Memorizing an entire dictionary is kind of like the cases I've read about with persons whose native language isn't arabic, but have successfully memorized and can recite verbally the entire Quran.
I've learned a couple alphabets, Hebrew among them, just for fun. I'm pretty confident I could learn to recite the Quran with a month of steady practice.
But memorize the whole thing? Like, name a sura, and I'm off to the races? That's very impressive.
And without any understanding of the underlying words! That's even more impressive, but my heart sinks a little at the waste of human potential which it represents.
Perhaps they're right, and they earn a lifetime in Paradise for their trouble. I can't help but thinking there are better ways to spend ones youth.
I think in his case he was criticizing the scribes who memorized the scriptures, yet had no mercy for others.
It’s certainly an amazing feat of perseverance to memorize anything, but without understanding and transformation for good, it might as well be a million digits of pi.
I don't think that matches the definition of "can read" of most people. Maybe you can pronounce Hebrew, but "being able to read a given lamguage" implies some level of understanding.
Note: most religious schools I know of do try to teach the kids to understand what they're reading as well, but that's a more advanced phase - first the kids learn to read Hebrew, which is the bare minimum requirement to be a functioning member of religious society, and then they're taught to understand what they're reading.
My experience was that some kids learned enough to translate a passage of average difficulty by high school, while others never quite got past the very basic vocabulary. But no one in my school got past second grade without being able to read and transcribe a text. (This was at a religious day school in the US).
So, even if I can fluently read the Quraan, I wouldn't be able to figure out the right way to read a simple poster.
> A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand around a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic, which is a Maghrebi Arabic related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between other varieties of Arabic.
Arabic-origin words make up a minority of Maltese vocabulary, and I assume Maltese speakers are much more likely to watch English or Italian television than MSA, and most don't have Quranic education.
What would the rest of the vocabulary be based on?
AFAIK the most common words are more likely to be of Arabic origin, though.
Speaking Arabic natively makes a huge difference in that the resources for understanding Quran are all available to you easily, both linguistically and culturally.