# Msa in arab countries



## IsaacDMQ

In arab countries understand the natives when is talked to them in msa arabic?


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## WadiH

It varies between countries and socio-economic classes, but generally people in big cities will understand fuSha easily.


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## djara

In Tunisia, people who have been to school understand MSA. Those who haven't been to school long  enough will have problems understanding the syntax and very specialized vocabulary.


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## IsaacDMQ

If the media,literature...etc is in msa the majority should understand it.


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## raamez

The majority understands MSA indeed, but only a few can speak it flawlessly.


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## rarabara

interestingly , I see or observe that I can spell/write almost all of texts pronunciated on al jazeera arabic which is well known channel these days.
i.e. at least we can say that not the no media uses it.
in fact, egyptian dialect is also just undersatandable or hopefully (in sha Allah) will be so for me. All in all some pop musics really implicit. but in this time,I would like to remember Wadi Hanifa's advice.

to summarize, I believe that it would really worth to struggle with MSA to master it if you have no problem in pronunciating it correctly. (i.e. I believe or hope (in sha Allah) we will understand some dialects) if we master MSA.


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## rarabara

IsaacDMQ said:


> In arab countries understand the natives when is talked to them in msa arabic?


specifically,I think Saudi Arabia natives and maybe UAE yes, understand. one of my friends says syrian dialect was clear and also close to MSA.


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## JAN SHAR

In 2022 every Arab can understand MSA but not every Arab can speak it.


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## Aa1egy

IsaacDMQ said:


> In arab countries understand the natives when is talked to them in msa arabic?


 I doubt western north Africans can, it's a very distinct form of arabic they use.


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## Hemza

Aa1egy said:


> I doubt western north Africans can, it's a very distinct form of arabic they use.


A distinct form of Standard Arabic? Or are you talking about the dialects? What makes you think that because the dialects are different (as almost all dialects are actually), people are unable to understand Standard Arabic? In which language do you think official documents are written? What is the language taught at school? Etc.


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## Aa1egy

Hemza said:


> A distinct form of Standard Arabic? Or are you talking about the dialects? What makes you think that because the dialects are different (as almost all dialects are actually), people are unable to understand Standard Arabic? In which language do you think official documents are written? What is the language taught at school? Etc.


I meant that their dialect is very different from standard arabic, more than any other dialect, at least for me, so chances are... they wouldn't get a grasp on it as I would assume others do, I am not saying they all can't, I am saying that they might have the most chance of not being familiar with it.


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## Hemza

That's two misconceptions then .


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## Aa1egy

Hemza said:


> That's two misconceptions then .


I hope they are and there will be a time in which we all understand and even talk using standard arabic inshallah my brother.


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## WadiH

I don’t know what it’s like for the newer generations, but in my generation we picked up FusHa natively from watching TV when all cartoons were dubbed in FusHa. I think the Maghreb was similar to the Mashreq in this respect so I think most Maghrebis above a certain age and economic level should understand it easily.  Nowadays the media environment is much more fragmented so I don’t know how much exposure children get to FuSHa (I know with my kids it’s been a big challenge).


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## Romeel

I think most Arabs will understand Standard Arabic when they hear it, but less than that will speak or write it correctly.


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## Hemza

Assuming many kids still spend hours (unfortunately) in front of this channel my cousins used to piss me off with, Spacetoon, I guess they're still exposed to it. Though I suspect that a part of the youth tend to also be exposed to other languages media as well as their dialect based media more than they used to be, thus reducing their exposure to Standard Arabic for some of them.


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## Ali Smith

In my experience, all Arabs understand MSA (which means you will never need to learn to _speak_ a dialect), but less educated ones cannot reciprocate when spoken to in it (which means you may have to learn to _understand_ their dialect).


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## IsaacDMQ

Don't you think that it would be nice that msa arabic be the language of arab countries both spoken and written? So one would go these countries to practice  spoken arabic,talks to arabs...etc


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## Hemza

IsaacDMQ said:


> Don't you think that it would be nice that msa arabic be the language of arab countries both spoken and written? So one would go these countries to practice  spoken arabic,talks to arabs...etc


From an utilitarian standpoint yes. Now, you must be aware that the existence of dialects precedes the existence of Standard Arabic and that goes this way for all languages since the rise of a standardised language is often the consequence of a political process. In Arabia itself, there are many dialects up to this day and this happens everywhere in the world.
Also, Arabic dialects are not standalone languages, they're (in my opinion) colloquial, spoken versions of Arabic and are a part of what embeds the "Arabic label" as much as Standard Arabic itself (compare with Spanish, there are many dialects of it within Spain and there is Standard Spanish of Spain also known as Castellano though no one would separate all these versions of Spanish, they're all included under the label "Spanish").

Arabic's expension also happened at a time where the people who arabised the current day Arabic speaking areas were talking they're own dialect and not Standard Arabic. This added to the historical and political division of these lands (+ native languages of the areas' influence) gave birth to the differences found today which aren't that great given all these factors.

I imagine that what leads to such idea even amongst some Arabs is that (in my opinion again) many people greatly exaggerate the differences between each dialects on a hand and between Standard Arabic and the dialects (which after all, come from the same sources) on another hand. Of course, a speaker of a dialect who has never been exposed to another may not understand more than 10% the first time he/she hears it yet it only takes few days up to few weeks to get used and understand another dialect (I'm a good example, although not being really a native speaker, since I've got exposed to Egyptian Arabic. It took me some times to get used to it as I didn't have a previous exposure to it and now, I understand it pretty well).

It's not like learning another language, it's just getting used to a different pronunciation, some different words (that may be from this standpoint, a weakness of Arabic: its extremely large lexicon but that to me, what makes Arabic amazing) but overall, the grammar of the dialects is almost identical, the prepositions are identical, the conjugation may vary a little bit though all of this doesn't prevent intellibility).

Colombian Spanish and Argentinian Spanish are all considered Spanish although having some differences, aren't they? Though I'm sure it wouldn't be a hard challenge for a Colombian who had no previous exposure to Argentinian Spanish to understand it after few days of exposure.


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