Contemplating Arabic

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Xenops
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Contemplating Arabic

Postby Xenops » Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:44 pm

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40662&PN=0&TPN=1

As Cavesa has mentioned here (and on the old forum), learning Arabic might prove rather useful in the future, so I sometimes wonder if I should learn it alongside French, especially as I’m interested in Europe. I confess I don’t have a passion for it, and since it’s a grade 4 language as far as learning it as an English native, it would be the one of the most difficult to learn. But passion or not, I’m wondering if it’s a necessity.

Thoughts?
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby tarvos » Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:32 pm

Stop contemplating it and start learning it. No language was ever learned sitting around and pondering.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:36 pm

I don’t wish to appear to be “beating up on you” but, in my view, only you can answer these questions.

Right off the bat, I think you need to decide whether learning Arabic will be useful or essential, it cannot be both.

When you say that “learning Arabic might prove rather useful”, you are invoking the notion of probability and the quality of having practical worth. So then, given your own foreseeable future, will the ability to communicate in Arabic at the Intermediate Level prove to have some practical worth for you and, if so, when and why do you think this will be the case? What is the probability: 10 percent, 50 percent, 100 percent?

When you ask yourself “I’m wondering if it’s a necessity”, you are no longer in the realm of practical worth; rather, you have entered the realm of that which is indispensable. There is no sliding scale of usefulness here, the ability to speak Arabic that you are pondering would be absolutely essential to your well-being. Are you contemplating such a scenario? Can you describe it? How likely is this to occur?
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby aaleks » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:28 pm

I don't believe in a reasonable choice, because life is unpredictable. If the necessity is just a hypothetical probability and you have no interest in the language itself, all the effort and time you'd have to put into learning it will probably never pay off.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby Xenops » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:49 pm

Thank you for the replies, folks. :) Perhaps my paranoia with the political happenings (I’ll just leave it at that) is making me wanting to be prepared...for something that may or may not happen. As much of the feedback in my “learning a language you don’t love” thread, it’s hard to spend time on something you’re not obsessed about.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby Arnaud » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:32 am

People in France don't speak arabic, they speak their "dialects" if it's been maintained in the family: Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Berber, etc, and understand Arabic, french is used as the Lingua Franca among them. It's so true that they send their children to Arabic courses during the week-end.
Second thing: Currently there is a massive arrival of people from Eastern Europe, I hear more and more Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Ukrainian (and Russian spoken by Ukrainians) and other slavic languages in the streets. There is also a big Tamil community (due to the colonial history of France) that keeps on growing. So Arabic is no more useful than any other language and is "lost in the mass".
French is still the more useful language and everywhere in the Parisian suburbs, there are FSL courses offered for free in the schools and public libraries.
That being said, if you want to learn MSA Arabic, learn it.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby Atinkoriko » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:53 am

Being as it’s quite a difficult language, I’m not sure the feeling of necessity would be a strong enough motivator to get you to stick with it all the way to the end.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby DangerDave2010 » Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:01 am

It is a necessity, but one is only able to understand that after having learned it.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby Ogrim » Thu Nov 16, 2017 1:04 pm

I find the word "necessity" a bit curious. If you use it with geopolitics in mind, then I can't see how it is more necessary to learn Arabic than Russian or Mandarin.

I am studying Arabic (MSA) because I want to. I don't think it will be very "useful" for me, and it is certainly not necessary, but it would give me great satisfaction to be able to pick up an Arabic newspaper, listen to a song by or tune in to Aljazeera and actually understand what I read or hear. That is still a long way away, Arabic is difficult and requires a lot of investment. However, the more I advance, the more I fall in love with the language, and my only regret is that I did not start learning it many years ago.
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Re: Contemplating Arabic

Postby nooj » Thu Nov 16, 2017 3:02 pm

Arnaud wrote:People in France don't speak arabic, they speak their "dialects" if it's been maintained in the family: Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Berber, etc, and understand Arabic, french is used as the Lingua Franca among them. It's so true that they send their children to Arabic courses during the week-end.
Second thing: Currently there is a massive arrival of people from Eastern Europe, I hear more and more Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Ukrainian (and Russian spoken by Ukrainians) and other slavic languages in the streets. There is also a big Tamil community (due to the colonial history of France) that keeps on growing. So Arabic is no more useful than any other language and is "lost in the mass".
French is still the more useful language and everywhere in the Parisian suburbs, there are FSL courses offered for free in the schools and public libraries.
That being said, if you want to learn MSA Arabic, learn it.


Agreed, but Berber is not an Arabic language, it is a related branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and doesn't deserve to be classified among the North African Arabics.

It seems to me that France is like the USA: it eats up foreign languages as well as native French languages so that within a generation, two at most, people do not speak the language of their ancestors.

Xenops wrote:http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40662&PN=0&TPN=1

As Cavesa has mentioned here (and on the old forum), learning Arabic might prove rather useful in the future, so I sometimes wonder if I should learn it alongside French, especially as I’m interested in Europe. I confess I don’t have a passion for it, and since it’s a grade 4 language as far as learning it as an English native, it would be the one of the most difficult to learn. But passion or not, I’m wondering if it’s a necessity.

Thoughts?


Passion is a funny thing, you might end up falling madly in love with Arabic even though you don't find Arabic attractive now.

I would dispute the idea that Arabic might prove useful in the future, because in fact Arabic is useful now. But it also calls into question what 'usefulness' means. If you live in the USA or in Europe, knowing Arabic is only as useful as the opportunities you go looking for it. Let me put it another way, if you want to use Arabic, you will find Arabic useful. If you learn Chinese but don't want to do anything with that, well Chinese is a big fat useless language to you.

If you do decide to learn Arabic, please consider learning MSA and a dialect at the same time. Not just because it is useful, although of course it will be because a dialect will be the true entry point into Arab culture(s), the one that get you invited into homes, but because when you get bored or depressed, a dialect may turn out to be your greatest motivation.

The purest shot of motivation that I get into my arm for Arabic is meeting North Africans and speaking Arabic. Just yesterday I met a French person who was born in Paris but whose parents are Algerian and they spoke to him in Algerian Arabic, so he understands and speaks it as a heritage language, although he cannot read or write in Standard Arabic. We instantly connected because I spoke to him in Moroccan Arabic and he spoke to me in Algerian. I went to France and I could buy fruit and vegetables at the market with my Arabic, I could chat to the airport personnel at Charles De Gaulle. This isn't about political or economic usefulness, something that is of course super important, but rather personal contact and feeling. I would go so far as to say that you cannot have a normal relationship with Arabs only knowing MSA. MSA will make you a literate speaker. A dialect will make you a speaker.

If you're ever in Paris BTW, I would highly recommend going to the Institut du monde arabe, they have a superb library of Arabic books.
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