December posting meme: studying Arabic

[genarti]

Okay, obviously, I am not doing these meme exactly on the days I intended. (Although if you asked for a specific day for a reason I'm aware of, I will try to make that day! I know myself too well to outright guarantee.) But I am aiming to do them all, even belatedly, and so! As per

Comments

[sovay]

(I'm sure it was a very weird experience for our teachers, and any visitors: all these people wandering about earnestly speaking in broken and accented and highly formal Modern Standard.)

One of my professors at Yale had this story. He was the epigrapher for a dig in Iraq and knew a little Arabic to go along with his fluent Assyrian, but it wasn't even Modern Standard: the way he told it, what he knew was classical. He could read it, not really speak it. At one point he had to ask for directions at a village and there was a substantial hiatus while someone's grandfather was located who had been to university and studied the classics and could tell the tall skinny German turn that way in some incredibly formal, archaic grammar.

koshary (lentils and onions and rice and pasta all heaped in a bowl, with hot sauce), and I miss all three of those still, and if you know of a place in Boston to get koshary I would love to hear from you about it.I would swear I have actually seen this mentioned in a recent restaurant review, because I didn'

[genarti]

He was the epigrapher for a dig in Iraq and knew a little Arabic to go along with his fluent Assyrian, but it wasn't even Modern Standard: the way he told it, what he knew was classical. He could read it, not really speak it. At one point he had to ask for directions at a village and there was a substantial hiatus while someone's grandfather was located who had been to university and studied the classics and could tell the tall skinny German turn that way in some incredibly formal, archaic grammar.Ha! Wow, what a fantastic story. I'm glad someone's erudite grandfather was on hand to (at least eventually) make it easier for everyone

[sovay]

and had in fact a fascinating if somewhat halting conversation about philosophy with occasional tidbits of folk medicine with a seller of medical supplies in the central and tourist-heavy square.

That's wonderful.

My Iraqi-American friend, on the other hand, had enormous trouble making herself understood in Morocco with her Iraqi Arabic, and was deeply frustrated by it.

Are the differences between dialects of Arabic comparable to the situation with the Scandanavian languages? None of which I speak, but the impression I got from a Norwegian friend in graduate school was that they are mostly mutually intelligible, but not entirely and not always both ways: listening comprehension and ability to converse do not run identically. (I believe his example was Norwegian being comprehensible to Danish listeners, but Danish spoken to Norwegians sounding incredibly strange.) Which I thought was fascinating.

[astridv]

Very interesting post!

[genarti]

Thanks for reading! I'm not sure I achieved coherent, but I'm glad that I achieved interesting either way. :)