Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

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Yep, Arabic is indeed a fascinating language. I'd like to add that Arabic grammar is extremely difficult, at least when compared to English. It takes years of study just to understand what short vowel to place at the end of certain words.

To put it simply, Arabic sentences are divided into two main types: "verb" sentences (first word is a verb) and "noun" sentences.

Verb sentences are structured as (from right to left of course):

verb > subject > object

Each word ends with a different short vowel depending on its place in a sentence. The subject for instance always ends in a dhamma ('u' sound), while the object ends in a fatha ('a' sound).

Unlike with the English language, rarely do you find someone who follows grammatical rules in everyday speech. Only scholars or teachers who use formal language apply such rules when speaking or writing.

The vastness of the language is also why Muslims resort to a tafsir (or explanation) of the Quran to understand certain verses and chapters. Words sometimes mean something else when found after a certain word or in a certain context.

This is sort of true, but short vowels at the end of words (the case system) are not generally useful for non-Muslim language learners.

Why is this? Well, in the Qur'an, they are written (as are all short vowels). Also in some voweled classical Arabic poetry. But even in formal, MSA, they aren't pronounced!

So you have a grammatical marker that isn't written, and isn't pronounced outside of certain unique contexts.

You can converse in fluent MSA, read virtually any non-religious text, and never need to see these case markers. Of course for Muslims (the majority of Arabic learners) they are important.

Agreed. I only mentioned this to show that Arabic is complex, especially for people who want to study the language in detail.

In older times however, most Arabs used to incorporate these short vowels into everyday speech. It was normal for them.

I find this somewhat fascinating because if I or any other casual speaker were to attempt to do this, we'd have to pause for at least a few seconds before each word to figure out which short vowel goes at the end of it.

It's pretty sad that Arabic speakers have gone backwards instead of advancing in the language, but I guess it's a price we must pay.

> Unlike with the English language, rarely do you find someone who follows grammatical rules in everyday speech.

Surely they do follow grammar, albeit the grammar of whatever colloquial Arabic they are speaking, rather than the grammar of Modern Standard Arabic?

In terms of colloquial Arabics, do they have less complex inflexional systems compared to MSA (in the same way that Italian and Spanish do compared with Latin)?

Most Arabic dialects are just that: dialects. They have no grammatical rules, nor a official written form for that matter, and are ultimately used for nothing more than speech.

> They have no grammatical rules

Nonsense! All languages and dialects (not just prestige ones such as MSA or Standard English) have grammatical rules. If a language didn't have grammar, it would be impossible to express the distinction between "the dog bites the man" and "the man bites the dog".

Exactement.

They have lots of grammatical rules! See http://arabic.desert-sky.net/g_tenses.html, for example.

Arabic speakers tend to diss their dialects and dismiss them as 'mere speech', but they're just as rich as any other language.

Yes, but these rules are applied in a spoken form only, not to mention the fact that they are not studied, but are instead learned over time and in no fixed order.

Besides, nobody would write an article in Egyptian Arabic or any other dialect for that matter because it'd simply be a waste of time.

Most languages in the world have no spoken form. They all have grammatical "rules", that is they follow a certain syntax, morphology, etc.

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