DiscussMormonism.com

Dr. Peterson,

I am considering taking some Arabic courses at a local community college. I enjoy learning languages. Arabic interests me for several reasons.

• Given world events over the past 10 years, it seems a knowledge of Arabic would be good for understanding what it going on and why events have unfolded the way they have.
• Because of the first, a knowledge of Arabic would also broaden my job skills.
• Being a related Semitic language, Arabic would be helpful for later learning Hebrew (a long term goal of mine).
• Arabic does have some applicability for studying early Christianity (though obviously much less than Greek, Latin, or Syriac).
• Arabic has applicability for studying the continuity of the Greek philosophical tradition.

I would have already signed up, but I read this paragraph on a website (the guy who runs the website is a skilled polyglot, so he usually knows what he is talking about)

There is no question that culturally Arabic is an extremely important language. However, it is not as useful as one may assume at first. The first problem is that if you wish to converse on the street, you will either have to learn one of the many colloquial dialects, which are only spoken in a few countries. Thus the large number of countries where 'Arabic' is spoken is actually misleading, since it is written but not actually spoken. Second, if you wish to do business, most Arabic businessmen will speak either English or French (in the Maghreb). The business advantage of speaking Arabic is probably not as strong as being a Muslim. Thus the reader would be advised to limit his ambitions as to the use of Arabic and not assume he'll be able, from the study of one language, to address each and every Arab in their mother tongue.

Source: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ ... index.html

My first question is do you concur with the quoted opinion? Also, if you could clear up any misperceptions I have in the bulleted list I would be very grateful.

Thank You.

Aristotle Smith wrote:Given world events over the past 10 years, it seems a knowledge of Arabic would be good for understanding what it going on and why events have unfolded the way they have.

True. And not just in Arabic-speaking countries. With the resurgence of Islamic fervor over the past few decades, Arabic is relevant throughout the Muslim world as the language of the Qur’an, of the shari‘a, etc.

Aristotle Smith wrote:Because of the first, a knowledge of Arabic would also broaden my job skills.

It would -- although, of course, that depends on what your job goals are. It wouldn't be relevant, probably, to plumbing or accounting, but could be quite relevant to political science, diplomacy, development work, international business, and several areas of academia.

Aristotle Smith wrote:Being a related Semitic language, Arabic would be helpful for later learning Hebrew (a long term goal of mine).

Yes. Their structures and vocabularies are cognate and mutually helpful. I'm also convinced that a knowledge of early Arabia can shed important light, by way of cultural parallels, on the world of the Hebrew Bible. That idea used to be widely accepted (most of the great nineteenth-century scholars of the Hebrew Bible were also Arabists, and vice versa), but has gone somewhat out of favor in the past century -- for, in my view, no really compelling reasons, but mostly because of the more specialized nature of modern scholarship.

Aristotle Smith wrote:Arabic does have some applicability for studying early Christianity (though obviously much less than Greek, Latin, or Syriac).

Plus, there is an entire Arabic Christian literature, commencing no later than the early 800s AD, that remains almost ignored in the West. (BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative has now published two volumes of Arabic Christian materials. And, for that matter, one volume of Syriac writing.)

Aristotle Smith wrote:Arabic has applicability for studying the continuity of the Greek philosophical tradition.

Absolutely. That, in fact, is the chief focus of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative.

There is no question that culturally Arabic is an extremely important language. However, it is not as useful as one may assume at first. The first problem is that if you wish to converse on the street, you will either have to learn one of the many colloquial dialects, which are only spoken in a few countries. Thus the large number of countries where 'Arabic' is spoken is actually misleading, since it is written but not actually spoken.

It's very true that Arabic represents a classic case of diglossia. The spoken Arabic on the street in Cairo is substantially different from that spoken on the street in Riyadh, both differ from that spoken in Marrakesh, and all three differ from the classical language and even from "Modern Standard Arabic" (MSA), which is spoken natively by nobody.

But it's misleading to suggest that Arabic isn't spoken in those countries. It is. The dialects are simply variants of Arabic, not separate and distinct languages. And every educated person in those countries will be able to read and understand and more or less to speak MSA, because it is the language of broadcasting, literature, newspapers, and official documents both public and private. The Arabic translators at the United Nations render speeches and documents into MSA, not into the Maghrebi or Palestinian or Sudanese dialects. I've lectured at universities in Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, and, to the extent that I did it in Arabic, did so in MSA.

Languages where Arabic is written but not actually spoken would include not Tunisia and Syria, but places like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. (I've actually spoken MSA in Indonesia and Iran, where students at Islamic schools learn the standard language but know nothing about regional dialects.)

Second, if you wish to do business, most Arabic businessmen will speak either English or French (in the Maghreb).

I've found such things spotty. Some Arab businessmen speak English almost natively. Some don't speak anything but Arabic. You never know.

In any case, though, Arabs really appreciate it when foreigners have made any significant effort to learn their language and understand their culture. They are very different, in this regard, from, say, the French, who will sometimes denigrate you unless your French is perfect. The Arabs wax enthusiastic if you can do anything at all with their language. They find it unexpected, and cute.

And, in my experience, every important transaction in the Arab and Muslim world depends upon personal relationships, much more so than in the West. If they like you, you'll go far. If they don't, it will matter relatively little how good your product is or how well you presented it.

The business advantage of speaking Arabic is probably not as strong as being a Muslim.

That may be true. Although the desire to make money is a great leveler of religious differences.

Thus the reader would be advised to limit his ambitions as to the use of Arabic and not assume he'll be able, from the study of one language, to address each and every Arab in their mother tongue.

There's some truth in that. But I think it's overstated. Contracts aren't done in Maghrebi Arabic or Levantine Arabic or Iraqi Arabic. The formal language of all business transactions in the Arab world is MSA.

Thank you for the prompt and full response.

If you don't mind, I have a follow up question. Is the diglossa situation in Arabic more or less pronounced than the diglossa situation with Greek up until the 1980's or so?

Aristotle Smith wrote:Thank you for the prompt and full response.

If you don't mind, I have a follow up question. Is the diglossa situation in Arabic more or less pronounced than the diglossa situation with Greek up until the 1980's or so?

Although I have a degree in classical Greek and have dabbled in the modern language (which I can read passingly well, but not fluently), I don't have a lot of experience with modern Greek, and certainly not with modern spoken Greek on the ground. (Though I would love to spend a year or two there to master the modern language -- an interest I've developed just since finishing graduate school -- I've only visited Greece a handful of times, and have never spent more than a week or two there.) Still, from what I've read, I think it's comparable.

But not identical. Arabic fusha (essentially MSA, although the term can also be extended to the classical language and to the language of the Qur’an) -- sorry; I lack the necessary diacritics -- can't be seen as being in competition with ‘ammiyya (dialect Arabic) in the same way that Demotic and Katharevousa were competing in Greece prior to Demotic's ultimate victory in Standard Modern Greek.

Nor is it the same as Norwegian (with Bokmal and Nynorsk and Samlnorsk, etc.), where the government has had to intervene repeatedly in order to try to regulate the relationship between different varieties of Norwegian.

MSA and the Arabic dialects survive pretty peacefully alongside each other. (In this respect, the case is comparable to the linguistic situation in German-speaking Switzerland, which I know very, very well.) The prestige of the former guarantees that there is no popular pressure whatever to replace it with the relevant dialect. And, in fact, the perceived Qur’anic sacredness of fusha would make such an attempt essentially blasphemous. (A colleague of mine has studied the sociolinguistic relationship of Egyptian colloquial Arabic with MSA for many years now, and it's clear that, while Egyptians all speak the local dialect[s], they're rather ashamed that they do, and often find ‘ammiyya unworthy of academic attention.)

Thanks for your second reply. It was very helpful.