
Why Arabic Is Terrific (2011) - rmbryan
https://idlewords.com/2011/08/why_arabic_is_terrific.htm
======
ztravis
I absolutely agree - Arabic is a beautiful language and a joy to learn, and it
is particularly appealing for those who enjoy structure and regularity (e.g.
CS and math folk!). Be forewarned, though - the significant differences
between MSA (modern standard Arabic, the focus of most "Arabic"
courses/material) and regional/national dialects (and the differences between
those various dialects themselves) may make it a bit less practical than you'd
hope (and a source of disappointment when you go to actually speak with
people!).

Permit me to plug a pet project of mine:

[http://arabicreference.com](http://arabicreference.com)

It's basically an online version of Hans Wehr, the de facto standard
dictionary for students of Arabic. You can search by root or by word and
provides form I vowelling, masadir (infinitives), broken plurals, and other
useful information organized by form. I know there exist other good
dictionaries out there, but I never found one I quite liked as a reference as
much as I enjoyed Hans Wehr. I hope someone else finds it useful! (I've been
neglecting it a bit recently, so I apologize for any bugs and for the lack of
an SSL cert).

~~~
jnbiche
Hans Wehr's dictionary is awesome. How did you get permission to use it
online?

~~~
jnbiche
I'll try to answer my own question: I knew Wehr's dictionary was fairly old,
but it may be old enough that it has entered public domain. There are still
major publishers that publish the dictionary, but it may well be public
domain.

------
arbuge
Anybody who finds Arabic interesting might also like to take a look at
Maltese, an Arabic offshoot which is the only Semitic language written in
Latin script:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language)

As a Maltese person, we were required during the 1980s to learn Arabic as an
additional language in school, a task made considerably easier by the
similarities between the languages.

~~~
wallflower
You might enjoy “The Hyperglot” which stars Michael Levi Harris, a true
polyglot, in a cute short film involving the Maltese language.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKahZwqZjWg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKahZwqZjWg)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-
hyperglot/id992386797](https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-
hyperglot/id992386797)

~~~
pjmlp
Thanks as well, I love to dive into all sorts of languages.

------
rmbryan
And then there is this beast: ع a consonant pronounced so far back in the
throat that you must wait two hours after eating to safely attempt it.
Naturally it's one of the most common sounds in the language.

~~~
dsimms
[https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn-
arabic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn-arabic-
pronunciation) says:

: We have a muscle in our throat which is never used except in vomiting. Think
about that and pretend you are about to be sick. You will find that what is
normally called in English gagging is actually a restriction in the deep part
of the throat. If you begin to gag, and then release the airstream from the
lungs, you will have produced a perfect : (called :ain in Arabic).

~~~
hinkley
Is that the same muscle used to roll Rs in some of the Romance languages?

~~~
dmoy
There's a decent wiki page on this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R)

~~~
hinkley
So yeah that helps me articulate, but I’m still fuzzy on if there’s a
different muscle back there that Arabic uses, or if the answer is “yes, it’s a
variant on the same thing”?

I’m a bit of a parrot and so sounds I can’t reproduce draw me in like a moth
to a flame. The click sound in some African languages and the very guttural
singsong of Vietnamese/Thai are my only nemeses... so far.

~~~
snovv_crash
isiZulu / isiXhosa have not one, but three distinct click sounds. I suspect
the Khoisan languages have even more.

~~~
animal531
Not that many more, they mostly only use 4, with 5 in some localised dialects.

------
istajeer242
Excellent article on a very logical language. However this part:

> No other language will make you work as hard to avoid speaking formally to
> pairs of women

Arabs actually don't speak this formal way and may look at you strange if you
do (they may not even understand in countries like Libya or Egypt); most of
the colloquial dialects skip most of these rules, and don't deal the
difference between "those two females ran" vs "those two males ran" vs "those
males ran", etc.

But author summarizes it:

> The second is that spoken Arabic has diverged substantially from the written
> language, so you can study it formally for years and not be able to
> understand a television commercial

------
DonHopkins
"1\. There's something about intelligence agencies - maybe the familiar
comfort of a three-letter acronym on the wall, maybe the late-night spanking
parties - that draws fraternity boys like ants to a picnic, and right now the
road to bro advancement leads through an Arabic classroom. Their complete lack
of a sense of irony allows these students to combine sincere appreciation for
The Fountainhead with a desire for a lifelong career in government service,
and the hardest part of studying Arabic is having to listen to their asinine
opinions after they have gained enough proficiency to try to express them."

Is there a term like "Brook" is to "Spook" like "Brogrammer" is to
"Programmer"?

~~~
Terr_
I'd like to propose "Brost" <\- "Ghost" <\- "Spook"

It's a weaker connection, but rhyming with "Boast" it maintains the clear
"Bro" prefix and is distinct from other spoken or written words.

~~~
DonHopkins
Brost! Aha yes, rhyming with "Boast" gives it a nice ring, while the
pronunciation and meaning of "Brook" is kind of ambiguous.

I wonder if spies now prefer to be called ghosts instead of spooks because of
the latter's racist connotations, or have they reclaimed the term and wear it
as a badge of honor? ;)

------
sudosteph
I love learning writing systems and think the Semitic languages, including
Arabic, are especially fun to learn and write.

I thought about trying to learn more Arabic for fun, but this part convinced
me not to bother:

> My absolute favorite is that all non-human plurals are grammatically
> feminine singular: al-kutub hadra' (الكتب خضراء) "The books, she is green"

After attempting a minor in French, I hate dealing with arbitrary gender in
languages. I'm convinced that the grammatical construct of gender exists only
to make it easier to identify foreign or uneducated speakers!

~~~
rolleiflex
This is a common opinion even amongst language specialists. So much so, in the
process of modernising Turkish, about 90 years ago, whatever little concept of
gender Turkish had was completely stripped from the language, leaving only
'it', alongside its conversion to Latin alphabet.

The good thing is that it's truly a structural, mathematical language now,
though still hard to learn, and it can avoid the whole his / her awkwardness
for people whose gender is unknown to the writer. The gaps left by the Arabic
words dropped from common use was filled by French (11% of its corpus is 1:1
to French) and if you know a Romance language, you can make pretty decent
guesses.

The bad thing, on the other hand, is that Turkey is full of ancient history,
and so much of that history is adorned in Imperial Turkish, using Arabic
alphabet that no one can read. Even if they did, they wouldn't understand,
since Imperial and Modern Turkish has diverged so much they are no longer
mutually intelligible, not even the slightest clue.

It makes you feel like a foreigner in one's own country, in a way. Always
found it funny that I can understand Middle English from 1300s, and I can read
inscribed colonnades in Rome from 500 BC – but I can neither read nor
understand Turkish from 1922.

~~~
amdsn
> So much so, in the process of modernising Turkish, about 90 years ago,
> whatever little concept of gender Turkish had was completely stripped from
> the language, leaving only 'it'

Do you have a source for that at all? Lack of grammatical gender is a feature
of the entire family so I would be surprised if there were somehow "remnants"
of it that were present as recently as Ataturk's reforms. Removing loans that
happen to be gendered in their source language don't really count.

~~~
rolleiflex
Turkish grammar never had gender, but Arabic loanwords it had did. They tried
to remove those from mass circulation.

------
askthereception
"Unlike the rest of the language, numerals are written left-to-right."

Everyone makes this mistake. It is rather the case that in English (and other
languages) numerals are written right-to-left. You can tell since, when
reading right-to-left, you will know exactly what each number signifies. If
you start from the left, you will not know what the first number signifies
until you have reached the end of the whole number.

Interesting to learn though that in Arabic it is still pronounced from left to
right, up until the tens.

~~~
meitham
It actually used to be right to left, just like the language! In some formal
communication it's still the case, like when news channel announce new year
"one and eighty and nine hundreds and a thousand. The change to read from left
to right started fairly recently in the twentieth century, along with the
change of the order of alphabets from أبجدهوز to أبتثجحخ.

I'm a native Arabic speaker, and yes I still struggle to both: speak P and
hear P, Put no BroPlem!

~~~
phicoh
I'm curious, when was it right to left?

In computer speak, the way we write numbers in English is 'big endian'. We
write the most significant digit first.

The most common 'little endian' system is postal addresses, where we start
with the smallest unit (name) then in, some cases, house number, street, city,
country.

Note that roman numerals are commonly written in big ending way. So this
practice is very old.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Yet historically English numbers were little endian, base twenty: "four and
twenty" etc. Base 20 comes from Celtic roots I think, so perhaps other
European languages have a similar history too.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2909136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2909136)

------
alzaeem
"Glottal stops are everywhere in English but we are not trained to hear them,
so a long portion of one of your first Arabic classes will be devoted to
blowing your mind with the fact that English words like 'apple' and 'elegant'
do not start with a vowel."

Is this for real?! Do non native speakers of Arabic (and similar languages)
not hear the common sound at the start of words like apple, elegant, ignite,
umpire? I find that hard to believe since they are saying it.

~~~
graeme
No, at least for me, Canadian English, I hear them as starting with: ap, el,
ig, um

So sound wise they all start with a glottal stop that we don't notice as it
isn't written as such?

~~~
yorwba
You may very well pronounce them without a glottal stop. If you whisper the
words, you might be able to hear it as a click in your throat.

~~~
graeme
I tried that and I sounded a bit like an exaggerated latin accent from a
movie. Sort of like a faintly pronounced h in front. Is that a glottal stop?

~~~
fouronnes3
No it's not like the initial h in 'hospital' at all. It's closer to you
pronounce the 't' in 'batman' with a Boston accent.

------
apta
A not very well known fact is that Arabic has a pharyngealized lateral
fricative letter (ض) which a lot of people mispronounce as eather a
pharyngealized /d/ sound, or merge with the pharyngealized /dh/ sound (ظ).
Both of which are incorrect. Apparently there are still some people in Iraq
and parts of Saudi Arabia who maintain the correct pronunciation.

It is even mis-transliterated as /d/ in the linked article in (hadra).

~~~
chrisshroba
For someone like me who has no idea what these words mean, could you explain a
little more or link a video on the topic? :)

~~~
tdfx
It's the "dh" in Riyadh. (الرياض‎)

~~~
apta
This is the correct pronunciation:
[https://youtu.be/U0qr9XxJges?t=99](https://youtu.be/U0qr9XxJges?t=99). Note
that they sound similar, but they're independent letters.

------
jen729w
My best friend has a little site which I’m always trying to get her to do more
on. If you’re attempting to learn Arabic it may help.

[http://www.rememberarabic.com/](http://www.rememberarabic.com/)

She has a very definite style:

> When writing the rules for Arabic grammar, someone decided that Lakin should
> be called the weak version of 'but', and Lakinna should be called the strong
> version of 'but'. If someone can decide that, then I can decide to create a
> Hammock of Freedom. So I did.

Go check her out. I’m seeing her for a walk in an hour, I can pass on kind
comments. :-)

------
learc83
I'm trying to learn Egyptian Arabic and the resources available are incredibly
frustrating. It's a very popular language yet nearly all the beginner
resources are for Modern Standard Arabic.

It's almost like being forced to learn Latin first before you can learn
Spanish.

------
kaycebasques
I crammed 3 years of Arabic study into my 2 years at Cal. The logic of the
triliteral root system is partly what got me interested in programming.

~~~
vowelless
Doesn’t Hebrew have a similar concept?

~~~
dalbasal
Not just similar, many/most of the roots are shared.

~~~
fortran77
Hebrew, at least as far as instances of Hebrew writing, is _much_ older than
Arabic. There are 3,000 year old Hebrew Inscriptions ( see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayit_Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayit_Stone)
). The Zayit stone was found 31 miles south west of Jerusalem and its dated as
10th century BCE.

Also see: [https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-older-Hebrew-or-
Arab...](https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-older-Hebrew-or-
Arabic/answer/Helena-Almagest)

~~~
opportune
That's because Hebrew died out for over a thousand years and is now a revived
dead language. The lack of a vulgar dialect prevented it from changing,
similar to how Latin has not changed since native vulgar speakers died out (or
rather, their dialects became so distinct that they are now considered
different languages e.g. Romanian).

~~~
fortran77
Hebrew never "died." That is revisionist propaganda. People have been
continuously speaking Hebrew in Jerusalem, Judea, Sumeria, and nearby in
Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Gaza for the past 3,000 years, as well as using it for
prayer and study while in exile.

~~~
opportune
Source? Obviously people have been speaking Hebrew all over the world as part
of prayer and study, nobody would dispute that. But to my knowledge nobody was
using Hebrew as a day-to-day language until Zionism became popular in the late
19th-20th centuries.

~~~
c0vfefe
Depends on how strict your definition of language death, I suppose. AFAIK
Hebrew has always been used in religious contexts by the Jewish diaspora.

------
whalabi
You can hear some spoken Arabic and a comparison of some of the dialects here:
[https://youtu.be/WEwgafTDrOU](https://youtu.be/WEwgafTDrOU)

I think it's an awesome sounding language.

The differences between the dialects are huge though, but everyone will
understand Lebanese Arabic and Egyptian because they make the most tv and
movies ت

~~~
alpha_squared
Wow, I'm thoroughly impressed how well he nailed that. For reference, I speak
Egyptian Arabic and know speakers from nearly every country represented in
that video. Very neat.

------
Causality1
>Muslims believe that Arabic as written in the 7th century A.D. is the
language of divine revalation. This has served as a tremendously conservative
force on written Arabic, with two important consequences.

>The first is that texts from over a thousand years ago remain accessible to
modern readers. If you're an English speaker, where even texts from 200 years
ago can be rough going, this is quite a treat.

The former has less to do with the latter than you might imagine. Many
languages without a supposed divine mandate are also readable many hundreds of
years later. English is in the minority in that regard, in that its history of
being influenced strongly by conquest locks off its older writings to modern
eyes.

~~~
ggm
Had the experience in the National Palace Museum Taiwan of both Taiwanese and
elder Chinese (the ones who don't only speak simplified but can handle
traditional) looking at thousand-plus year old artifacts and mumbling to
themselves, way beyond what an english speaker will try and do with roman or
greek inscription.

~~~
iso1337
Those older texts were written in Classical Chinese, so there's still a
barrier in terms of context and education to fully understanding them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese)

------
weinzierl
> The Feminine Plural

> Formal Arabic distinguishes between groups composed entirely of women and
> groups that contain one or more men, and has distinct pronouns, plural
> forms, and verb conjugations for feminine dual and feminine plural.

> This gives Arabic a total of twelve personal pronouns. No other language
> will make you work as hard to avoid speaking formally to pairs of women.

All Romance languages I know (French, Spanish, Portuguese) work like that. For
example in Portuguese: _" They play football."_ is _" Elas jogam futebol."_ if
it's about the women's national soccer team but _" Eles jogam futebol."_ if
it's an all male or mixed team.

~~~
notafrog
AFAIK they (in Arabic) also have dual pronouns which refers to exactly two
people; they use another pronoun for 3+ people.

~~~
the_af
Which language? Spanish doesn't.

~~~
notafrog
I meant Arabic.

------
whalabi
But most importantly, you can use an Arabic letter, teh (sounds like t) as a
smiley face: ت

See this happy fellow? ت

------
getcrunk
Traditional Arabic (fusha) is closest to Modern Standard Arabic. Everyone who
said msa or fusha is generally relegated to academic or formal use is not
incorrect. But fusha is still widely in use by Muslim scholars (clergy-ish).
It is necessary to do an advanced study Islam, Quran and majority of Islamic
texts (legal, spiritual, theological) and new texts of a higher academic
caliber are still written in fushah today (albeit with voweling)

------
Thorrez
> This idea is so cool that you'd think it came from a constructed language,
> and yet Arabic has actual native speakers who live completely normal lives
> and will not try to talk to you about Runescape.

Is there a large overlap between constructed language enthusiasts and
Runescape enthusiasts? That seems kind of strange to me.

------
ggm
My favourite bit, after the comments about the screaming eagle?

 _This is where a douchier person would write 'colophon'_

But overall it did its mission: it made learning arabic feel linguistically
interesting.

------
vowelless
> Arabic, on the other hand, twists healthy minds in twelve ways:

I only see 11.

~~~
idlewords
That's the 12th way!

------
ncmncm
The ambiguity of the term "terrific" seems uniquely suited to describing
Arabic.

For non-native readers: the word means both extremely appealing, and also
mortally horrifying. It is best used when both apply to some degree.

~~~
khaledh
Interestingly, "terrific" in Arabic means "فظيع", which has exactly the same
ambiguity as in English: it can be used to refer to something extremely
appealing or extremely horrific.

~~~
ncmncm
It leads me to wonder if this is a universal, from Uruki to Iroquois.

------
gumby
I really enjoyed learning Arabic and this article nicely calls attention to a
number of the highlights. As my first non-indo-european language it helped
change some of my perspectives.

If you speak French the Arabic language texts and practice books are better
than what I've been able to find in English.

------
justaaron
Bonus points for not being on Medium!

~~~
justaaron
double bonus for being witty as all get-up. well written. scroll to the
bottom.

------
petjuh
Proto-indo-european also had extensive use of ablaut, and a dual number.

------
chungleong
Sort of off topic. I still remember this project we inherited from DLI ages
ago. Folks there were having difficulty with storing UTF-8 strings in
JavaScript. Whenever a character gets truncated (due to db length limit),
Netscape would complain and die. Someone apparently discovered that you
wouldn't get the error if the broken UTF-8 text was in a JavaScript comment.
So every text string in the program was a function that parses its own source
code for a comment. It was a hilarious hack.

------
Grustaf
Japanese grammar is decidedly not vanilla. Arabic is actually much more
similar to English and the ind-european languages.

------
barce
I wonder if this is still true: "right now the road to bro advancement leads
through an Arabic classroom."

~~~
ggm
Well that, or inheriting a few billions from dad, to turn into millions so you
can be a millionaire without trying.

------
ydnaclementine
The books recommended seem to have less than stellar reviews, unfortunate

~~~
whorleater
Al-kitaab is a diffcult book to self study, and somehow an even harder one to
work with in class. While it's inefficient, somewhere around book 2 you've
aquired enough vocabulary and grammar to speak in fusha, although unless
you've really followed through with a dialect for ammiya you're going to need
a tutor to help you out. I wouldn't put too much stock in the reviews for the
textbook.

Realistically, arabic is difficult, and actually speaking street arabic is
frustrating.

Source: Currently doing arabic, spending the month in Jordan on vacation doing
an arabic intensive, using al-kitaab in both classroom settings and self
study.

Arabic is, however, definitely terrific. I'm definitely going to blow all my
vacation days next year to come back again.

------
shgidi
Have you tried Hebrew?

