# What is the usefulness of the Arabic dialects?



## James Bates

Punjabi is the mother tongue of some 48% of the population of Pakistan, while the national language, Urdu, is the native language of less than 8%. It may therefore seem that non-Punjabi Pakistanis would have some desire to learn Punjabi. I have been living in Lahore, the capital of the Pakistani province  of Punjab, for over twelve years. Despite that, I have never had much motivation to learn Punjabi, mainly due to the fact that I seldom encounter a person who cannot communicate in Urdu. On the rare occasion when I do come across such a person I simply ask the next person to translate. Furthermore, I never have any trouble reading signs or advertisements or newspapers for the simple reason that Punjabi is hardly ever written, Urdu and English being the preferred mediums for writing. True, I cannot understand movies, songs, and poetry in that language, nor eavesdrop on other people's conversations, but as far as communication is concerned I have not the slightest incentive to acquire a knowledge of Punjabi.

My experiences with Punjabi have led me to believe that the utility of a language is not to be gauged from the number of its speakers but from the number of speakers accessible exclusively through it.

My question to the reader is: what are the merits of the dialects of Arabic? If one’s goal is to communicate, i.e. to understand and be understood, then, I believe, MSA will suffice everywhere. On the other hand, if one’s goal is to eavesdrop, then it is true that MSA will be next to useless, as it is the mother tongue of none. Only the dialect used by the people on whom one wishes to eavesdrop will be useful. However, it is clearly infeasible to learn each and every dialect of Arabic, as they change from country to country and even city to city (e.g. the Cairene dialect is different from that of Alexandria).
              Some people have made the utterly incomprehensible suggestion that the Egyptian dialect should be learned, as it is the most widely understood of the dialects. Once again, my question is: what is the objective? If it is to communicate, then is not MSA more widely understood? If it is not to communicate but to eavesdrop, then how would Egyptian Arabic be useful outside of Egypt? Furthermore, even in Egypt there are several dialects. If the argument is made that Arabs are more comfortable speaking and being spoken to in the dialects than in MSA, then my question is: do you really think an Iraqi or Sudanese would be more comfortable speaking the language of the streets of Cairo than the language in which he was educated? True, he would be most comfortable speaking his own dialect, but we have already ruled out the feasibility of learning each and every dialect.

Finally, it is not to be forgotten that the dialects are rarely written outside of comic strips and that almost all written material in Arabic, from school textbooks to fashion magazines, is available exclusively in MSA.


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## elroy

There are colloquial words, phrases, expressions, collocations, and idioms that MSA cannot teach you.  If your goal is to *understand* the spoken language in a particular region of the Arabic-speaking world as well as be understood (putting aside for the moment the fact that not all Arabs are proficient in MSA), you need to learn a dialect.  

Obviously, it would be quite a formidable undertaking to try to learn all of them, but that is not necessary.  If you live in the Arab world, you only need to learn the dialect of the area you find yourself in.  You won't be able to understand everything on foreign TV, but that's not exactly indispensable.

If I were going to move to Morocco, I would definitely learn the Moroccan dialect.  I cannot imagine living there and expecting to understand everything only based on my knowledge of MSA.  Furthermore, I would eventually want to sound natural and not stilted.


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## James Bates

elroy said:


> There are colloquial words, phrases, expressions, collocations, and idioms that MSA cannot teach you.



True, MSA cannot teach you them, but why would you want to learn them anyway? Cannot Arabs get along well in the language of their education?


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## elroy

James Bates said:


> True, MSA cannot teach you them, but why would you want to learn them anyway? Cannot Arabs get along well in the language of their education?


 We could if we had to, I guess (except for those who are not educated or proficient in MSA), but we don't - and I reckon that's not going to change anytime soon.  So the answer to your question is simple: you would want to learn a dialect to understand everyday speech - and to communicate with those around you in an ordinary way.


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## James Bates

elroy said:


> So the answer to your question is simple: you would want to learn a dialect to understand everyday speech - and to communicate with those around you in an ordinary way.




But you do agree that if one is not interested in eavesdropping but only in understanding and making oneself understood, then MSA will suffice?


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## MarcB

Adding to what Elroy said, Egyptian (any of them) but especially Cairene due to media is mutually intelligible with Levantine Arabic and Sudanese. Of course there are differences but they do not impede natural conversations in both directions, the few words which might not be understood can easily be explained. Western Arabic and Gulf Arabic present some difficulty (mostly Western), i.e. they usually understand Egyptian and Levantine but not the reverse. If you speak any dialect and live or spend time in another country you can quickly adapt to local speech since the majority of the vocabulary is the same, pronunciation and speed are the biggest factors in comprehension. 
 There are some differences in grammar as well.


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## James Bates

MarcB said:


> If you speak any dialect and live or spend time in another country you can quickly adapt to local speech since the majority of the vocabulary is the same, pronunciation and speed are the biggest factors in comprehension. There are some differences in grammar as well.



Yes, I know that the dialects are not completely different languages and that if you know one you have an advantage in learning another. The only question is why settle for anything less than MSA, a language that is uniform throughout the Arab world? Why insist on the dialects?


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## elroy

James Bates said:


> But you do agree that if one is not interested in eavesdropping but only in understanding and making oneself understood, then MSA will suffice?


 No, I do not agree, because with MSA alone you will not be able to understand everything that is spoken.


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## James Bates

elroy said:


> No, I do not agree, because with MSA alone you will not be able to understand everything that is spoken.



That's strange, because my experience tells me that when one speaks MSA with an Arab, he almost always reciprocates, just as when one speaks Urdu here in Lahore.


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## MarcB

You are right that someone who speaks MSA will reciprocate. Also you will find many people who speak English so that is a consideration if you do not want to learn the spoken language.


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## elroy

James Bates said:


> That's strange, because my experience tells me that when one speaks MSA with an Arab, he almost always reciprocates, just as when one speaks Urdu here in Lahore.


 Arabs may respond to you in MSA to accommodate your needs, but do you really want to keep making them do that?

Furthermore, I was referring to situations such as, say, a gathering of Arabs, where you do not understand all that is being said, or any situation in which you are addressed first.


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## James Bates

MarcB said:


> You are right that someone who speaks MSA will reciprocate. Also you will find many people who speak English so that is a consideration if you do not want to learn the spoken language.




Yes, you will also find people who speak English here in Punjab, but they are a minority. You CANNOT get by with just English here; you need to know Urdu or Punjabi, and if one does not have the time to learn both, one will undoubtedly opt for the former, as it is understood throughout Pakistan, Kashmir, and even parts of India, while the latter is unsurprisingly confined to Punjab.

Similarly, I am sure there are some Arabs who speak English, French, and other European languages, but I am also sure they are a minority. The medium of instruction in public schools in the Arab world is MSA, which means that every Arab who has been to school has a knowledge of MSA. Even if one does come across a non-MSA speaking (i.e. illiterate) Arab, as one occasionally comes across non-Urdu speaking Punjabis, one can simply ask the next person to interpret.


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## MarcB

See my corrected post number 6.


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## Taalib

James,

Keep in mind that the dichotomy between Urdu and Punjabi is not the same as Arabic and regional, national, or local dialects. The Pakistani government's move to impose Urdu as the national language came primarily to dilute ethnic and tribal differences. What good was a central government if Sindhi and Baluchi speakers couldn't "get" each other when working in an army battalion? But by imposing Urdu, the government not merely taught it in the classrooms, it actively relegated Punjabi and the other regional languages to second-class status. It used admittedly cunning political techniques to pacify regional identity, reduce tribal power, and convince everyday Pakistanis that such a thing as a national language did exist, and that they should speak it instead of their own regional tongue.

Enter the Arabic world, where instead of a few regional dialects and a government-imposed master language, you have upwards of twenty countries, each with regional and local variations of dialects--but with no central authority imposing the "mother tongue" of MSA upon everyday life and, thus, relegating the colloquial language as second-class tools of communication that would allow every person to instantly recognize the logic that many students of Arabic are taught: that MSA is the best and most practical form of Arabic; all other variations are meaningless. But the lack of a central linguistic authority enforcing MSA practices means that coverage of MSA proficiency (passive or otherwise) is patchy because the reach of the state into public spaces and private lives is often times more theoretical than real. 

To give further highlight to these analogies' poor fit, consider that Pakistan is a densely populated country where the geographic diffusion of Urdu was aided by censorship, enforcement, and education. The Arab world is a moderately populated swathe of numerous countries where there the preexisting tradition of MSA as "high" language and everything else as "low" language is enforced purely as a matter of educational objective.

As a result, extensive travel in the region nets you these insights that considerable modify the original assumption:

1) Not everyone understands, reads, or speaks MSA. In many Arab countries, illiteracy is high (especially in rural areas); but even in urban centers, the quality of education varies. Unless you insist on encountering only middle- to upper-class people in metropolitan areas, there is no guarantee that MSA alone will suffice in even the most basic tasks. My work in Arab countries was based upon movement through political and journalistic communities filled with relatively elite people, so knowing MSA alone would do the trick. But the number of politicians and journalists in any given Arab country is exceedingly low. Thus, one should add an addendum to your linguistic criterion--it's not only how many people you need to communicate with, it's also about the purpose of communication.

2) "Understanding" MSA is not equivalent to "fluency" in MSA. Many Arabs have passive understanding of MSA from all their years of formal education but in their daily lives seldom use it; and as a result, if you speak to many in MSA, they might understand most of it, but their replies might leave you befuddled, a mish-mash as it may be between local and MSA tongues. Newspapers and satellite TV are helping to make MSA more of a regional universal mode of communication, but active and encouraged use--like what the Pakistani government has long done with Urdu in, say, the frontier areas--has not yet rendered MSA a second tongue for each and every Arab, one that s/he can easily slip into to speak with the exotic foreigner who grasps its tenets. 

3) For many students of Arabic, future residence/work in the region will be defined by a single-country focus, and it makes complete sense if the student is planning on living or working in a general sub-region--e.g., the maghreb; the Arab east; the Arab gulf--to learn a dominant dialect in that subregion. As others pointed out, certain dialects are closely related to each other, and share affinities that give the speaker considerable grasp over other colloquial variations spoken in the subregion. Perhaps if you were to insist on travelling to 15 countries over the course of three years, then it makes no sense struggling to learn all the dialectical variations you will encounter. But if one is training to live and work in a single city or country, it makes complete sense to learn the dialect and its linkages with MSA. It makes sense even under your original criterion: communicating with as many people as possible if your work takes you to a single locale means that you should learn the dialect, because you will be able to communicate with far more people.


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## Anatoli

MarcB said:


> Adding to what Elroy said, Egyptian (any of them) but especially Cairene due to media is mutually intelligible with Levantine Arabic and Sudanese. Of course there are differences but they do not impede natural conversations in both directions, the few words which might not be understood can easily be explained. Western Arabic and Gulf Arabic present some difficulty (mostly Western), i.e. they usually understand Egyptian and Levantine but not the reverse. If you speak any dialect and live or spend time in another country you can quickly adapt to local speech since the majority of the vocabulary is the same, pronunciation and speed are the biggest factors in comprehension.
> There are some differences in grammar as well.



I also read interesting ideas about so called _*Shared Arabic*_, I don't think such a definition exist but I wonder if there is such a sort of a colloquial Arabic using words common to most dialects and/or using some simplified version of MSA but I doubt it is possible, even if we take some simple words like "what", it is different for all dialects, although they are also widely known.

See question 10:
http://hmaxos.com/FAQ.htm



> ...
> Shared Arabic is what's in  common between spoken Arabic dialects, modern written and classical Arabic. It  is what all Arabs share, highly or modestly educated Arabs. ...


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## MarcB

Anatoli,
I think it does exist in an unofficial way.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

James Bates said:


> But you do agree that if one is not interested in eavesdropping but only in understanding and making oneself understood, then MSA will suffice?



This way,you could never share a spontaneous,fluent and intimate discussion.
MSA limitates your conversation to formal speech.


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## elroy

Thank you, Taalib, for an amazingly comprehensive and accurate reply.  It's always great to get the perspective of a foreigner who has spent time in the region.  

I just have a couple of questions for you:


> [...] that would allow every person to instantly recognize the logic that many students of Arabic are taught: that MSA is the best and most practical form of Arabic; all other variations are meaningless. [...]


 (emphasis mine)

Does this mean that you agree with this "logic"?  Or were you simply stating a point of view?



> [...] where there the preexisting tradition of MSA as "high" language and everything else as "low" language is enforced purely as a matter of educational objective.


 What do you mean by "a matter of educational objective"? 

Thank you to Tariq as well, for putting things so concisely and matter-of-factly.


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## Taalib

Thanks mudirator!

On the first quotation, I was stating a point of view, not my own. My own belief is that Arabic exists as a spectrum of linguistic practices. Western students like myself were taught that there is "high" Arabic (MSA) that is the backbone of Arabic culture and literary tradition, that every Arab knows--or SHOULD know--and there is "low" Arabic, the dialects, which are practically jibberish because they violate classic grammatical conventions, etc. But I feel that any open-minded person who has spent at least a year or two in the region will understand this hierarchical dichotomy is a fiction, a pleasant lie that we were told to help us deal with the intimidating structure of Arabic, but nonetheless a non-truth. In practice, people mix different sorts of Arabic all the time, and to gain a full appreciation of the language one ought to learn both--or at least, as in my case when I don't live in a country for that long--understand the basic principles of the dialect, so one blends in.

As for the second quotation, I meant to say by "educational objective" that the diffusion of MSA as a common "mother tongue" in most Arab countries was enforced not by censorship, coercion, etc. but rather through state education, which was usually conducted in classical or modern Arabic, either because it had a heavy religious component or because it was simply more practical for the teachers. In contrast, if you look at post-colonial governments in sub-Saharan Africa or Asia, you find states that upon independence really struggled to impose a sense of national identity that would overcome regional differences and languages. Imposing a mother tongue upon different regions was one tool of nationalism, and to do so states often had to censor local dialects, force out speakers who refused to convert, discriminate against those who still stuck to their local/regional languages, etc. 

This is really significant. For instance, the secession of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from (West) Pakistan in the early 1970s, which became a very bloody war, was partly fought over the continued imposition of Urdu was the government-favored national language over Bengali, officially a mother tongue of Pakistan but unofficially one that was clearly relegated as a second-class language. You find experiences like these all over the post-colonial world. But in contrast, you don't find that many analogies in the Arab world (we might say perhaps that the Moroccan state, with its Berber minority, or maybe with its Western Sahara province, had a similar problem).


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## elroy

Taalib said:


> In practice, people mix different sorts of Arabic all the time, and to gain a full appreciation of the language one ought to learn both-- [...]


 Yislam tummak!    

If you read through older threads on the topic, you'll see that this is what I constantly try to explain to people on the forums. We do indeed use both forms of the language in different contexts, and in everyday speech we mostly use colloquial Arabic but mix in MSA when necessary; as such, a foreigner who learns only one or the other cannot claim to really "know" the language in every sense of the word. It's nice to see this confirmed by a non-Arab whose views don't run the risk of being dismissed as biased.  

And yes, you are right that the expansion of MSA throughout the Arabic-speaking world has been mostly achieved through education. Along with the reasons you mentioned, MSA is the variety that is taught in schools because there has been little to no standardization of the dialects (as far as spelling, grammar, etc.), so there really isn't anything concrete _to_ teach. MSA, on the other hand, is prescriptive by definition because it is generally reserved for very formal contexts and is therefore largely immune to the changes most other languages in the world undergo on a continual basis. At the same time, I should point out that it is not infrequent for teachers to speak _in_ colloquial Arabic while teaching.


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## Arrius

MSA which is understood by all educated Arabs (as well as Egyptian Copts and Lebanese Christians) occurs throughout the Arab World and is what is heard in news broadcasts and read in newspapers. It is founded on the language of the Koran so that even the illiterate Muslim Arab with no access to a radio has some familiarity with it.
It is therefore the kind of Arabic to learn first unless one's need for a dialect (say a London poiceman seconded to the Cairo force) is well known, and one is short of time.  Once this basis has been established one can then branch out into the dialect of an appropriate region, or at least include elements of it into one's MSA.  Cairene Egyptian, however, is a special case, as much that is said on TV and in the cinema  is heard in that version throughout the Arab World, so that Saudis for instance have learned to understand it quite well and it has encroached on their everyday speech as well as that of other regions.
  A further point, which has not been touched on so far is that dialects - if one excludes Moroccan which seems to manage with very few vowels rendering it incomprehensible to non-maghrebinians - are normally somewhat simpler than MSA, which already is a "simplified" version of Classical Arabic with the endings that need not be written these days omitted in speech. I use the quotes because Arabic is horrendously difficult for the foreigner to learn:even speakers of the closely related language, Hebrew, have much difficulty with its more dificult grammar. Thus going on to a dialect from a basic knowledge of MSA means dealing with a simplified
grammar.  A good example of this  are the rules governing numerals in say, Egyptian as compared to arabiya fos-ha: fairly simple in the former and an absolute nightmare even for Arab undergraduates in the latter. Thus the franji can make his life easier as well as appear more friendly by including some local usage in his stilted MSA.


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## elroy

Arrius said:


> MSA which is understood by all educated Arabs (as well as Egyptian Copts and Lebanese Christians)


 "Arab" does not equal "Moslem"! 


> even the illiterate Muslim Arab with no access to a radio has some familiarity with it.


 How?  Unless he has no radio but does have a TV. 


> Cairene Egyptian, however, is a special case, as much that is said on TV and in the cinema is heard in that version throughout the Arab World, so that Saudis for instance have learned to understand it quite well and it has encroached on their everyday speech as well as that of other regions.


 We (Palestinians) understand it very well too, but it has not "encroached on our everyday speech."  I don't know what the situation is like in other parts of the Arab world.


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## Arrius

Thank you for reading my posting and commenting on it. I do not appear to have expressed myself carefully enough.
I was trying to make the point that although the Koran is at the base of a degree of linguistic unity, some non-moslem groups with a somewhat different culture are included in this linguistic community.  I was also trying to say that even those who hear no MSA for lack of a radio(unlikely, I agree) constantly hear viva voce recitations from the Koran chanted  with  a careful classical pronunciation so that  even if they are illiterate and speaking an extremely distinct dialect they still have some familiarity with the kind of language that is the basis of MSA.
   Just as I realise, of course,  that an Arab is far from being identical with a Moslem, so am I aware  that the Koran or Quran was written a milennium-and-a half ago. Nonetheless, it is remarkable how much can still be understood superficially at least by anyone with a basic knowledge of MSA.
  I am surprised that Egyptian Colloquial has had no effect on the nearby Palestinian Colloquial, but you must agree that the constant bombardment of another variety of one's language is likely to influence to some degree the way one speaks.  In this way for many decades Americanisms have been seeping into British English e.g. "different than" instead of "different from". And when the Australian series "Neighbours" was popular, British teenagers watching it twice daily soon picked up new Aussie expressions and accent.


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## elroy

Egyptian Arabic has not had any signficiant effect on Palestinian Arabic, but you are veering off-topic.  The topic of this thread is the usefulness of learning colloquial Arabic as opposed to MSA.  If you are interested in discussing other topics, please open a new thread or search for old ones.


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## Anatoli

I noticed that opinions differ, depending on where you're from. People living in Saudi Arabia (both natives and Arabic learners), Saudi a more conservative society in all other aspects, they tend to agree that MSA is more useful than dialects and find it more natural to use MSA more often compared to other more liberal Arabic countries. It's only to a certain extent, of course, the 3 Saudi dialects are very popular too and one is even used by the government but unlike other Arabic countries, MSA is used for many programs in Saudi Arabia, not just for offcial news and Quran recitations. Another example is Libya, where it is attempted to use MSA as common language, not just the high language. I don't have the source for it, any more but Jordan has been promoting MSA outside class:



> [Arabic, Standard]...Official language. Used for education, official purposes, communication among Arabic-speaking countries. Education officials promoting this variety among students. Regional varieties have been used in classrooms, but this is changing.


(http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=arb , scroll to Jordan)

I am all for liberalism but IMHO, for Arabic unity I think, enforcing usage of MSA in public discussions is a positive thing, as it popularises standard Arabic over dialects. It doesn't mean that dialects don't have the right to exist but if MSA were used more often and not just in very official situations, it would become more natural to the ear and understood/known by much more people. My point is, that if you are exposed to a language much more often, you become fluent in it and also, it's a sad fact that literacy is very low in many Arabic countries and to be literate means knowing MSA, among other things. The usage of fuS-Ha by highly educated people is generally much higher than by illiterates, which affects the way literates speak in informal situations.

How much MSA versus colloquial is used depends on the speaker, the topic,      the situation - amongst other factors. At the other end of the spectrum, public      education as well as exposure to mass media, has introduced MSA elements amongst      the least educated so that it would be equally difficult to find an Arab speaker      whose speech is totally unaffected by MSA.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~andyf/digl_96.htm


> One thing that everyone agrees upon is that the national dialects are undergoing a leveling process and that there are a lot of recent borrowings from MSA into the dialects.


From the learner's point of view, I think this is a good comment:

http://www.edumagic.com/cgi-bin/library_courses/faq_e.htm#f14


> It is important to note that by studying        MSA as the basis of your Arabic language knowledge, you easily acquire the        colloquial form, as it is in many ways a simplified version of MSA.


I would add that one, of course, needs to be able to learn some differences of MSA vs dialects. The vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation which is different from standard, luckily it seems that although the vocabulary difference affects the most common and most frequently used words, the number of words, which are different is not that great.

I personally don't think that this debate on diglossia will ever stop (not necessarily on this forum) but in general.

(see Living Language)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/678/letters.htm



> Friedman and Lewis are good writers and scholars in English, but they know no Arabic, or superficial Arabic. Yet they give the impression of lack of reform in the Arabic language. Edward Said points out the reform in Arabic very vividly in the form of a journalistic Standard Arabic which is common throughout the Arabic world. The average high school student reads and speaks like the writers of _Al-Ahram _or Al- Jazeera. This standard Arabic has already influenced the public.



http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/677/cu15.htm


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