul (man), gumhuriya vs djamhariya (republic), etc. Note that vowels tend to be unstable across dialects, but this doesn’t matter much in a language that is strongly consonant-based. I remember that for Egyptian school kids learning MSA at school was almost like learning a foreign language. E.g. ‘bread’ in MSA is khubz while in Egyptian it is ‘aysh. Heaps like these. But as the video says, MSA is justified as a way to better understand the Qur’an al kareem. To appreciate this, we can remember that traditionally the whole Qur’an or large parts of it were learnt by heart without the students understanding much of what they were reciting.

[@cobra8888]

30 seconds in and you confuse "Yalla" (يلا) with "Ya Allah" (يا الله) in the video. And I knew this was gonna be a treat. Some random points: In Saudi, technically there are 5 dialects. You forgot the Southern dialect that could be considered as parts of Hejazi but they do stand on their own. Enough that Southern Saudis brag that other Saudi wouldnt understand it. A bit far stretched but you get the point. And there is the "Common" dialect of Saudi. Not official by any means but is somewhat recognized. So if someone from the South were to converse with someone from East, both would use the "Common" dialect to communicate. Cases are not NOT being used at all. They do exist in the Quran and The Bible and Schools to teach you Arabic. They are not being used in dialects because dialects utilize actual letters sometimes similar to English (A,I,E,O,U). But in MSA they are everywhere. Also because over time you will know what does the word mean because you have read the sentence or the position of the word in a sentence enough times that you would have memorized it by heart. Which takes me to. The cases in Arabic is similar to Hebrew. Open the Torah or Talmud and the Hebrew has cases to distinguish the enunciation of "Aleph" with another. A native Hebrew speaker won't use those cases in day to day similar to how a native Arabic speaker won't use cases in their day to day as well. I never heard of this "spoken but not written" rule. The only time I did was when I was studying German. Politicians resort to Grammaritians to correct their cases is because on average they are not good at reading in general. So giving a speech in Arabic without cases will expose them for the uneducated they are. You know who is actually can deliver an eloquent Arabic despite the distress? News reporters. Because of their time having to read and write and correct the language that over time they develop such mastery that they can just speak MSA while getting shot at and not make one mistake.

[@viperking6573]

Are they as different as the romance languages between each other?

[@HossamAbdallah-v8c]

Mmm well, El fus'ha is difficult but not hard for me as native speaker. If you want to improve your level watch Egyptian old movies and read Arabic literature I recommend Mahmood el-Aqaad's stories, Naguib Mahfouz'stories and Mostafa el-Manfalouti's stories. Those are a significant writers. Try to learn Egyptian accent because it's the easiest , but don't try to learn Port-Said people and upper Egypt people 'a dialect because they will be strange and hard to imitate for beginners, ok. Good luck in the learning of Arabic 👍

[@DavidCowie2022]

I read somewhere that there's a move to make a new international standard based on the educated speech of Cairo. Does anyone here know more about that?

[@josephboyer5761]

This is a nice video but you didnt cover hardly anything of what makes Arabic actually hard. As you progress through your journey learning Arabic, you would likely make separate videos covering topics about what makes arabic hard depending on what stage you're at. Just to name some things: 1. The measures chart... While understanding the forms isn't too bad on paper, tuning your ear to actually being able to identify the different measures flawlessly in speech for every root and every pattern their derivatives can take... is really tough. Especially when the differences are so subtle. The easiest for me was measure 10 (adding است) since it's a whole three letters! 2. Broken plurals - Given any plural, not being able to consistently reverse engineer the singular form really sucks to say the least. The other way around is worse. There's easily 8+ different forms the plural can take and they're basically random aside from sound feminine (adding ات) and sound masculine - which is only used for people (adding ين) You just have to learn them one by one. And don't forget, when a word is plural any adjective that modifies it is feminine! 3. inconsistency with verbal nouns - Measures 2-10 all have easy to learn patterns for forming verbal nouns. Measure 1 does not. Just like with broken plurals, you have to learn them one by one, most likely through trial and error. There is simply no way to guess the verbal noun of a measure 1 verb CORRECTLY. 4. The EXTENSIVE vocabulary... Estimates for how many words there are in Arabic can get as high as 11 million. While I'm not so sure about 11 million... there's certainly many many many times more than English. And i'm not just talking about those crazy rare medical words that english has - arabic has them too - I'm talking about the amount of roots that mean basically the same thing. There's around 6 or so words that all mean "to become," in common MSA nowadays. This sounds like a lot, and it is. The theory now is that there actually used to be 24 different words for "being/becoming" depending on what hour of the day it was. After a period of time, only around 6 of them stuck. I just asked my old ustadh about it, and at the time of writing this comment he gave me a new phrase, "بين عشية و ضحاها" which is used to express surprise about an unexpected outcome. Anyway, my point is this: there's literally no way you're magically conjuring up the intended meaning of so many of these words and phrases, and it's ALMOST a fool's errand to try and go learn them. But that's the problem - Arab's all know these sayings, they use them, albeit rarely, they still use them. So you have to learn it if you want to know what they're saying. Of course, every language has their proverbs, their slang, their innuendos, etc. but Arabic seems to just have a never-ending barrel of different ways to say the exact same thing. You will think you know your stuff, and then you'll encounter a new vocab word, see what it means, just to find out it's a fifth way of saying "to hear," and your reaction will be "But I thought X word meant 'to hear'!!" -- And it does! But there's always another word for it. 5. Logistics... Materials for learning this language are much harder to come by compared to something like Spanish. If you want to learn a dialect, even harder. If you want to learn Iraqi dialect, you have the best odds of joining the army, getting to DLI and hoping they still teach it when you get there, and getting randomly assigned the dialect you want. Good luck learning it on your own with no aid from a native. Translators never accommodate for Iraqi dialect; they don't understand it. The problem of the dialects isn't really so much that they exist, it's that obtaining material that you can actually use and learn from is very very difficult. It makes me not want to learn Iraqi - and I love this dialect. I've been studying this language in the military for around 3 and a half years now, i graduated DLI, and continue to progress through my career as a linguist. There are so many things I still don't know. I have an ILR 3 in MSA Listening and a couple dialects, and it doesn't even feel like it most the time. I was Iraqi trained at DLI, and I still suck lol, I still have so much to learn. Egyptian and Levantine dialects are two cans of worms I haven't dared to open even still. Learning this language is an exhausting journey.

[@Alaedious]

Informative comment! Thanks! 🎉❤😊

[@gxnitrotype]

looks like this video is only getting views 4 months late haha but hey, at least hebrew helped you with the pronunciations, right?

[@almami1599]

Well it certainly helped with 2 consonants

[@neuMANSTEIN]

Mmmm,,, (يلا) doesn't equal (يا الله)

[@PSCHS_ELTHS]

Polish is really so hard? Isn't other slavic languages on same level of difficulty? Although, I'm Ukrainian, so other slavic languages for me is not so difficult, as for non-slavic people.

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

Of the Slavic languages, I’ve only studied Polish and Russian to this point, but of those two, Polish’s grammar is much more difficult, largely because of the unpredictability of the Polish genitive and locative cases, whereas in Russian the cases have mostly regularized. I don’t know how it is in any other Slavic languages tho

[@PSCHS_ELTHS]

@@watchyourlanguage3870 okay, I didn't learn grammar in Russian & Ukrainian, but yeah, cases in Polish was a bit unintuitive. I've got a question, will you learn more slavic languages, if yes, which? (Just wondering)

[@watchyourlanguage3870]

@@PSCHS_ELTHS Yes, I’ll at least study Serbian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Bulgarian in future if not more

[@PSCHS_ELTHS]

@@watchyourlanguage3870 nice. As much, as I understand, Ukrainian (same thing with Belorus) won't be hard, Czech will be harder, and Serbo-Croatian & Bulgarian languages will be hardest. It's nice to hear (or read) that foreigners learning slavic languages (especially Ukrainian)

[@mbg8733]

Well, Modern Hebrew is more of a conlang that borrowed from ancient Hebrew and Arabic, than a natural language that descended from ancient Hebrew.

[@livedandletdie]

I'm glad I'm not learning Arabic. I mean, it's hard enough to speak German, and I say that as someone who grew up listening to German, due to my mother and grandmother speaking it, although neither of them are German, their ancestors were, as they both had very German names. Now as I never use German, or any other language except for English, even keeping in touch with my mother tongue is hard, as I hardly use it at work either. And this comes from someone who is supposed to be able to speak 5 languages.

[@ayouxy]

It's not that the Arabic language is the language of God or we consider it holy. Sure, you may find some uneducated people who think that but it's not accurate. God knows all languages and favour none over others. The only reason the Qur'an is in Arabic is because the place where it was it was revealed had Arabs. As for why people (especially Indonesians, shout out to them) choose to learn Arabic instead of settling for a translation is because of various reasons: - translation kills any piece of writing. No matter what we're translating, there's a certain aspect that will be lost in translation. This is crucial for a holy text that should not be tampered with in the slightest. - the Qur'an uses Al Balagha البلاغة, which is the art of effective and persuasive speech or writing, particularly in Arabic literature and oratory traditions. Al-Balagha encompasses the skillful use of language, figures of speech, metaphors, rhyme schemes and stylistic devices to convey ideas in a powerful and impactful manner. This is why if you ever looked up translations, you'd find them riddled with added parentheses that explain the meaning, which brings us to yet another point - the Qur'an is deeply complex. Many verses have layers that are only understood recently or may not have been understood yet. This makes it so that translations can suddenly become sacrilege that needs quick updating, which creates a lot of problems. - last point I can think of, as a Muslim, is the amount of non Arabs who had hate breath into their souls against Islam. These people would often bring a verse that has been translated in English which makes it easily misinterpretable for them. They grow so convinced of the meaning they understood that they assume that everything I say is a lie. However, if they read it in Arabic they will see that the meaning it truly carries cannot be easily translatable and can only be explained through Expressions that are close but not true to the actual meaning

[@slm20408]

As an arab, dialects are fucking confusing

[@ha.alamin]

Muslims don't believe that Classical Arabic is “the language of Allah” or “the only pure language” or more “correct”; Prophets communicate in the language of their people (including the scriptures they come with). Classical Arabic is preserved to avoid losing the message, as happened with the prior prophets. There is a belief that the Arabs were at their peak of eloquence at the time of the Prophet, which is why one of the miracles of the Qur'an is its challenging the poets with supernatural eloquence, similar to how witchcraft was at its peak in Egypt during Moses, which is why he challenged the magicians. Translations of the Qur'an are not considered holy because translations between _any_ two languages will lose meaning _and_ force you to specify what's not specified in the original; this has nothing to do with Classical Arabic being more “correct” or “pure” (though Muslims believe Allah chose to reveal the Qur'an in Arabic not arbitrarily but for reasons, some of which the Qur'an itself explicitly mentions). As an aside, descriptivism is not 100% true. Yes, it's a good operating principle when all you want to do is describe a language by how it's used, but that's not the end all be all of what we want to do with language. First of all, it doesn't rid us of an idea of correct and incorrect language, it just democratises it. Sure, if two large camps form, then both forms are self-consistent - in the sense that we know what the exceptions are, not in the sense that there aren't exceptions to the rules - and self-sustaining and useful within the camps and it'd be correct to use either that all participants of a conversation can understand and we probably shouldn't give one more or less prestige because of the social class of their speakers, but you can't just speak however you like without limit, otherwise language is useless. Second of all, it's a poor way to actually use language; like, seriously, please don't use “literally” to mean “very”. If I speak to someone regularly, and I know that when they use the word, “literally”, they mean it in the archaic sense, I would argue that person is using language in a much more useful (to their audience) way than someone else whose words can't be relied on. Self-imposing rules that may not be strictly part of a language is not necessarily a bad thing.

[@grindstoneii]

I’d like to note that while this is otherwise a very good video, I have a correction to your pronunciation of enphatic H in arabic. You pronounce it too similarly to the Kh fricative, which can really put off a lot of arabic speakers. The pressure is in the glottis, not the uvula or soft palate

[@mido_mayadoo]

You need to learn الاعراب😂😂now

[@ibrahim-c7w3s]

جيد هيهيهي

[@floridaman318]

"Arabic" and "Chinese" have something in common.

[@SonicBoom474]

8:18 no one of the main reasons is Yiddish and company which have nothing to do with the old hebrew. The current hebrew is not the old one nor a natural continuity of it. It is an artificial "revival".

[@mustafaalsamani8666]

thank you for the vid but arabic being the only pure language and the language of god isn't an islamic belief, allah spoke arabic but there no evidence that he only spoke arabic, but it is important to get islamic knowledge

[@farojj]

If you wanna learn a new culture and a new language you can't judge it by YOUR culture and YOUR mentality