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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I love learning languages and learning about languages. I considered seriously learning Arabic but I eventually decided against it mainly because, as the parent points out, there seem to be many variations between countries and also between formal, literary arabic and the spoken dialects.

Given that learning the language (in any form) is probably going to be a huge challenge the prospect of spending years studying the idiom only to end up in an arabophone country and not being able to fluently converse with anybody felt discouraging.

I eventually decided that I would focus on learning Russian instead, an other very difficult but obviously completely different languages (although it also features declensions and relatively simple conjugations minus the aspect thingy).

Do you think I was mistaken?

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Even though there are many dialects, nobody will misunderstand you. And, beyond that, it’s easy for everyone to shift to using a more formal Arabic in order to communicate with you.

yes but you are judged based on the dialect you speak, i have experienced cases where i wasn't taken seriously by businessmen coz i spoke a turkish variant of arabic in saudi arabia

True, but North African dialects in general are not understood at all by Middle Easterners. Further, some of the Gulf dialects (e.g., Iraqi, Omani, Yemeni) can be hard to understand.

You would just learn Egyptian or Lebanese arabic, everyone would understand you.

Written (formal) arabic is a different story though, I think that's what's commonly taught for non arabic people

I would add Syrian to that list.

But even within these dialects, there are regional dialects that might be difficult to understand even for native speakers from that same country.

For example, Tunisian Arabic can (roughly) be divided into northern and southern dialects. I've met people in the north who think I'm from Libya because of some words that are shared with southern Tunisian Arabic. Tunisia is a relatively small country, so imagine the variation in dialects in Egypt!

If you're interested in learning Arabic, don't let this scare you! The "generic" Egyptian, Lebanese, and Syrian dialects will easily be understood by most Middle Easterners and a fair chunk of North Africans.

> The "generic" Egyptian/Lebanese/Syrian dialect will easily be understood by most Middle Easterners and a fair chunk of North Africans.

But note that Egyptian Arabic is very different from Lebanese and Syrian Arabic (which both are in the Levantine Arabic family).

Definitely! I was just pointing out that these three dialects are the most universally understood, primarily due to their domination of Arabic music and film/TV.

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