David1917 wrote:For example, what do you think about Prof Arguelles' Arabic level, and the conclusions drawn from
this conversation, especially as it relates to the "should I learn MSA or not?" question?
First of all, for those of us who don't know, the
main focus of the studies of Professor Alexander Arguelles is about reading, rather than speaking.
Professor Alexander Arguelles @ www . foreignlanguageexpertise . com/about.html ; emphasis added wrote:I am all too frequently asked how many languages I know, and I dread this question because I am truly unable to answer it. Having spent my life studying languages, I have such varying levels of knowledge about or abilities in different languages that I cannot give a simple answer, especially since the traditional borders between languages disappear when, as I have, you study many members of any given language family. When I stumble trying to explain this, people often then ask how many languages I can speak; they are trying to simplify the matter, but this actually just makes it all the more complicated. The only aspect of my foreign language knowledge that I can quantify in any way is my ability to read, for my main goal in studying foreign languages is to develop the ability to read the Great Books that have been written in them.
You asked me what I think of his Arabic level. And I only watched a single video were he speaks it. It was the one you linked to. Also, I'd like to note that I was able to watch some parts of it only. Like visually skimming through it. For some reasons like the audio sometimes stopping, and so on.
As for his
speaking skill, I definitely consider it as advanced enough for being able to converse about, at least, most subjects. Some minor errors? Yes, maybe. If they exist, they are about e.g. saying "an yatakallamuna" أن يتكلمون instead of "an yatakallamu" أن يتكلموا. This very example did occur in this video. "yatakallamuna" is the 3rd person present plural of "to speak". But when it is connected to "an", the final letter (the verb's Nun) is dropped, according to the general grammar rule.
However, as for this particular example, I couldn't even entirely (as in: 100%) outrule that keeping that Nun letter has got its foundation in Standard Arabic as well. In some, maybe rare, cases, there also is a second way of saying things like these. Nowadays, some people would directly call them an error, but these things are explained in some of the books on this language, especially in the older ones. There may be a few other things in the video that really would be minor errors. But I don't really mind. The same applies to the accent. It isn't non-existing, but neither is mine.
And as for the conclusions on whether one should learn MSA or not, I definitely agree with him on the importance of learning Standard Arabic. Also, we don't differ on the possibility of communicating with people in various countries in that very flavor of their language. As for me, I'd rather start with Classical Arabic (which is what I actually did), and then I'd look at the differences between it and MSA.
Now why would I recommend that approach? Because a not-so-small number of courses/books that are about the contemporary variant do contain some over-simplifications. Like not explaining some grammar concepts that are needed even for the understanding of some (recent) videos/books/etc. Also, some of the modern learning materials wouldn't focus that much on morphology (as-sarf الصرف). But that area of knowledge really is needed when one tries to comprehend the changes that occur to some verbs when their number or tense changes. Sometimes, one or more letters are being removed, so it isn't always that easy to recognize them. So that's where studying just a bit of morphology comes in handy.
That said, whoever learns MSA from any reliable source, even if it wouldn't be too in-depth, speaking of grammar, already did acquire a certain foundation of some kind that can be built upon.
And just to be clear, whatever I said about learning MSA and some books/courses isn't about Professor Alexander Arguelles nor his Arabic skills. It simply is a part of my answer to David1917's question.
. Through things like these, I am able to learn about how to make my posts more fancy and more useful to a broader range of people. They might even include you one day.
. I have various reasons for doing so. 
