# Colloquial Arabic has no rules?



## Malki92

Hello all,

Sorry if the title of the thread is a bit incoherent, hopefully I can clarify what I am asking. I've read (on this forum, and other places, and have heard this claim many times) that colloquial Arabic has _no rules_. I just want to understand what is meant when people say this. Surely this can't mean that grammar rules do not exist within dialects of Arabic, no? For example, you cannot say, "_biddi bajiib_." You must say, "_biddi ajiib_." Isn't that considered a rule? Or is what people mean by there are no rules in colloquial Arabic is that there are no universal rules? Meaning that, for example, the [grammatical, or whatever else] rules of rural Moroccan Arabic are not the same as urban Palestinian Arabic, therefore colloquial (as a universal term) Arabic does not have [universal?] rules. 

I am not challenging the statement at all, I just want to understand what is meant by it when people say it. Perhaps people mean different things, I don't know. But, if you have an understanding of this concept (whether you believe it or not) and care to elaborate what it means to you. And perhaps what you feel the overall position of people who believe this is, I'd greatly appreciate that. 

Thanks a ton.


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## Drink

I think what is meant is that colloquial Arabic does not have a standard set of rules. *There are rules of course*, but the details vary from city to city, village to village, tribe to tribe, making them hard to formalize and document. The same is true of any colloquial language including colloquial English.


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## Schem

It doesn't mean anything because it's nonsensical. Maybe a fictional universal colloquial Arabic (which doesn't exist) has no rules but actual dialects do.


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## Eternal student

I think there is much truth in both the above two responses. I think you are also definitely right that different people mean different things when they make this claim. You should also consider the fact that very often when people say this they actually have very little concrete idea _what _they mean. It's surprisingly common for all kinds of people to have beliefs, sometimes very strongly held, without really understanding what they mean by those beliefs (in the philosophical literature these are called _de dicto _beliefs).

I think part of what motivates a lot of native Arabic speakers to say this is the fact that no native Arabic speaker is a native speaker of Standard Arabic. They have to learn to speak/write it laboriously in school, and a significant part of the learning process is explicitly learning complex grammatical rules (which often have no counterparts in dialects, e.g. rules about cases). Since these people acquired their native dialect effortlessly as children, this is one reason that they perceive (in a fuzzy, vague way) that dialects have no rules, at least in comparison to Standard Arabic.


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## إسكندراني

I would claim that most native English speakers don't realise English has set rules. They just perceive sentences as right or wrong.


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## Eternal student

If anything, I would argue that the average native English speaker is even more ignorant about the realities of how English is used and the rules that govern the different types of English. At least most Arabs realise that there is something qualitatively different about the way they speak compared to the way they write. My impression is that most English speakers believe that well-educated English speakers speak the same way that they write, which is nonsense. And they also think that any speech that deviates from the norms of standard spoken and/or written English is somehow the result of laziness or failing to apply rules, which is again nonsense. All speech forms are rule governed - it's as simple as that.


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## Lark-lover

Simply, a native-speaker's rules are their own intuition


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## Eternal student

Their intuition is determined by the rules that they have subconsciously established in the process of acquiring their native language from infancy. It is because different native speakers have (subconsciously) acquired the same rules that they have the same intuitions about their shared language.


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## WannaBFluent

Lark-lover said:


> Simply, a native-speaker's rules are their own intuition


I agree 100%. There is *no rules* for all the native speakers whatever the language, that is why he said that I guess. Sometimes, you know that there's a mistake in a sentence without being able to explain why it is incorrect... It just doesn't sound good to your ear. Obviously, this is not innate, but acquired as Eternal student said. In fact, when we are little kids (and we all have been, right?) we don't understand the rules, we just mimic, imitate sentences that we heard before!


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## Eternal student

The fact that you cannot articulate why something sounds right or wrong does not mean that there is not a rule (which you know subconsciously) which explains why this is the case. A rule is a rule even if you can't articulate it.

And it's not true that children only mimic what they've heard. Tiny children who can only utter one word at a time, possibly. But as soon as they can combine words into phrases, these phrases are original and created on the basis of rules. A 2-year-old will say 'Daddy sleep', or whatever, without anyone having said this exact phrase to them before. What they will never say is something like 'Daddy the'. Because... rules.


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## WannaBFluent

I disagree. Even some little kids that use some correct sentences like "hello, how are you?" or "do you want some chocolate?" etc don't understand the basics of the sentence (its rules), it is just a mimic. Same for some foreigners that will tell you a correct sentence while they don't even know the meaning of each word composing it.


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## Jack.D

External student I really enjoyed reading your comments, they were all rational, it seems you have studied or done a research on this topic before..
I just want to add a bit of information on this topic passed on my experience..
I have taught colloquial Arabic to non-native speakers before, As a native speaker I didn't realize before I started teaching that we have concrete rules for the colloquial Arabic, but surprisingly I discovered that rules do exist and they are concrete rules and actually I started to document those rules in order to make it easier for the students to learn it.
Colloquial Arabic are many dialects which have developed over the years, and because colloquial is not really a language (its derived from the Standard Arabic and its similar to it) , there are no documented rules, and we don't want to forget that in each country you have several dialects and many accents, and so with that vast number of dialects and accents it would be really hard to document all of the different rules of each dialect .. so sticking with one universal language which is the root language (Standard Arabic) of all of those dialects by documenting it, would be the easiest and the best thing to do. And in my opinion it is extremely helpful and beneficial to do that because of two reasons, first you can understand written Arabic across the whole Arab world. And the other important reason is that if you moved to a an Arab country you'll find yourself, after spending a couple of months there socializing with the people, that you can understand the people and maybe even talk like them, but maybe what would make it difficult for you is that there are no documented rules and maybe no specific dictionary of that colloquial language , but I believe that it wouldn't really be a big problem as you already have the basis or the root ( The Standard Arabic) of that colloquial language which of course is derived from it..


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## WannaBFluent

Jack.D said:


> but maybe what would make it difficult for you is that there are no documented rules and maybe no specific dictionary of that colloquial language , but I believe that it wouldn't really be a big problem as you already have the basis or the root ( The Standard Arabic) of that colloquial language which of course is derived from it..


What? There are tons of grammar books, dictionnaries and stuff like that about a lot of colloquial Arabic dialects, you can even easily find some good free resources on the internet. I have several pdf books on my hard disk about different dialects - Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Chadian, Moroccan (the ressources are mostly in French though), Algerian (mostly in French), Hejazi, Gulf (Qatar, Saudi, Oman), Yemeni, Iraqi, and about 20 differents books about Egyptian Arabic! All for free!
So seriously, I don't get your point, you just had to type in google to know that you were definitely wrong. No offence by the way, but if you want to learn a particular dialect, it's very simple (well, at least to get the ressources, for the learning part, it's all about Allah willing). I am currently learning MSA Arabic and Syrian Colloquial, I don't spend any single dinar nor get a teacher. You just need the right pdf books and tapes for the pronounciation, that is all. Even if you don't have any tape, you can get used to the accent by watching local TV channel through the Internet.


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## Jack.D

Well I knew about those books before but they are limited, I mean you can not really learn a full Arabic dialect through them, and I meant by documenting, the concrete grammar rules, and by dictionary I meant something like "Oxford English Dictionary or المعجم الوجيز"... My main point was to emphasize that its more beneficial to socialize with people and learn the original language from them.. and its more helpful for you to learn Standard Arabic, so it can be as a bridge to understand other dialects..


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## WannaBFluent

Oh, yes, obviously, that is right. It's better to know native people. But I still think that you can learn a full Arabic dialect or any language only on the Internet. Get the right books, tapes, ask your questions on forums like this one, watch local TV channels, listen to local radio channels and a huge motivation, and in shaa2 Allah, you will reach your objectives. Of course, you can't know all the vocabulary, all the words, even for your native language!


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## WadiH

There are clearly rules to each dialect.  But these rules are fluid and are much less likely to withstand the influence of other dialects.  The fact that each dialect exists on a continuum does not help in that respect.  One can say they have rules but the rules are not as stable as for more standardized languages.


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## suma

Drink said:


> I think what is meant is that colloquial Arabic does not have a standard set of rules. *There are rules of course*, but the details vary from city to city, village to village, tribe to tribe, making them hard to formalize and document. The same is true of any colloquial language including colloquial English.


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## salutatout

[mod note: moved from here]
No difference between the two because the spoken language has no rules.


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## elroy

Of course the spoken language has rules, salutatout.  You can't just combine words willy-nilly and expect to communicate clearly.  Your own statement about the verbs used in Syrian contradicts your claim about the spoken language.  If Syrian Arabic had no rules you'd be able to use whatever verb you wanted!


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## salutatout

Well, Elroy, it was a figure of speech only when I said no rules. I should have said no rules to a certain extent because it varies a lot not only from one city to another but also from one person to another. One says, biddi for I want, another says baddi for the same, while the word uridu for I want cannot be aridu or iridu in the fus'ha. This is what I meant by saying it has no rule, but of course, to a certain extent.


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## davoosh

I agree with Elroy, dialectal rules are just as complex as Fusha, it's just that they are not perceived as such by a lot of speakers. For example, whether one village uses biddi and one village uses baddi is a rule in itself (and a rule that can probably be extended if we take a close look at the vowel system used in those villages, for example).


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## salutatout

Dear friends
let us be clear about what we mean with rules. when we say "rules" we mean "qawa'id". Spoken language has no qawa'id. That is why we also have something called "i'rab" in fusha. the reason we have thousands of dialects in the Arab World is because there are no specific rules for the spoken language. respectfully.


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## n8starr

I wish people wouldn't say that 3ammiya does not have rules because it clearly does, however these rules are not as strict as fuS7a.


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## salutatout

If 'Amiyah had rules we wouldn't have thousands of dialects.


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## davoosh

If 3aammiyya didn't have rules, there wouldn't be a 500+ page Syrian reference grammar sitting on my shelf, nor a detailed study of Cairene and Yemeni syntax and morphology, amongst others. I'm sure these authors and researchers would be very surprised to hear 3aammiyya doesn't have 'rules'.


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## djara

What happened to Latin in the Renaissance (dethroned by French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) hasn't yet happened to Arabic because Arabs believe that the emergence of local languages will jeopardize the understandability of the Coran. What they don't see is that with MSA grammar and MSA vocabulary you CANNOT understand the Coran.


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## She'lock Holmes

In Arabic folk linguistic, arabophones of all social classes (especially the lower classes but this is in no way restricted to them) commonly consider their vernaculars as 'broken Arabic' which means that they _supposedly _have no grammar and whatever you say is an illegitimate vernacular; of course, this isn't correct in the slightest as these 'dialects' function as static vernacular languages and merely their lexical and (although much slower) phonological aspects are being influenced by MWA (e.g. راح or حـ in Syrian for the future tense is never replaceable by سوف or سـ).

I noticed that people here tend to *not *have a negative view of them.


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