# The difference between Arabic dialects is as big as...



## Jacobtm

Hello,

So I've had some interest in learning Arabic, but have been warned that the formal, written Arabic that is usually taught to students is not useful for actually conversing with people, and that the dialects spoken in different countries are practically different languages with common roots. 

I was wondering if anyone could help me try to figure out exactly how different these different dialects are. For instance, would the difference be comparable to the differences between Romance languages?

I can speak and comprehend Spanish well, and can read Portuguese and Italian to a limited degree, but can't really understand spoken Portuguese or Italian unless it's spoken very slowly and the words used are quite basic. Would a speaker of Egyptian Arabic find himself in much the same situation when presented with Syrian or Moroccan Arabic speaker, or is there more or less mutual intelligibility between spoken Arabic dialects?

Or perhaps I've over-estimated the difference between dialects. While I say I speak and comprehend Spanish well, what I really mean is Mexican Spanish, and trying to watch an Argentinian movie to me is practically impossible, especially during casual dialogue with lots of colloquial expressions. Would the difference be more akin to the difference between different varieties of Spanish, with (mostly) the same basic structure but alot of extra variety on top in pronunciation and vocabulary?


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## Mahaodeh

This is a long subject, much debated and actually rather sensitive to Arabs. Learning fus7a (MSA and/or CA, Arabs actually do not distinguish between the two) is helpful because all written communication is in fus7a not in dialects as well as the fact that all Arabs speak fus7a although they only use it in writing and in formal settings (such as delivering a speach at a conference).

Arabs, regardless of the dialect they speak, find that their dialect is very close to fus7a although they are aware of the differences; non-Arabs may find that there is a bigger difference.

As for mutual comprehension, in most cases they understand each other very well; but Darjah (the dialect in Morocco and Algeria) are hard to understand by most others unless they speak very slowley and not use the loanwords from Berber and French. So basically an Egyptian understands a Syrian or Saudi very well and vice versa but all three generally find it hard to understand a Moroccan and in most cases they revert to fus7a to communicate. I wouldn't call them languages, they are too close to be seperate languages.

All dialects are based on fus7a - it's not merely the common roots. The grammar in dialects is very much simplified, but the rules are actually more or less the same in all dialects (i.e., it's basically the same simplification - dual form in verbs is omited, inflictions for verbs and nouns are omited...etc.) the difference, in my view, is mostly the accent (as opposed to dialect, it's the "music of the language") that creates the new dialect. Vocabulary is mostly Arabic in all dialects and almost all basic words are Arabic, but Arabic actually has an enormous vocabulary, so another difference is the choice of words that become common in one dialect and not in the other (one example is the word for "I want": it's areed, biddi, abgha, abii, 'aawiz and others in different dialects, all are fus7a and all mean "I want", but each dialect has picked only one or two - naturally, the fact that all native speakers know fus7a helps in the mutual comprehension).

Dialects have more loanwords than fus7a, interestingly though, those loanwords can actually be pan-Arabic (example, tilfizyoun for TV, not fus7a but pan-Arabic) although sometimes there are loanwords that are specific to some dialects and not to others - as an example, Iraqi Arabic has a little bit more Persian loanwords than others and Egyptian Arabic has some Italian loanwords that don't exist in others. Darjah (in Morocco and Algeria) are probably problematic for two reasons, one is the accent (they tend to omit more vowels than is allowed in Arabic) and the existance of quite a sizeable amount of Berber loanwords that do not exist in other dialects.

I can't compare the situation to Romance languages because I don't speak any of them, but basing on what you explained, Maybe you can say that most dialects are like the differences beetween Spanish dialects with Darjah being closer to Italian or Portogese.

Personally, I would advise learning fus7a for several reasons:
- It's much easier to find a place to learn it, most places either teach basic words "to get by" in collequal or teach fus7a.
- You have pleanty of reasources, TV, News, Newspapers, Books...etc.
- Everyone understands fus7a (including little pre-school children because cartoons and children's shows are in fus7a not collequal), you can add to that some Muslims whose native toung is not Arabic but they learn Arabic in school as a second language.
- You can always learn a dialect later. Dialects are basically fus7a with the grammar rules very much simplified, some letters are pronounced a little different, different preferences on which word to use for what and some additional loanwords. It's much easier to learn a dialect after you learn fus7a, plus, you can learn more than one dialect.

That is my opinion, maybe other people have other opinions.


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## kepulauan

Thank you Mahaodeh for a long and informative answer. I'm in the dilemma of choosing whether to start with MSA or Khaliji and after reading some threads here I'm starting to sway toward the former. 

I have been trying to find comparison tables for Arabic dialects on the internet but with no results. Has Anyone had better luck than me? They need not be extensive, just for fun.


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## berndf

*Moderator note:*

*Here are a few useful links to threads in Arabic forum concerning this matter compiled by my colleague Cherine who is moderating that forum:*

*MSA - Classical Arabic - Dialects*
- Varieties of Arabic 
- Is there such a thing as MSA? 
- Quranic Arabic vs Modern Arabic 
- Learning Classical Arabic 
- MSA in everyday speech: How does it sound? 
- Arabic grammar books/textbooks 
- Usefulness of MSA vs French in North Africa 
- Can a person learn MSA to read the Quran? 
- Quranic vocabulary and grammar resources 
- MSA in Arabic 
- MSA in speech
- When do you use Modern Standard Arabic? 
- Classical Arabic vs Modern Standard Arabic 
- Arabic and its many forms 
- Dialect closest to Standard or Classical Arabic 
- Evolution of Arabic 
- Creation of Modern Standard Arabic 
*Dialects*
- الفصحى والعامية (The title says: fusHa and 'ammeyya = Standard Arabic and colloquial)
- Similarities and differences between Colloquial and Standard Arabic 
- History/Origin of Arabic dialects 
- What is the usefulness of the Arabic dialects 
- Learning Tunisian dialect 
- Translation between fuS7a and misriyah 
- Jordanian vs. Egyptian Dialects 
- Palestinian Arabic vs. Jordanian Arabic 
- Going from one dialect to another 
- Pure Arabic vs Aletered Arabic 
- Learning Maghreb Arabic 
- Moroccan Arabic 
- Egyptian accent vs MSA 
- Dialects of Arabic 
- Are pop songs normally in MSA or dialect?

*Thank you very much Cherine.*


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## Hulalessar

pollodia said:


> I'm in the dilemma of choosing whether to start with MSA or Khaliji.



I think the answer has to depend on the reason you want to learn the language.

If you just want to "learn Arabic" then you should go for MSA. You will then be able to read the language and get by in Arabic speaking countries. It will also be a good starting point to learn any vernacular.

If you are planning spending some time in the Gulf area and time is limited before you get there then you should go for Khaliji.


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## Abu Rashid

> I'm in the dilemma of choosing whether to start with MSA or Khaliji



If you learnt one specific dialect like Khaliji, you'd still have the dilemma of only being able to communicate with those specific people and would still need to learn more in order to communicate widely in the Arab world.

However if you learn Fus7a (MSA) first, then you will have a good grounding in the language, which will make you pretty much universally understood in all of the Arab world, as well having a good grounding from which to specialise in a dialect. It does make the learning process longer, since you need to learn two lots of many things, but the result will be much better.


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## kepulauan

Thanks guys! Things are getting much clearer for me now. But back to Jacobs's question...

I can't tell you if the Arabic dialect difference is comparable to the romance languages but I think it's safe to say that the Spanish varieties are more comparable to English varieties (the most usual ones, I' not talking about pidgin or creoles). I too can read Portuguese easily but Romanian would be impossible. Of course writing, listening and speaking either of them would also be impossible. Within the Spanish speaking world I find it much different. I learned European Spanish and have a difficulty listening to Mexican movies but in the end it's just a question of practice. At first I couldn't comprehend Cuban lyrics but when I read them it turns out everyone is using the same structure, as you allready said. You can get used to listening to any Spanish variety but from what I've read in the links above you can't learn Khaliji and then get used to Fusha that easily. 

Hope that was helpful and accurate


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## Abu Rashid

> You can get used to listening to any Spanish variety but from what I've read in the links above you can't learn Khaliji and then get used to Fusha that easily.



I think the idea of the Romance analogy was to compare Spanish, French etc. to Latin, to understand how Arabic dialects relate to Fus7a. But I'd suggest the relationship is more accurate if you consider it say 1500-2000 years ago, when Latin was still used, side by side, with the various vulgar Latins of Gaul, Hispania etc. Today the analogy isn't so accurate because the Romance languages have officially diverged, and because Latin isn't widely spoken side by side with them. A French speaker and a Spanish speaker cannot just switch to Latin if they can't understand one another.


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## Mahaodeh

pollodia said:


> You can get used to listening to any Spanish variety but from what I've read in the links above you can't learn Khaliji and then get used to Fusha that easily.


 
Native Arabs can and do so all the time. I never said you can't learn Khaliji first then learn fus7a, of course you can - why not? What we said is that if you learn khaliji first you will have a hard time understanding the other dialects (which are quite common in khaleej region, by the way ) but it is in no way impossible, we just said it's easier the other way round.


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## Masjeen

pollodia said:


> Thank you Mahaodeh for a long and informative answer. I'm in the dilemma of choosing whether to start with MSA or Khaliji and after reading some threads here I'm starting to sway toward the former.
> 
> I have been trying to find comparison tables for Arabic dialects on the internet but with no results. Has Anyone had better luck than me? They need not be extensive, just for fun.


 
Without hesitation, Select the Fus7a
 You can study the dialects later very quickly


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## kepulauan

Mahaodeh said:


> Native Arabs can and do so all the time. I never said you can't learn Khaliji first then learn fus7a, of course you can - why not? What we said is that if you learn khaliji first you will have a hard time understanding the other dialects (which are quite common in khaleej region, by the way ) but it is in no way impossible, we just said it's easier the other way round.



I was talking about the last paragraph of Jacob's question regarding the internal variation of Spanish. European, Mexican, Rioplatanese etc. are comparable to Br. English and US. English Aus. English as far as I can tell. There is no need to _learn_ more than one.




Abu Rashid said:


> I think the idea of the Romance analogy was to compare Spanish, French etc. to Latin, to understand how Arabic dialects relate to Fus7a. But I'd suggest the relationship is more accurate if you consider it say 1500-2000 years ago, when Latin was still used, side by side, with the various vulgar Latins of Gaul, Hispania etc. Today the analogy isn't so accurate because the Romance languages have officially diverged, and because Latin isn't widely spoken side by side with them. A French speaker and a Spanish speaker cannot just switch to Latin if they can't understand one another.



I didn't attempt to answer the romance analogy earlier but recall the vulgars didn´t become separate languages until the 9th century and Latin continued to be an important literary language throuhout Europe until the 16th century. So maybe it was similar a little less than 1500 years ago?


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## WadiH

pollodia said:


> At first I couldn't comprehend Cuban lyrics but when I read them it turns out everyone is using the same structure, as you allready said. You can get used to listening to any Spanish variety but from what I've read in the links above you can't learn Khaliji and then get used to Fusha that easily.



Honestly -- and this is controversial and not a lot of people here agree with me on this -- the transition from Khaliji to Fus7a is simpler than it is from most other dialects.

Regardless of what dialect you start from, you will need to overcome some superficial phonetic features (in Khaliji, these would be q > g, k > ch, j > y, and no more glottal stop), and some of the short vowels are different (In Khaliji, short "u" is rare, mostly becomes short "i").  And of course there are the case/mood markings, but these are optional even in MSA (my experience is that few Arabs know how to apply those rules anyway so I wouldn't worry about those).

Off the top of my head, the main grammatical differences you would have to learn in Fus7a are:

1 - future is marked by the prefix _sawfa/sa-_ instead of _b-_ or _raa7_
2 - there is a "true passive" form in Fus7a (_yuf3a_l).  Khaliji used to have one too, but it's basically extinct nowadays.
3 - The "connective" particles "an" ("an+verb": "to do")
4 - Negation is done differently
5 - Different word for "also"
6 - Initial consonantal clusters are common in Khaliji but not allowed in Fus7a (maybe not a grammar issue per se)

There are other differences, of course, but I really believe that covers most of it.

And of course, Fus7a has a bigger vocabulary (but that's natural in every language; the written vocabulary is always much greater than the spoken).  But more importantly, there is some "basic vocabulary" that is different (words for "want," "see," "go," etc.).  The Khaliji words are not necessarily "wrong" under Fus7a, but each form of the language prefers certain words over others.

My advice would be to expose yourself to Fus7a via TV/radio once you've begun to get a handle on Khaliji.

As for the transition from Khaliji to other dialects, you should know that as spoken in 2010, Khaliji is already heavily influenced by other Arabic dialects.  Once you learn one Arabic dialect, the transition to others is usually not hard at all, unless you make a huge jump from, say, Iraqi to Moroccan, or something.  Someone on this forum said long ago that Arabic spoken varieties are closer to each other than any of them is to Fus7a, and I think that in the 21st century that is basically true (at least in the eastern half of the Arab World).

So, bottom line is, if you're worried about learning Fus7a after Khaliji, don't.  Just learn Khaliji, and if you're serious enough about Arabic, you will have little difficulty making the transition to Fus7a.

Note that there isn't a lot of "written Khaliji material," except for vernacular poetry, which is more "Najdi" than Khaliji anyway and difficult to understand even for us natives, and of course pop song lyrics.  That may be the only drawback to learning Khaliji, unless you've found a very good course.


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## Abu Rashid

> I didn't attempt to answer the romance analogy earlier but recall the vulgars didn´t become separate languages until the 9th century and Latin continued to be an important literary language throuhout Europe until the 16th century. So maybe it was similar a little less than 1500 years ago?



The major difference here is that the Arabic dialects have always existed (as far as is known) and probably always will, alongside fus7a. So this makes a very different situation, because the dialects are continously affected by fus7a, and 'bound together' by it into a single language. The Romance languages began diverging in the first few centuries C.E until they finally diverged enough to become separate languages (as you stated by the 9th.) This isn't happening in the Arabic world and probably never will. In fact with the emergence of mass media and communications, the reverse is happening, they're actually converging to some degree.

So my point was, at some early time between first few centuries C.E and 9th. century, yes the mutual intelligibility situation might've been comparable, but today, definitely not.

I would say the mutual intelligibility is probably something closer to Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, going by what speakers of those languages tell me (not being a speaker myself of any of them).


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> The major difference here is that the Arabic dialects have always existed (as far as is known) and probably always will, alongside fus7a.


I don't think that Maghrebi or Iraqi dialects, for example, existed in Muhhamad's time. Therefore the fact that certain dialects may have existed in the 7th century does not contribute to the question about today's dialects.


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## Abu Rashid

> I don't think that Maghrebi or Iraqi dialects, for example, existed in Muhhamad's time. Therefore the fact that certain dialects may have existed in the 7th century does not contribute to the question about today's dialects.



Well the dialects are constantly evolving, so of course today's version of the Iraqi and Maghrebi dialects didn't exist exactly as they do today. However if we take the example of Maltese, which ceased having contact with any other Arabic around about 1100 C.E, yet it's very close to the Maghrebi dialects, which indicates the features of the Maghrebi dialects existed even all the way back then.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Well the dialects are constantly evolving, so of course today's version of the Iraqi and Maghrebi dialects didn't exist exactly as they do today. However if we take the example of Maltese, which ceased having contact with any other Arabic around about 1100 C.E, yet it's very close to the Maghrebi dialects, which indicates the features of the Maghrebi dialects existed even all the way back then.


Origumi was talking of the early 7th century. Are you suggesting there was such a thing as Maghrebi Arabic at that time?


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## Abu Rashid

> Origumi was talking of the early 7th century. Are you suggesting there was such a thing as Maghrebi Arabic at that time?



Since I didn't say that, obviously not.

The Maghrebi dialect of course evolved during the spread of Islam into North Africa, but it didn't just evolve out of thin air. It evolved out of the existing dialects of those tribes who were instrumental in opening North Africa to Islam. Also I'm not speaking about specific characteristics of Maghrebi dialect, but about the dialect features in general.

So for instance, dropping the dual verbs, attaching the particle 'fa' or 'wa' to the word 'ayna' (where), replacing 'tha' with 'ta' in some words, replacing 'qaf' with 'gaf or hamza' and many other features that exist in the bulk of dialects, between Maghreb (and Malta) and Iraq, all appear to have existed since very early times, most probably since the inception of Islam, and I don't see why not before.

That was my point. Not that the Maghrebi dialect existed perfectly as it does today or that the Iraqi dialect existed perfectly as it does today, but that the general features of the dialects of today did mostly exist in that time too in the spoken dialects of the time.

And in fact many of the specific attributes of the different far-flung dialects today can be traced back to the Arabic tribes that settled those areas. Sure there is also some amount of influence from the indigenous peoples of those regions who adopted the language, but there is also many elements of the dialects which seem to be common to all, and which probably were brought from the Arabian peninsula, from the early 7th. century, and I'd suggest before.


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> And in fact many of the specific attributes of the different far-flung dialects today can be traced back to the Arabic tribes that settled those areas. Sure there is also some amount of influence from the indigenous peoples of those regions who adopted the language, but there is also many elements of the dialects which seem to be common to all, and which probably were brought from the Arabian peninsula, from the early 7th century, and I'd suggest before.


But this is a very general claim that can be applied (with minimal required adjustments), I believe, to almost every dialect family. For example to the Romance languages.

If I understand correctly, Abu Rashid's main argument is that another dialect (or actually dialect family, maybe with a common ancestor) existed side-by-side with the Quranic language, and that there's continuity between this dialect family and modern dialects. Well, it makes sense. Personally I do not know if the Quran language is supposed to have belonged to a specific tribe, or is some kind of koine, or maybe an attempt to preserve the "original" Arabic - that is, the old-fashioned literature-liturgical-poetic style of the time. In any case people in the street are not likely to have used this high register language. And there are many streets (or fields, or deserts) in the Arab Peninsula. And yet - this happens wherever many communities over large area and long time-period speak the same language and is not special by any mean to the Arabic language development. One can conclude that the separation between Arabic dialects is as old as the separation between post-Latin dialects (1500 years or so), thus the differences among them may be on a similar level.

Having said that, I am not sure how much this historical discussion is important to the issue of "as big as". Seems to me that Mahadohe's and Wadi Hanifa's approach (above) of analyzing the actual differences, should be more productive.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> That was my point. Not that the Maghrebi dialect existed perfectly as it does today or that the Iraqi dialect existed perfectly as it does today, but that the general features of the dialects of today did mostly exist in that time too in the spoken dialects of the time.


How would we know this? Are there contemporary sources documenting this? Or can these features be traced back to original dialects in the Arabian peninsula? It is next to impossible to trance the development of early Vulgar Latin. I am astonished that it should be so much easier to trace the development of Arabic vernaculars during or just after the Islamic conquests.

I find it especially difficult to explain the differences between Maghrebi and Egyptian Arabic by differences rooted in original dialects. In particular since the late 7th/early 8th century "Arabization" of the Maghreb was, to my knowledge, lead by the Arabic rulers of Egypt.


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## azeid

Mahaodeh said:


> This is a long subject, much debated and actually rather sensitive to Arabs. Learning fus7a (MSA and/or CA, Arabs actually do not distinguish between the two) is helpful because all written communication is in fus7a not in dialects as well as the fact that all Arabs speak fus7a although they only use it in writing and in formal settings (such as delivering a speach at a conference).
> 
> Arabs, regardless of the dialect they speak, find that their dialect is very close to fus7a although they are aware of the differences; non-Arabs may find that there is a bigger difference.
> 
> As for mutual comprehension, in most cases they understand each other very well; but Darjah (the dialect in Morocco and Algeria) are hard to understand by most others unless they speak very slowley and not use the loanwords from Berber and French. So basically an Egyptian understands a Syrian or Saudi very well and vice versa but all three generally find it hard to understand a Moroccan and in most cases they revert to fus7a to communicate. I wouldn't call them languages, they are too close to be seperate languages.
> 
> All dialects are based on fus7a - it's not merely the common roots. The grammar in dialects is very much simplified, but the rules are actually more or less the same in all dialects (i.e., it's basically the same simplification - dual form in verbs is omited, inflictions for verbs and nouns are omited...etc.) the difference, in my view, is mostly the accent (as opposed to dialect, it's the "music of the language") that creates the new dialect. Vocabulary is mostly Arabic in all dialects and almost all basic words are Arabic, but Arabic actually has an enormous vocabulary, so another difference is the choice of words that become common in one dialect and not in the other (one example is the word for "I want": it's areed, biddi, abgha, abii, 'aawiz and others in different dialects, all are fus7a and all mean "I want", but each dialect has picked only one or two - naturally, the fact that all native speakers know fus7a helps in the mutual comprehension).
> 
> Dialects have more loanwords than fus7a, interestingly though, those loanwords can actually be pan-Arabic (example, tilfizyoun for TV, not fus7a but pan-Arabic) although sometimes there are loanwords that are specific to some dialects and not to others - as an example, Iraqi Arabic has a little bit more Persian loanwords than others and Egyptian Arabic has some Italian loanwords that don't exist in others. Darjah (in Morocco and Algeria) are probably problematic for two reasons, one is the accent (they tend to omit more vowels than is allowed in Arabic) and the existance of quite a sizeable amount of Berber loanwords that do not exist in other dialects.
> 
> I can't compare the situation to Romance languages because I don't speak any of them, but basing on what you explained, Maybe you can say that most dialects are like the differences beetween Spanish dialects with Darjah being closer to Italian or Portogese.
> 
> Personally, I would advise learning fus7a for several reasons:
> - It's much easier to find a place to learn it, most places either teach basic words "to get by" in collequal or teach fus7a.
> - You have pleanty of reasources, TV, News, Newspapers, Books...etc.
> - Everyone understands fus7a (including little pre-school children because cartoons and children's shows are in fus7a not collequal), you can add to that some Muslims whose native toung is not Arabic but they learn Arabic in school as a second language.
> - You can always learn a dialect later. Dialects are basically fus7a with the grammar rules very much simplified, some letters are pronounced a little different, different preferences on which word to use for what and some additional loanwords. It's much easier to learn a dialect after you learn fus7a, plus, you can learn more than one dialect.
> 
> That is my opinion, maybe other people have other opinions.


I agree with Maha and Wadi about the connection between Fus7a and the local dialects in the Arab world and I second the opinion of learning Fus7a at first as it is easy for everyone in the Arab world to understand fus7a, some people will be just surprised of using fus7a in the daily conversation but again you will be understood.
I'd like to highlight one point which was mentioned by Maha that the Egyptian dialect has many loaned Italian words.
I will talk here about Egypt, When people mention the Egyptian dialect,they mean by that the Cairene dialect and that is because it is the used dialect in the media but actually there are many dialects in Egypt and they differ from each other in the terms of phonetics and the chosen vocabularies from Fus7a as Maha stated. Moreover,you can find easily that the Sa3eedi dialects (which are used in Upper Egypt) are closer to some of khaliji dialects (especially the one used in Hejaz) than to Cairene dialect. The same goes for the dialects in Delta (Northern part of Egypt) and of course the used dialects by Bedouins in Sinai, Red sea and the western desert.


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## Abu Rashid

origumi,



> But this is a very general claim that can be applied (with minimal required adjustments), I believe, to almost every dialect family. For example to the Romance languages.



The Romance languages had their specific history, and the Arabic dialects theres. I really don't think it serves any purpose to say that parallels can be drawn between the two in any area you like, just by adjusting the requirements (even if minimally). We already covered the fact there is some similarity in the relationship between Fusha/Arabic-dialects and Latin/Romance-languages, but there's also a lot of differences.



> If I understand correctly, Abu Rashid's main argument is that another dialect (or actually dialect family, maybe with a common ancestor) existed side-by-side with the Quranic language, and that there's continuity between this dialect family and modern dialects. Well, it makes sense.



The only other possible conclusions could be that all dialects evolved out of Qur'anic Arabic, or that they just evolved out of thin air. I think what I suggested is probably the most likely. But I think the confusion in this discussion has come about by some misunderstanding what I said, and claiming I said the Arabic dialects as they exist today, existed at that time, they did not, and I did not state any such thing.



> One can conclude that the separation between Arabic dialects is as old as the separation between post-Latin dialects (1500 years or so), thus the differences among them may be on a similar level.



This is a completely irrational claim. Are you suggesting all "dialect drift" occurs at roughly the same rate?? Therefore 1500 years in one language should be the same in any language?? Come on origumi, this is not logical at all. By your claim, the Arabic speakers here of different dialects shouldn't be able to clearly understand one another, yet in the vast majority of cases they can. Perhaps if we use extreme examples like Maltese or even Maghrebi or Cypriot-Maronite Arabic, then it might be similar to the situation of Romance languages, but they are extreme examples. The vast bulk of the Arabic world have no problem speaking with one another. The same cannot be said of the Romance world. In fact I don't think there's any two Romance languages which are mutually intelligible. It seems you've completely neglected the fact that most of the Arabic world has been politically united for the bulk of that ~1500 years, the Latin world was not.

The simple fact is the two languages (Latin and Arabic) evolved in very different situations, and so their daughter languages/dialects are in very different predicaments. You seem incapable of discerning this though, and want to make them "roughly the same", when the situation is not the same at all.


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## Outsider

Abu Rashid said:


> The vast bulk of the Arabic world have no problem speaking with one another. The same cannot be said of the Romance world. In fact I don't think there's any two Romance languages which are mutually intelligible.


It depends on how you count them. Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible to a significant extent.

A lot depends on how much effort is put into understanding and making oneself understood, on how much exposure the  interlocutors have had to the other language, on the medium used (written or spoken?), on the register (how informal?...)

Vary these factors, and sometimes a single Romance language can be unintelligible with itself.


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## Awwal12

By the way, I've once read a story about Soviet journalists and Libyan workers in Tripoli. The journalists addressed to the workers in standard Arabic, but the workers could only answer with a confused look: "Sorry, but we understand only Libyan" (A.Grigoryev, V.Gusarov, "the Legends and Facts of the Arabian East").


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## Pedro y La Torre

Occitan and Catalan are mutually intelligble to a great degree. Likewise for Galician and Portuguese. Similar to Arab dialects, I think, there is often a dialect continuum as one moves from one Romance-speaking country to another, hence the jump from French to Spanish, if we include languages like Occitan and Catalan, is not as big as many would imagine.


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## Hulalessar

Outsider said:


> Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible to a significant extent.



They may be to the Portuguese! I think that the reason the intelligibility tends to be one way is that Spanish is (at least a bit) like speaking Portuguese as it is written. Lots of things I buy in Spain have instructions on them in Portuguese as well as Spanish and on the whole I can understand the Portuguese instructions. However, once I hear Portuguese all comprehension goes out of the window. Mind you that sometimes happens here in Andalucía. It is as you say:



Outsider said:


> A lot depends on how much effort is put into understanding and making oneself understood, on how much exposure the  interlocutors have had to the other language, on the medium used (written or spoken?), on the register (how informal?...)



As has been suggested, comparing the Romance speaking world with the Arabic speaking world as they are today is not comparing like with like.

First, it is no easy matter to measure distance between languages/dialects; asserting that any given group of languages/dialects is more homogeneous than any other given group of languages/dialects in the end has to come down to an impression.

Secondly, for any Romance language (at least those possessed of a written standard) whilst there will be some differences between written and spoken language, the unity of the language is basically unquestionable. Arabic (MSA), though it can be uttered, is above all a written standard. The generally unwritten vernaculars differ not only from each other but also from MSA, in the latter case more than any Romance vernacular differs from its written standard.

Most, if not all, Arabic vernacular speakers are exposed to MSA in some degree. Whilst even the well-educated do not actually speak MSA as a matter of course, they are exposed to MSA more and when discussing certain subjects they are often obliged to resort to it to a greater or less extent. When an educated Arabic vernacular speaker from one country speaks to one from another, if they do not actually converse in MSA, each will tend to "delocalise" his speech to facilitate communication. This tendency, often unconscious, may lead to the impression that the vernacular of each is more easily understood than is in fact the case.

As Outsider says, the degree to which any two speakers of different vernaculars (whether they be Arabic, Romance, Scandinavian or anything else) understand each other depends on a number of factors and different speakers will tell you different things.


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## WadiH

Hulalessar said:


> When an educated Arabic vernacular speaker from one country speaks to one from another, if they do not actually converse in MSA, each will tend to "delocalise" his speech to facilitate communication.



For many people, especially in our part of the Arabic world, this "delocalised" speech is becoming a native language.



> This tendency, often unconscious, may lead to the impression that the vernacular of each is more easily understood than is in fact the case.



Of course, the same phenomenon occurs widely in English, as I can attest from personal experience.

I often bring myself to believe that there are a couple of dozen (or even a hundred) separate languages called Arabic, as separate as Romanian and Portuguese, French and Spanish, Hebrew and Aramaic, or English and Dutch, as I have no real ideological investment either way. However, as soon as I go to work the next day the reality of how Arabic actually exists in the world forces me to abandon any such idea (not to mention when I put anecdotes like the one above about the Russian talking to Libyans in MSA in proper perspective and compare them with my experiences with my other native language, English).  At most, Arabic can be divided into 3 or 4 separate languages -- at most.  Anything more than that is stretching it and does not take into account realities on the ground, especially in this day and age.

I also don't see a reason to shoehorn Arabic to fit the model of Romance languages or any other group.  Arabic should be analyzed on its own terms, as it actually exists and as its speakers actually use it.  If MSA or Classical Arabic or the Quran exert an influence on speakers and increases intelligibility, than that should be taken as a fact, not artificially removed from the picture to fit some idealized, theoretical thought experiment.


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## Abu Rashid

> I also don't see a reason to shoehorn Arabic to fit the model of Romance languages or any other group. Arabic should be analyzed on its own terms, as it actually exists and as its speakers actually use it. If MSA or Classical Arabic or the Quran exert an influence on speakers and increases intelligibility, than that should be taken as a fact, not artificially removed from the picture to fit some idealized, theoretical thought experiment.





This was precisely the point I was trying to make, but obviously wasn't doing a good job.


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## origumi

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I also don't see a reason to shoehorn Arabic to fit the model of Romance languages or any other group. Arabic should be analyzed on its own terms, as it actually exists and as its speakers actually use it. If MSA or Classical Arabic or the Quran exert an influence on speakers and increases intelligibility, than that should be taken as a fact, not artificially removed from the picture to fit some idealized, theoretical thought experiment.


It seems that the "idealized, theoretical thought" is actually taken by 'Arabists' in this thread. Difference between languages can be measured by quantitative tools. Such tools apply to Romance dialects / languages as well as for Arabic dialects / languages. Nothing is theoretical or idealistic in this technique. I cannot understand the claims that historical / social / geographical / religious / other details around Arabic make it inappropriate to measure it as done for Romance. On the contrary, it makes no difference if Arabic dialects existed in the 5th or 7th centuries, or to what level Arab intellectuals / men of faith / school children can communicate via MSA / CA, or how much the Quran has ongoing influence on all dialects. The bottom line is important - difference between dialects - the explanations should follow, not precede.


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## Mahaodeh

Awwal12 said:


> By the way, I've once read a story about Soviet journalists and Libyan workers in Tripoli. The journalists addressed to the workers in standard Arabic, but the workers could only answer with a confused look: "Sorry, but we understand only Libyan" (A.Grigoryev, V.Gusarov, "the Legends and Facts of the Arabian East").


 
I don't know much about Russian nor Libyan workers in Tripoli, but I do know that not all foreigners speak the new language they learnt well enough for the natives to understand no matter how good a job they think they did.

I consider myself to be almost a native English speaker (I was raised in London between the ages of 2 to 12 years, basically, I can speak English by the age of three or four). However, when I speak with people of Phillipino origin in English, I don't understand what they say. When I first arrived in Abu Dhabi I can speak with the local Emaratis in Arabic perfectly and understand them very well, but the Indian shop owners who speak khaliji Arabic, I could not understand them at all!

A forienger brings much of his own language to the new language, he misses letters that are hard to pronounce (example, missing the letter 3ain), he pronounces some letters differently because they are hard (such pronouncing the 7aa' "khaa'" or "haa'") or because that is the way in his own language (such as pronouncing the f a p as the Phillipinios do, or the r an l as the Japanese do), not to mention his own accent.

Could it not be possible that the journalists were just not clear enough?


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## Awwal12

> Could it not be possible that the journalists were just not clear enough?


It is always possible, but their Arabic at least wasn't bad, as one can conclude from the entire book. Of course, I always had in mind the possibility you've mentioned above. Nevertheless, the authors also wrote that Egyptian specialists had serious problems in communication with their Libyan colleagues, especially when it was coming to technical questions.


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## clevermizo

Awwal12 said:


> It is always possible, but their Arabic at least wasn't bad, as one can conclude from the entire book. Of course, I always had in mind the possibility you've mentioned above. Nevertheless, the authors also wrote that Egyptian specialists had serious problems in communication with their Libyan colleagues, especially when it was coming to technical questions.




Well it depends on the level of education of the Libyans in question. If a foreigner speaks (accented?) Standard Arabic that may already be difficult to understand to a native Libyan speaker who is relatively illiterate and perhaps with shaky grasp of Standard Arabic, then I could see how it would be difficult to understand. Personally I don't know the rates of illiteracy in Libya.

When I was taking Arabic classes in Jordan (all in Standard Arabic, obviously), I could understand my Jordanian teacher perfectly (whether she was speaking in Standard Arabic in class, or in Jordanian dialect outside of class), but I could barely understand any of the American students in the class at all. My abilities in colloquial Arabic are stronger, but I have no problem with Standard Arabic when spoken clearly. Like Maha said, the difficulties in pronunciation for some non-native speakers when they learn make them perhaps barely comprehensible to a native speaker and completely incomprehensible to me as a learner.

I found the same problem with students in my Mandarin classes in university.


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## Timmy123

Given that the consensus seems to be that almost any dialect is easy to pick up once there is a grounding in MSA, should one always endeavor to learn MSA first and then a dialect (leaving aside any external factors/ reasons related to work etc and assuming that the learner does actually want to learn both forms of Arabic)...?

I have come across a study which highlights natural language learning process of native Arabic speakers (i.e. native speakers always learn a dialect and then MSA and possible never the other way round) With this in mind, in order to mimic this type of natural learning, should not adults also learn in this manner? (I know that there are all sorts of factors related to age and cognitive processes, would it be possible to put those aside in answering this issue?)

To add to the discussion, the differences between romance languages are far greater than the differences between the dialects barring some of the Western African dialects and various other exceptions).


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## clevermizo

Timmy123 said:


> s actually want to learn both forms of Arabic)...?
> 
> I have come across a study which highlights natural language learning process of native Arabic speakers (i.e. native speakers always learn a dialect and then MSA and possible never the other way round) With this in mind, in order to mimic this type of natural learning, should not adults also learn in this manner? (I know that there are all sorts of factors related to age and cognitive processes, would it be possible to put those aside in answering this issue?)



That's the way I did it. I think I turned out all right. I'm not fluent, but perhaps "advanced." I study both concurrently. Anyway, it depends on your goals.



> To add to the discussion, the differences between romance languages are far greater than the differences between the dialects barring some of the Western African dialects and various other exceptions).


It depends on which Romance languages you compare, and which Arabic dialects you compare. In either case you could analyze them such that there is large analogy, or little analogy. I think there is _some_ analogy there, but quantifying it serves no real academic purpose in my opinion. There are some striking parallels between the two systems.


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## Hulalessar

origumi said:


> IDifference between languages can be measured by quantitative tools.



Can it though? Certainly one describe two or more languages and compare them, but how can you measure distance between them? For a start the differences will be phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and semantic. What comparative weight is one to give to each in the over all assessment? When comparing one group of languages with another and trying to decide which exhibits the greater degree of homogeneity you may be faced with the fact that the languages in one group differ from each other in different ways from the languages in the other. That  is why I think that any assessment of whether one group of languages hangs together more than another has to be to an extent intuitive.


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## kalamaya

Hi Jacob,
All I can tell you is based on my own experience : I can speak fluent Tunisian dialect, but I can hardly understand people from other arab countries, even border countries. And in Tunisia, I can't understand the _media_ _language _(only some words), nor the _litterary language_. It's a very strange situation but I'm used to !
A friend of mine has been learning arab (_standard_) for years, and when he visited Tunisia nobody could understand what he was saying, and he couldn't understand the people either.
Maya


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## Abu Rashid

> All I can tell you is based on my own experience : I can speak fluent  Tunisian dialect...



The Maghrebi dialects are the exception. Most other regions can understand each other fairly well. Also I have a friend who is Tunisian and we can talk no problem. But maybe he just spent more time studying fus7a. But he also converses quite well with Palestinians.


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## arabiclearner

Wadi Hanifa said:


> For many people, especially in our part of the Arabic world, this "delocalised" speech is becoming a native language.



Wadi Hanifa, whereabouts are you in KSA?  What other Arabic dialects being spoken by foreign workers are affecting the Saudi dialects and how are they adapting to speak with the natives?  What aspects are being dropped and whats being adapted?


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## Atlanta David

pollodia said:


> Thank you Mahaodeh for a long and informative answer. I'm in the dilemma of choosing whether to start with MSA or Khaliji and after reading some threads here I'm starting to sway toward the former.
> 
> I have been trying to find comparison tables for Arabic dialects on the internet but with no results. Has Anyone had better luck than me? They need not be extensive, just for fun.



There is an urgent need for easy comparison tables - for beginning and intermediate learners, and I haven't seen them online yet. And only the larger college programs even offer dialect classes at all. 

However, the Georgetown University Press' Al-kitaab series, 3rd edition, fully embraces "MSA+some colloquial" as an admirable stance. The three volumes (Alif Baa, Part One, and now Part Two) provides all vocabulary in 3 color-coded forms - MSA, Egyptian, and Syrian ("Shaami"), from the beginning, and maintains it in a English/MSA/Eg/Shaami glossary in the back. So there are some comparison tables for you. They are also on the companion website. Al-Kitaab focusses mainly on a simplified MSA, but it introduces key words that are different from the beginning (i.e.,   "I want" = uriid [MSA], 3aayiz [Eg], biddi [shaami] ). It provides all video monologues in all three versions as well. I think it's fabulous, but I also have seen many teachers prefer the 2nd edition, which has much less colloquial. Regrettably, some Arabic teachers completely avoid colloquial, or even simplifying MSA a little for the first year students. It's a complicated and sensitive issue.

In my case, in the 1980's, I learned an absurdly formal version of MSA, then learned Egyptian well through the CASA program in Cairo, then gradually branched out to other dialects, while teaching MSA at university. But it would have been much faster to be exposed to a dialect from the beginning, to show that they are not at all mutually exclusive. Spoken and Formal are much closer to each other than, say, Spanish and Italian, let alone Latin and Spanish. But they are much further from each other than formal English and informal English, and this variety is what makes Arabic harder to learn than, say, Russian. (IMHO.)

I actually once began to create a multimedia website comparing four dialects, with recordings comparing about 500 basic phrases in Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and Moroccan, exactly for people like you, but so far haven't been able to finish it. Maybe in the future.  

Other resources: (1) There are some random home-made youtube videos as a quick way to get started in some dialects.
(2) There are also fairly good full textbooks in some of the dialects - Egyptian, Palestinian, Moroccan, etc (For example, Kallimni 'arabi bishweysh, for Egyptian). But no brief intro to the broad picture. (3) The National Foreign Language Center at University of Maryland has a detailed web-based multiamedia program called Recognizing Dialects: Arabic, but only will sell it ($65) to educational institutions, not individuals. And it's perhaps too advanced and academic - not "for fun," as you put it. You can sample it's comparison of Algerian and MSA on their website.
(4) There are many academic books with detailed comparative charts of similarities and differences among Arabic dialects and MSA - grammar, syntax, phonology, vocab, but nothing very user-friendly - too much detail and too impractical. (Margaret Nydell and Karen Ryding, for example)

Good luck, D


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## ninjack

Wadi Hanifa said:


> At most, Arabic can be divided into 3 or 4 separate languages -- at most.  Anything more than that is stretching it and does not take into account realities on the ground, especially in this day and age.



What four languages would these be?  West, Egypt, Levant and Iraqi-Gulf?


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## Hemza

Abu Rashid said:


> The Maghrebi dialects are the exception. Most other regions can understand each other fairly well. Also I have a friend who is Tunisian and we can talk no problem. But maybe he just spent more time studying fus7a. But he also converses quite well with Palestinians.



On what do you base your assumption? I don't think that a Cairene person put among a group of Jordanian bedouins would be able to understand a single word I exaggerate of course). You forgot about the media exposure. Maghrebi dialects aren't an "exception" as many people seem to think (may be because of the lack of knowledge about them). Two questions:

-I saw your first reply and in spite that I agree on most things you said, I didn't understand when you stated that Moroccan and Algerian are hard to understand. For who? What about Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya? Are they easier? If so, what makes them eaiser? Again, harder, easier for who?
-When you speak about Berber words used in the Maghreb, do you know the proportion of them in these dialects? Do you think that's what prevent the intelligibility with other dialects?

And according to my experience among them, the Egyptians I know, understand the Syrian and the Saudi when these ones (especially the Saudi) leave many words he/she would use when speaking with someone from their country. The matter of mutual intelligibility isn't only a matter of vocabulary, it relies on many many factors and there may be understanding or not according to the speakers themselves, their age, their pronunciation, their vocabulary, etc which as you probably know, vary from places to places within a country (especially in big countries like Algeria/Saudi Arabia/Iraq for example). Also, again, according to my experience, people who understand "the most" Maghrebi dialects are often Arabian people. Why? Because if you compare Najdi/Hijazi dialectS or the Yemeni ones with the Maghrebi ones, you will see a loooot of similarities and shared features not found for example in urban Levantine dialects or Egyptian. Even with Iraqi. It might be a single example which doesn't prove nothing but take the verb ولى/يولي. This is a verb, my best friend who is an Egyptian, never heard. I said it once to an Iraqi I've met, she perfectly understood it.

Do not forget about exposure: understanding a dialect is also a matter of exposure. I don't think a Saudi who has never been exposed to an Egyptian TV show/a song (let's dream, why not  ) would be able to understand an Egyptian easily the first time he will meet one. Maghrebi dialects (as well as the Yemeni/Sudanese ones I guess) havent had the chance to be granted a large exposure like Syrian (and its siblings)/Egyptian have had. One tiny example? An Iraqi classmate at my university who is always with her to Algerian friends. She understands them with no problem. So you can come from من أقصى منطقى المغرب و من أقصى منطقى العراق,, being exposed make you understand other's dialects, wherever you come from .

Lastly, I hope my broken English won't sting your eyes, it's not my native language.


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