# Is there such a thing as MSA?



## mansio

A few months ago I was part of the missionary-Zionist-US anti-Islam conspiracy because I dared say on a famous Muslim forum that there was such a thing as MSA.

One of my fiercest opponent was an Egyptian. Even when I told him that in every large bookstore and library you can choose between books and grammars on Classical Arabic or MSA, he brushed the argument aside by saying that those books were written by fake Arab scholars.

Split from here.


----------



## elroy

My advice for you is to ignore such people.


----------



## mansio

Elroy

Don't worry for me, I shall confront him again on the Sabi'una issue.


----------



## Arabelle

mansio said:
			
		

> A few months ago I was part of the missionary-Zionist-US anti-Islam conspiracy because I dared say on a famous Muslim forum that there was such a thing as MSA.
> 
> One of my fiercest opponent was an Egyptian. Even when I told him that in every large bookstore and library you can choose between books and grammars on Classical Arabic or MSA, he brushed the argument aside by saying that those books were written by fake Arab scholars.



I am very very intersted to know more about that debate. May I, please?
Do you mean that there are people who believe there is nothing like fus7a?


----------



## mansio

Arabelle

To my mind there isn't much to debate. There is basically only one brand of literary (or literal) Arabic that is also called fu97aa. As that language has greatly expanded in modern vocabulary and probably slight changes in structure, scholars have found it more convenient to use the word Classical for Arabic before the twentieth or nineteenth century and MSA after.


----------



## Arabelle

I still don't really see your point Mansio, but never mind if you don't want to explain further.
Thank you!


----------



## mansio

Arabelle

What is my point that you do not see ?


----------



## Arabelle

Mansio,

All I wanted to know is what the debate was about, when you were called 'part of the missionary-Zionist-US anti-Islam conspiracy' in a Muslim forum.
I understood from it that some Muslims called you so because you said there was such a thing as MSA. So I wonder what was the context, and how you got to be called so. I mean,are you telling us everything here?
I am not an expert in linguistics, so it's not like I'll have the answer to whatever the debate was about, but I was curious to know!

Voila!


----------



## mansio

Arabelle

I am personally not interested in the debate whether there is a MSA and a Classical Arabic or only Classical Arabic.
I think that the scholars who decided there was a MSA did not want to mix up things between the Arabic of the Quran and of ancient literature, with an Arabic that talks about cars, planes, stock-options or amusement parks.

The Muslims you find on Muslim forums (the so-called interfaith dialogue forums) adamantly reject the idea that there could be a "modern" version of Arabic. For them Arabic has not changed an iota from pre-islamic times. Of course it is in line with the incorruptibility of the Quran dogma. So they tell you that the "fabrication" of MSA is a roundabout way by Christian "missionaries" to undermine Arabic and the credibility of the Quran. When you say that some of the books on MSA are written by Arab scholars who apparently are not "missionaries", they just say they must be fake scholars.


----------



## zooz

ok, for me, this requires a clear definition of what we mean by the terms 'MSA' & 'Classical Arabic' exactly.


posted in the other thread by elroy:
_



Please tell me if my memory is correct: amongst the more fanatical, irrational, unrealistic people, the dialects are looked down upon as perversions of the true Arabic language and a threat to the unity of the Arab world. Is there any truth to that statement? [I am merely reciting from a cloudy memory and not expressing any sort of an opinion].

Click to expand...

 

I've never heard about or met anyone who's merely against the dialects because it's a threaten or anything else, so I'm not completely agreed with elroy.

though there're some people who demand to make the dialect an official language and that not welcomed by the most of the arabs, but that's another story._


----------



## elroy

zooz said:
			
		

> _I've never heard about or met anyone who's merely against the dialects because it's a threaten or anything else, so I'm not completely agreed with elroy._


 
I've never personally met anyone like that either, but I've _come across _at least one person on this forum who believed that (he's long gone, by the way).

It's not a matter of agreeing with anyone; it's a sad truth.


----------



## Arabelle

Mansio,

I am not getting you into the debate over MSA, I don't need to. All I wanted to know is: did really some Muslims call you so? Then I guess then that the debate was way serious than what it seems to be.

And elroy, what sad truth? That there are people who make of dialcets languages, or that some dialects are languages?


----------



## zooz

> I've never personally met anyone like that either, but I've _come across _at least one person on this forum who believed that (he's long gone, by the way).


if we're talking about the public opinion including the uneducated class in the arabic societies, that's another issue. what I meant is regarding the language scholars & researchers, and the cultured people who look at this matter objectively.


----------



## elroy

The sad truth is that there are fanatics who decry both MSA and/or the dialects as illegitimate or inferior varieties of the language.  As Zooz said, these people are not scholars by any means, nor are their views objective.


----------



## Anatoli

I hope this is topic-related but I keep wondering, if there is such a thing as *Colloquial MSA*.

I keep bringing this up again as after being exposed a little to both classical Arabic and Arabic taught by some Western textbooks I found that *a version of MSA* is being taught and advocated (they claim to teach the MSA, not a regional dialect):

Both romanised texts and audio-recording almost completely ignore case endings, except for some indefinite accusative endings, which are also reflected in writing.

Case endings might cause some difficulties to learners but if a textbook claims it teaches standard Arabic, the endings should be at least pronounced.

Let me list textbooks that use this type of Arabic: Teach Yourself Arabic (Jack Smart and Frances Altorfer), Ultimate Arabic (written by a number of authors, all of them native Arabic speakers) and Mastering Arabic (Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar). All of these books introduce case endings to an extent but they are never (hardly) used in recordings.

Berlitz's Arabic phrasebook admits it uses a modified version of MSA. This simpler version uses MSA vocabulary but the grammar is simpler.

Apart from missing case endings, all of the texts normally use the simpler version of numerals (e.g. always ithn*ayn*, never ithn*aan*) and tend to use the simpler form of dual - just using ending -ayn, not -aan (Nominative) + -ayn (in oblique cases), thus they bring the Arabic used closer to some spoken dialects.

I am sure there are other textbooks using the same approac. I just wish to understand, if this is a trend or carelessness or something else. Today I watched Arabic news in SBS, Australia - it was DRTV from Dubai and noticed, despite my poor Arabic that endings were often skipped, not even in the pause - several times they said just "Hakuuma Islaamiyya" (not Hakuuma_*tun*_ Islaamiyya*tun* or whatever other ending it should be in the sentence).

EDIT:

Much earlier I started this thread about the Importance of case endings in MSA:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=173710


----------



## cherine

Yes, Anatoli, and I thought we settled that 

To sum up the reason for that case edning-droping : to know the case ending of a word, you need a certain degree of grammar mastering. You don't have that, you can't tell which "7araka" (case ending) is the right one. And in this case, it's safer to drop the case ending at all.

You're being a beginner, you better follow your beginners' book. 

Even among natives, there are many who make mistakes when reading. So it's safer to drop the case endings.


----------



## suma

This old debate is pointless and of little practical value, IMHO.
Western Orientalists distinguish several "varieties" of Arabic and among them they have come up with this term MSA.
However traditional Arab linguists do not make such a distinction, for them there are the coloquial dialects and then there is fus7aa, the classical language of the Quran and old as well as modern literature. New vocabulary itself does not change the language, the overall grammar and structure has remained the same.


----------



## Anatoli

cherine said:


> Yes, Anatoli, and I thought we settled that
> ...
> Even among natives, there are many who make mistakes when reading. So it's safer to drop the case endings.


Thanks, Cherine. In this thread, I am asking if such a version of MSA exists, not so much about what is easier to stick to for beginners. I would be perfectly satisfied if textbooks mentioned that endings and other features are too hard to master at the beginning, so we will teach you a simpler way of speaking but they all mentioned that you can omit the case endings, verb endings, etc, so creating a mixture of spoken dialects and MSA. I know this is not official and would be criticised by purists but you should probably listen to a text recorded in such a way and say what kind of Arabic it is.  The speech sounds quite natural, not sure if they deliberately drop the endings to suit learners but grammatically it's quite different from what I can hear from recordings for textbooks of University of Madina, Quranic recitals and some other audio. As I said, it's not about difficulty, BTW, I don't find endings too difficult if they are exlained and used. Please don't think I am looking for an excuse not to use endings 

I hope you understand what I mean. If it's safe to drop endings when speaking in MSA, then what version of MSA is it? Who speaks it?


----------



## cherine

Anatoli said:


> Thanks, Cherine. In this thread, I am asking if such a version of MSA exists, not so much about what is easier to stick to for beginners.


Why do you think it's a "version" ?!
When people say, for example, "he don't care" (instead of doesn't) they changed the grammar, but this doesn't mean they created another version of English grammar.
When I say : dhahabt lilmadrasa (instead of dhahabt*u* lilmadrasa*ti*) I'm not speaking a different version of fus7a, I'm just dropping the case endings.


> I know this is not official and would be criticised by purists but you should probably listen to a text recorded in such a way and say what kind of Arabic it is.


I don't call myself a purist.  But I'm not sure I like your suggestion, or maybe I don't understand very much what your getting at.
What kind of Arabic is it ? It's fus7a. Even if the case endings are not pronounced, it's still fus7a.


> The speech sounds quite natural, not sure if they deliberately drop the endings to suit learners but grammatically it's quite different from what I can hear from recordings for textbooks of University of Madina, Quranic recitals and some other audio.


Yes, it sounds natural because it's natural. And trust me, I prefer such speech to a speech with wrongful case endings, where people try to sound "educated" or well-versed into grammar and make huge errors.

One side note : you can't -better not- compare Quranic recitations to anything else, because this reading has its own rules.


> As I said, it's not about difficulty, BTW, I don't find endings too difficult if they are exlained and used. Please don't think I am looking for an excuse not to use endings


I'm sure you're not looking for excuses. But let's try this :
How would you determine the proper case endings if you don't know enough grammar ? This is what I always repeat, but you don't seem to get what I'm getting at.  Maybe when you'll learn enough you'll understand what I mean. 


> I hope you understand what I mean. If it's safe to drop endings when speaking in MSA, then what version of MSA is it? Who speaks it?


I hope I understand it too.

It's safer to drop endings for those who don't have enough grammatical knowledge to put the right endings on words. It's the same "version" of MSA, because I've never heard of any "versions". Who speaks it ? Whoever isn't sure about the correct endings.

You want examples ?
How can you determine the endings of the words of these sentences ? 

رأيت المدرّسة بالأمس.
ذهبت إلى بيت خالي لأسلِّم عليه.
عاد الرجل من سفر طويل.
جلست والخوف بعينيها تتأمل فنجاني المقلوب، قالت: يا ولدي لا تحزن، فالحب عليك هو المكتوب
وليل كموج البحر أرخى سدوله ... عليَّ بأنواع الهموم ليبتلي​
The last two are poetry: Nizar Qabbany (Modern Syrian poet), and Imru2 al-Qays (pre-Islamic poet).

Let's consider that as an exercise, to see if we're understanding each other  and to be like a base from which to go in this "theoretical" discussion.


----------



## MarcB

I understand your frustration. Look at it this way, for Arabs fu7ha is both CA and MSA. . Only scholars and teachers use these terms for foreigners who learn Arabic. I must say that before coming to WR I had never heard of M SA, I believe I read in a post that Cherine said the same thing. When Arabs refer to Fu7ha in English they say Classical, formal, written, proper etc. So when you ask what version is it is hard to answer. Keep in mind Quranic recitation is religious, poetic and a skill. People study it for years and memorize it so if they have a lot of practice and a good memory they repeat verses which have been codified for centuries. MSA is spontaneous and is subject to errors as any unrehearsed language is. So although basically the rules are derived from CA they have been relaxed. A language that has a disglosia is unlike English or Russian where we write what we speak, although we may be a little more formal. Spoken and written Arabic are different, but related languages therein lies the confusion. So if for convenience sake you would like to call it a simplified version maybe that is ok. Buy the way Cherine if people use improper grammar in English; it is an error, although it may be a common error.


----------



## Anatoli

Thanks. Cherine and MarcB. I am not frustrated, although I may sound like I am because I am too pedantic in my questions.

Cherine, sorry, to answer your exercise questions about endings I would need to know more vocab, of course, to determine the role of words in the sentences. Despite my poor Arabic, I think I can talk about theories of grammar. But I've done quite a few exercises with words I am familar with using numerals (2, 3-10, 11- 100...), pronouns, Idafa constructions, inna, anna, verb-object constructs, triptotes/diptotes, etc. Your exercise is still difficult for me, not because of endings but because I will have trouble finding all the words in the dictionary. 

One thing I can't agree on, is that people drop endings because they don't what endings to use rather than doing it because they think it's more natural.

Arabic endings can be explained in a couple of pages, despite my weak knowledge of Arabic, I am almost certain, they are not too hard.

Compare: Russian has 3 genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), 6 cases multiplied by about 5 declension groups, endings will also be different for sinmgular/plural. Different verbs rule different cases and it's not obvious which preposition should use which case (unlike Arabic where it's always 1) genitive after prepositions and if it's possession 2) accusative if it is an object,  and 3) subjects are always nominative).

In Arabic, you only have 2 groups - triptotes and diptotes and difference between definite/indefinite but all endings ar predictable, there are no special groups:

Triptotes: un (N.)/in (G.)/an (A.) (indefinite); u/i/a (definite)
Diptotes: u/a/a (indef./def.)
That's it!

This is just an example of one declension type with 6 cases:
kniga - book
Singular: 1) knig*a*, 2) knig*i*, 3) knig*e*, 4) knig*u* 5) knog*oy* 6) knig*e*
Plural: 1) knig*i*, 2) knig (0 ending), 3) knig*am*, 4) knig*i* 5) knog*ami* 6) knig*akh*

There is no option to skip the endings in Russian but people who are beginners or even more with Russian make mistakes and put wrong endings. What makes it easier though and clearer compared to Arabic - endings are always written and pronounced, they are not optional.

If, even TV anchors sometimes drop endings in news broadcasts (I am not referring to pause situations), I am sure they know the grammar , then the rules are often deliberately broken, not because of the lack of knowledge thereof.


----------



## zooz

MarcB said:


> MSA is spontaneous and is subject to errors as any unrehearsed language is. So although basically the rules are derived from CA they have been relaxed.


The so-called _Classical Arabic_ and _Modern Standard Arabic_ are one language with no grammatical or structural variations. I'm not aware of the principals on which those terms were formed. In Arabic the accustomed term is* اللغة العربية الفصحى*; the language which Arabs speak, use and hear daily. However, if one insists on using those terms, I'd put it this way: Modern Standard Arabic = Classical Arabic - Archaic words/expressions...etc. + modern terms & foreign words.


----------



## cherine

zooz said:


> *Modern Standard Arabic = Classical Arabic - Archaic words/expressions...etc. + modern terms & foreign words*.


يا سلاااااام ! أوجزت فأعجزت يا زوز
This is the best definition/defferentiation I've read so far     Masha2allah 3aleik 
I hope people will be convinced.


----------



## Anatoli

cherine said:


> ...
> I don't call myself a purist.  But I'm not sure I like your suggestion, or maybe I don't understand very much what your getting at.
> ...


Cherine and Zooz, imagine the situation - you are reading an interesting newspaper article (written in MSA) to your family (not at a high-level meeting) to your family out loud. You are interested in what it says (information), not how it is written (style). Would you 1) transform/translate the article into your dialect on the fly, 2) read strictly following MSA rules and pronunciation or 3) read as it is written but simplify it using your dialect pronunciation and dropping endings?

I think #3 is an answer but please confirm. I'd like to get an anbiased answer  The answer may also depend on habits and profession but what is the most natural way?


----------



## MarcB

Zooz, I agree with you. When I said subject to errors I mean when we speak any language we can make errors, not that so-called MSA has errors.


----------



## cherine

Anatoli said:


> Would you
> 1) transform/translate the article into your dialect on the fly, That would be very hard and unnecessary. I can recount the article but, reading is reading; i.e. you just read out loud what's written.
> 2) read strictly following MSA rules and pronunciation If the reader is not very good at grammar, he won't be able to guess all the proper case endings, so he will drop some -if not all- of them. He can also make errors. But he will still be reading what's written.
> or 3) read as it is written but simplify it using your dialect pronunciation and dropping endings? There is no big differences in the dialect pronounciation. And Egyptian readin an MSA text will read the ج as g not j, but he will still read the MSA in MSA (fus7a) not colloquial (3ammiyya).
> 
> So, my answer is : I would, personally, mix between options 2 and 3. Because I can sometimes make errors in grammar, or be unsure about the proper parsing إعراب of a word or sentence.
> 
> I think #3 is an answer but please confirm. I'd like to get an anbiased answer  The answer may also depend on habits and profession but what is the most natural way?


Now, what real difference is there between 2 and 3 ? do they create different versions of fus7a ? different versions of MSA ?
Personnally, I don't think so.

But, you're of course free to believe what you wish


----------



## Anatoli

I am satisfied with your answer, Cherine. Well, #3 is almost a mixture of spoken dialects and the strict i`raab of fuS-Ha and if colloquial words penetrate the standard written form - bingo - you get a new standard - it's not formalised and not taught officially by universities but it seems like it is a variation of Arabic, if you wish, not a version.

A common quote:



> Case endings are only used in very formal MSA and _usually _dropped in *spoken MSA*.


Same comments were said about humaa, antunna, dual verb endings, ithnayn vs itnaan/ithnayn, katab*t* vs katab*tu*/katab*ta* but I can't comment how strictly this is followed/not followed in written Arabic and spoken MSA.

Sorry for being a pain


----------



## Hibou57

Anatoli said:


> Both romanised texts and audio-recording almost completely ignore case endings, except for some indefinite accusative endings, which are also reflected in writing.
> 
> Case endings might cause some difficulties to learners but if a textbook claims it teaches standard Arabic, the endings should be at least pronounced.


Dunno if it is a reference, but I've read in a book written by Boutros Hallaq _(if you know)_, that in MSA, ending declinations are to be dropped.



> Apart from missing case endings, all of the texts normally use the simpler version of numerals (e.g. always ithn*ayn*, never ithn*aan*)


I've never seen ithnayn anywhere... are you sure this is not with dialects ?


----------



## Taalib

Great discussion! I'd like to make a new argument to give further fodder for discussion; I am making it on the basis of years of working in the Mideast in several different countries, combined with a healthy exposure to linguistic scholarship on Arabic.

My personal view is that the dichotomy between "high" Arabic and "low" Arabic--which roughly corresponds to MSA versus colloquial--is a false one. In my experience across the Mideast and in numerous spoken contexts--and this includes the times I have lived with families, times I have attended political interviews, the times I have participated in official press conferences, times I have sat around the coffeeshops talking and listening to people, and the times I have attended (and also taught) classes at local universities--I have found that the language exists across a spectrum, and in every situation involving two or more speakers there is inevitably slippage between varieties of the language. 

I believe this is difficult for many to comprehend because non-native speakers tend to learn that there are two ideal types of Arabic, which are gross caricatures. The first ideal type is MSA spoken, written, and read with full case endings, approximating CSA in every way except for idioms, semantics, and some syntax. It is synthesized, dissected, deconstructed, and analyzed for the learner; its grammar is explained to be predictable, its vocabulary is rich but knowable, and its overall structure elegant and profound. The second ideal type is the "native" talk that appears so exotic to Western speakers who know only MSA, and that is the colloquial dialects--the 'aamiyah, daarijah, and lahjah that do great violence to classic grammar, give no pretense to spelling or pronunciation conventions, and often frustrate the learner because of its seemingly alien nature.

I have encountered many novice learners who express annoyance that in everyday situations, nobody speaks like the Arabic ideal type they learned, the MSA + case endings; and for that reason the language frustrates them. Often times, to give them some kind of analytical traction, the argument that "most Arabs just don't speak proper Arabic" or "most Arabs break the rules of MSA" is propagated. I think another source of frustration is that there are relatively few well-known languages elsewhere commonly taught that match Arabic in its diglossia.

But in the various situations I've described above where I have been embedded as a student, teacher, journalist, bureaucrat, and observer, I have found that the functional use of Arabic will sway towards either ideal type according to the situation but will never quite get there completely. You hear Arabic that approximates MSA but utilizes numerous local colloquial conventions at the highest levels of politics and journalism. You hear Arabic that sounds colloquial but then is effortlessly "code-switched" into MSA idioms, phrases, and syntax in response to new topics and questions. Not speaking in orthodox "fusha" as Western textbooks describe is not breaking the rules; it is a functional modification of a linguistic discourse that, by its nature, is always changing and is rich in variety. And that's my simple and staid conclusion: there are "varieties" of Arabic, spoken and written in numerous contexts and which only seldom matches the ideal types completely; but there are no "versions" of Arabic, like computer programs, in which some people speak version 2.0; some speak 4.0; and those just learning software want to know how come nobody speaks the 1.21b (build 523) that they learned in their introductory programming course.


----------



## Anatoli

Hibou57 said:


> Dunno if it is a reference, but I've read in a book written by Boutros Hallaq _(if you know)_, that in MSA, ending declinations are to be dropped.
> 
> I've never seen ithnayn anywhere... are you sure this is not with dialects ?



I don't understand your first comment.

Ithnayn is used only in oblique cases (genitive, accusative) in MSA (strict) and always in dialects, there are also "ithnaa" and  "ithnay" forms. My point was ithnay(n) is used in spoken dialects plus very often in MSA where it should be ithnaa(n) in nominative case (in classical or strictly followed MSA).


----------



## Hibou57

Suma said:
			
		

> Western Orientalists distinguish several "varieties" of Arabic and among them they have come up with this term MSA.
> However traditional Arab linguists do not make such a distinction,


If it really is a creation of those western linguists, how do you explain that there is something very near of birth date for MSA ? _(at the time of the « Renaissance Arabe »)_

Arabes were active in this process of the creation of MSA... wasn't they ?

So it should be admitted as a reality of the language... even if its usage in every days life often alter it _(the Arabic world is large)_.



			
				Cherine said:
			
		

> When people say, for example, "he don't care" (instead of doesn't) they changed the grammar, but this doesn't mean they created another version of English grammar.


[comment]heuuu.. I think the meaning is not the same in those two cases.[/comment]



			
				Cherine said:
			
		

> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *zooz*
> 
> 
> *Modern Standard Arabic = Classical Arabic - Archaic words/expressions...etc. + modern terms & foreign words*.
> 
> يا سلاااااام ! أوجزت فأعجزت يا زوز
> This is the best definition/defferentiation I've read so far    Masha2allah 3aleik
> I hope people will be convinced.


I think I can do, mmmmh, yes 
In other words _(again)_, one may say that it just a matter of style, just like the differences there are between the so called « français recherché » _(an old term, indeed)_ and the style of french you may read elsewhere, the standard one _(let MSF = Modern Standard French  )_. Even if the style « français recherché » as a special _(some may say pedantic?)_ status, many great books are written using standard french style, and are not less considered well written for such a reason. What about it too ?

While I was reading this topic, it comes into my mind that it is just a matter of style... perhaps...



			
				Taalib said:
			
		

> colloquial dialects--the 'aamiyah, daarijah, and lahjah


Hohoho... is 3aamiyyah a dialect or a word meaning colloquial ? Cherine use it as if it means colloquial, and you, Taalib, seems to say it is a dialect 



			
				Taalib said:
			
		

> do great violence to classic grammar, give no pretense to spelling


yes indeed lol, and the translitteration _(where it often ends)_ does not help.


----------



## Anatoli

Taalib, thanks for sharing your experiences, I enjoyed your post!  As many people pointed out the fix to become "backward compatible" and compatible with all the versions, you need to versed in both MSA and at least one dialect or better more than one. So, get your get setup disks for both and install both versions and then try to merge them! __


----------



## mujahid7ia

Taalib said:


> ...in which some people speak version 2.0; some speak 4.0; and those just learning software want to know how come nobody speaks the 1.21b (build 523) that they learned in their introductory programming course.





That was an interesting (and amusing) post.

I liked your idea of Arabic being on a spectrum. How would one become familiar (not proficient, of course) with the majority of the spectrum?
(I assume the answer will be spend some time in Arab countries with natives.)


----------



## Taalib

Thanks for the comment!

Familiarity with the linguistic spectrum would require significant time spent immersed in an environment where all varieties of the language can be heard, analyzed, assimilated, digested, and--if not understood--then at the very least situated in their respective places. For many students, this sounds daunting, but it's my belief that after spending at least a few weeks in a major Arab metropolis, the student of Arabic begins to do all these things, almost subconsciously. It's the way the human mind works--for Western ears, the sounds of Arabic (whether "high" MSA or "low" dialect) sound alien, and it can take some time for the _average_ (there are plenty of fantastic and gifted masters out there, and I suspect many of them are right here in this forum) learner to tell the brain to stop thinking these words as gibberish and instead think of them as communicative items to be absorbed. Immersion is key. 

The implication, of course, is that it would be difficult (if not impossible) to learn the varieties of the language and appreciate their nuances without stepping outside the nice air-conditioned classrooms of universities and institutes of the (often wealthy) countries in which many new students live. (For American universities now, for instance, teaching Arabic has become a new industry.) However, this should be neither surprising nor frightening. Take, for instance, the Japanese, or the Koreans. Most Japanese or Korean students are required to learn English in their formal education, starting from primary school. But any British or American tourist who has been to Seoul or Tokyo and has tried to converse with a native speaker in fluent English would understand, after much pain, that classroom instruction in a foreign language is no guarantee for functional communication.

The best Western Arabists I have met are those that have successfully combined years of classroom instruction with intense months or years living in Arab countries. No surprise that many of them are diplomats or scholars, two professions that combine both experiences!


----------



## mujahid7ia

Thanks for the advice. I am thinking about spending the summer in Egypt.

You're right about learning in a classroom alone. I took a few years of Spanish but with a native speaker, I am very slow and quite awkward. I guess it's all about how much you immerse yourself in the language.


----------



## clevermizo

I was just reading this thread as I am a relatively new user on this forum, and I really just wanted to add a couple thoughts even though it certainly looks long dead (since last year, eh?):

There's a lot of talk about can we say there are different "versions" of fus7a or can we speak of different creatures called "MSA" or "Classical" etc. etc. I even read above someone call MSA an invention by Western Orientalists.

1. Orientalist has a very pejorative connotation in philosophy and sociology, so I think that it's a little fairer and safer to say that the term "MSA" was coined by some linguists and people involved in pedagogy, primarily in the west.

2. Labels such as "varieties," "versions," "types" which have a typological sense and orientation are *highly dependent upon the scope of observation and are not very relevant outside the consideration of this scope*. What I mean by this, is it is possible to say that if the scope of my study is comparing the way fus7a is read by some people in journalism who do not use case endings versus some people who do - it may be useful to label a "version" which has no case endings, depending on the parameters of my inquiry. However, if I expand the scope to a study on say, the use of fus7a vs. dialect in journalism, then it may no longer become useful scientifically to typologically relegate a certain pronunciation to a so-called "version" of the language.

For example, it may be that for most native speakers, the fact that they may sometimes drop case endings in reading aloud or other circumstances - is not a viable distinction between one type of fus7a and another. As Cherine has pointed out time and again in this thread, such things depend on the grammatical proficiency of the person who is making the utterance - as well as perhaps a desire to not sound overly pretentious or pedantic by making a mistake. 

The terms "Classical Arabic" and "MSA" etc., I think need to be taken with some grain of salt. I think they have usefulness as diachronic snapshots of a literary language in development, but this only really has meaning in comparing the two. In other words, you may as well avoid such labels at all, or say "fus7a in the 15 century commonly used such and such" vs. "fus7a in the 21 century commonly uses such and such." These actually may be a little more precise for inquiry, and a little more considerate of native perspectives.

The problem I see with pedagogy in the West as I have experienced it is the imposition of these sorts of scope-related terms on some sort of "real entities" that exist. I think it would be better if they taught us that such language is fus7a and such language is dialect, rather than such language is MSA and such language is CA etc. etc. - because "CA" or "MSA" are really meaningless unless compared to one another.

That's my rant - hopefully it wasn't too off base. I just think that people sometimes get caught up in labeling things when it is not functional to do so without considering the scope of linguistic observation.


----------



## Abu Rashid

If there is such a concept as MSA (for Arabs) then can someone please inform me what the Arabic name for it is? And also some references relating to it.

As far as I'm aware, it's a concept and a term merely coined by Western scholars of Arabic, and has very little if any useage in the Arabic world, as a concept/term.


----------



## coptiyah

I feel very silly, but I have never heard of two types of fus7a. What are the grammatical differences between the two, I'm not sure I'm quite right about this though I've gone through this thread trying to figure it out.

All I know is there is the 3amiyyah we speak to each other though sometimes people like to use it in writing as well like in writing modern poetry and letters and such, then there is the fus7a but as cherine said in one of the posts above sometimes people forget the grammar of the word and so they end it in sukkun that would be like dropping the 7arakat, I don't understand how this makes it a different version.

Does MSA have different grammatical rules to classical arabic? 

thanks


----------



## WadiH

coptiyah said:


> I feel very silly, but I have never heard of two types of fus7a. What are the grammatical differences between the two, I'm not sure I'm quite right about this though I've gone through this thread trying to figure it out.
> 
> All I know is there is the 3amiyyah we speak to each other though sometimes people like to use it in writing as well like in writing modern poetry and letters and such, then there is the fus7a but as cherine said in one of the posts above sometimes people forget the grammar of the word and so they end it in sukkun that would be like dropping the 7arakat, I don't understand how this makes it a different version.
> 
> Does MSA have different grammatical rules to classical arabic?
> 
> thanks


 
Hello Coptiyya
They don't have different grammatical rules; they are the same language. However, the way people use the language today is not exactly the same as how they used it 500 or 1000 years ago. If you read a text in Arabic, very often you'll be able to tell if it's pre-1800 or post-1800. That's (usually) what people mean by MSA and Classical.

Another way of using the terms is to distinguish between different styles of writing. The writing style of Muslim religious scholars today is very similar to the style of their predecessors from centuries ago, and noticeably different from the style of writing you would encounter in a newspaper like Al-Ahram. You might say that such scholars write in a "classical" style. Of course, this does not mean that we are talking about distinct languages.

Yet another way of looking it at is that MSA is the "standardized" version of fu97a. In the modern era, people have agreed on certain rules and conventions to facilitate communication between different regions, countries, or social classes. In the process, certain words or grammatical constructions that are technically correct in classical or pre-modern fus7a were dropped from the formal written language. For example, in modern written Arabic we don't say "شفت و شاف و يشوف" even though the word is technically fa9ee7. Also, we don't say "ما أدري" but "لا أدري" even though they're both correct in fus7a, and we don't say "ما عرفت" but only "لم أعرف". We also pronounce the hamza in fus7a, even though it was permissable to drop it in the 7th century. Another example is that we pronounce the ق as "qaf", even though Muhammad's tribe probably pronounced it as a hard "g", wa hakatha .

Finally, some people use the term MSA to signify the way people try to speak fus7a to each other (as opposed to written communication), in which they tend to drop the declensional endings (7arakat al i'rab) and mix in some "colloquial" pronunciations.

As a native speaker of Arabic, you probably don't perceive such a difference unless you think about it consciously, or you perceive it in a different way from non-natives. We have to remember that this classification was invented by foreign scholars and teachers who wanted to make sense of the different ways Arabic is used and facilitate the learning of the language by non-natives. In other words, it was created for pedagogical reasons, essentially.

One last point that I would like to make to everybody is regarding the reason many native speakers object to this 3-tiered system of understanding Arabic. One reason I think is that it over-emphasizes the difference between "MSA" and "Classical" and seems to imply that it's the same as the difference between spoken Arabic and fus7a. I, for one, think the 3-tiered system is very misleading for this very reason.


----------



## Anatoli

Wadi, what's the interaction between MSA and dialects these days, what is the mutual influence and which influence is stronger? In your opinion, what is the trend MSA vs dialects: are they getting closer or further apart? Does MSA absorb dialectal words and vice versa - do formal words become commonly used?


----------



## coptiyah

Thank you Wadi Hanifa,

Like old English and modern English, though it hadn't occured to me it was all that different, I guess any viable language must necessarily grow in time, lost some words and replace them with others. I agree with you that it really is misleading, I was honestly confused, actually if someone is very good in Arabic they won't drop any harakat, we only really do that because we're not all that good. I had a Palestinian Arabic teacher in primary school and he spoke to us like a book all the time without missing out any harakat.

cheers


----------



## WadiH

Anatoli said:


> Wadi, what's the interaction between MSA and dialects these days, what is the mutual influence and which influence is stronger? In your opinion, what is the trend MSA vs dialects: are they getting closer or further apart? Does MSA absorb dialectal words and vice versa - do formal words become commonly used?


 
My dear friend Anatoli,
لقد سألتَ عن عظيم
This is an interesting but difficult question.  I'll try to get back to you on it in a few days when I'm done with my exams.  Hopefully, other members can give us their thoughts on this question with respect to their own native dialects.


----------

