Literary Arabic present in the brain of Arabic speakers as a second language, not a mother tongue
Saturday, March 06, 2010
(Thanks to Zeinelabidin Elhassi for the link)
An article here from a few months ago tells us of a study showing that literary Arabic (i.e. MSA, the Arabic used for communication between Arabic speakers of different countries) registers in the brain as a second language, not a mother tongue.
This is one of the reasons why my tentative plans are to eventually learn Maltese first before tackling Arabic, because:
-Maltese plus Persian (which I'm studying now) may make MSA fairly intelligible from the start, and
-Arabic is so fragmented anyway that students are generally expected to learn one or more regional variants in addition to MSA.
Zein also commented on that subject on Auxlang before, calling it a good idea. Perhaps next year will be a good time, and hopefully by then there will be more places to learn Maltese online.
3 comments:
Mith: I found an interesting site which could help in foreign language learning, especially those with country-specific differences. It lists the front page of newspapers from 57 countries, including several Arabic ones. Iraq and Korea are two of the countries not participating, however, and the Maltese paper is in English.
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/?p_size=598
enjoy.
I spend a lot of time reading classical Persian and about 6 months ago began to read Arabic; 1001 Nights, to be precise. It's turned out to be a great way to become familiar with Arabic. Yes, there's a great amount of shared vocabulary with Persian, though the languages are so different structurally that there's still plenty to make Arabic difficult. Just learning to use the standard dictionary is a challenge in itself, since it's arranged according to word roots. My preference is to learn by reading (and I freely admit that my emphasis is on reading, not speaking) a very interesting text. Such texts are abundant in classical Persian (Hafez, Rumi, Khayyam, Sa'adi, Nezami, etc.) and Alf Leyla wa Leyla will keep us busy--and happy--for a long, long time. My concern about Maltese would be a probable lack of the kind of literature that keeps me motivated.
Mith: I found an interesting site which could help in foreign language learning, especially those with country-specific differences. It lists the front page of newspapers from 57 countries, including several Arabic ones. Iraq and Korea are two of the countries not participating, however, and the Maltese paper is in English.
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/?p_size=598
enjoy.
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