Job Discussion Forums

[naturegirl321]

How many of you living in the Middle East speak the language? HOw difficult is it to learn and how did you learn it?

[scot47]

"How many speak the language?" By that I assume you mean Arabic. In my experience most EFL tecahers lecturers and instructors speak zero Arabic and make no attempt to acquire any.

Arabic is dificult. Doubly so because of diglossia where the modern spoken language is so different fron the written language that they are efectively two different languages.

I was fortunate in that I came here many moons ago when English ews notwidely spoken. I was in a small town, ar awy from the big cities. For survival I had to learn Arabic. I invested some time and money in this and it has paid off.

[Paul in Saudi]

I see no point in learning the language. It is not widely-spoken outside the Arab World, better to learn Catalan or German.

Why bother, to visit the local tourist spots? Meet local girls? A buddy of mine actually started taking lessons in his villa. The locals thought he was a spy.

Oddly, I am taking Spanish lessons in the evening.

[scot47]

There you have the two contrasting views ! What annoyed me when I was learning Arabic is that many people assumed I was doing it for religious reason because I had become a Muslim !

There is in fact one school of Islamic Theology that suggests that Arabic should be taught only to Muslims. The language is very closely tied to an understanding of Islam and the Koran - at least in Saudi Arabia. I am not so sure about the more "secular" Arab states like Syria, Tunisia and Lebanon.

I do know that I get better treatment at police road blocks and in government offices when I use my Arabic. I have come across teachers who have been here for 20 or 30 years who have never learned a word of the language !

In fact for me Turkish would be mnore interesting and more useful but i have never spent any time in a Turkish-speaking nvironment. Total immesrio does make it easier. And as to the question "HOW", well I got a teacher and some books and we did it one-yo-one. The only way !!!
Doing it this way you soon learn the nonsense behind the theory that any native speaker can teach the language !

[Cleopatra]

My Arabic is pretty poor,to say the least,but still i get annoyed when people assume I haven't learned any and - being an English speaker - couldn't possibly do so! Mind you, given the attitudes of some "Westerners", that's hardly surprising! I also get annyoed when Arabs have inane conversations in awkward English "for my benefit". Don't know about you, but I find it really patronizing!

[Communist Smurf]

Sorry I'm joining this discussion a little bit late, but I couldn't help but throw in my oppinion on this subject as it's one that bothers and annoys me every day of my miserable existance.

I can wake up in the morning and listen to the muzin and understand what he's saying. I can watch the news and get a pretty decent idea what's being said. But I can hardly give a cab driver directions or order food through the telephone. Arabic is absurd in many ways, mainly in that there are so many different dialects from region to region. Furthermore, many Arabs speak English. I recently came back from Jerusalem. I was forced into staying in the Muslim quarter as it was Yom Kippour and I just couldn't believe how difficult is was to speak Arabic with them.

I've got a story. Once I went to Khan Al-Khalili in Cairo with a friend of mine that also spoke Italian. As a clever tactic, we tried speaking Italian to eachother while we were negotiating prices with the salesman. To our dismay, many Egyptians speak Italian! So instead, we spoke English so quickly that there was no way they could understand us. That actually worked better than speaking Italian.

I speak Modern Standard Arabic with some fluency. I have limited speaking ability with Egyptian and Iraqi colloquial. I'll save you some time and trouble. Unless you want to work for the government as a diplomat or spy (sometimes they're the same thing), it isn't necessary to learn Arabic and neither will it deter people from trying to rip you off (atleast not to a great impact).

[Albulbul]

"Arabic is absurd in many ways, mainly in that there are so many different dialects from region to region. " so says the Marxist-leninist Smurf.

Not so different from English ! To avoid locals understanding you can use one of the many regional varieties of English, use slang and use references to cultural artefacts with which your speaking partner is familiar. Use figures of speech and speak indirectly.

An example from WW2. Mail from POW camps in Germany was censored by the German authorities. An inmate of one of the camps wanted to get through the message that conditions were harsh. If he had written that, his letter would have been destroyed by the censor. So he wrote :

"Conditions here are wonderful. Tell that to the Army, tell that to the Navy, tell that to the Airforce. Tell that to the Marines."

For those who do not get it the expression "tell it to the marines" means " you are telling lies". Very few non-native speakers would pick up on that.

[Communist Smurf]

Not so, sahibii. The differences in dialect between English and Arabic are much different. How many dialects can you speak? I've lived in Egypt, Israel, and Bahrain. I can also speak some Iraqi and I'm here to tell you that British-English and Ebonics are closer than any of those dialects I've encountered. I've NEVER traveled to Enland. But how many English people do you think I would have problems speaking with? This is not the case with the Arab world. Even people living in Upper Egypt don't speak the same as those in Cairo or Alex.

[scot47]

Travel to Britain and you may be surprised. Go to places like Barnsley and Middlesborough. Motherwell and Abergavenny. I guarantee you will encounter MANY speakers who think they are talking English but who are totally incomprehensible to you.

You may have been exposed to what you THINK is British English via radio, film and TV. The reality is VERY different.

Diglossia rules !

And Ramadan Karim to you too, Nasrani !

[naturegirl321]

[Communist Smurf]

There is a big difference between having a different accent and having a different dialect. Yes, in English they have a different accent from Americans. Yes, the dialect is also different. But how big is the difference? Sure, an English person would get funny looks if they walked into a store and asked for a pack of f a g s. But people would still understand them. If they said they lived in a flat instead of an apartment, I don't that would confuse anyone.

In Egypt, ayeesh (Arabic for the word "life") can mean bread. In the gulf, it means rice (in addition to meaning "life"). If you live in the gulf, ask the locals if they are aware of this. Because most Egyptians aren't.

For the greater most part, I could probably understand any dialect of English that exists out there except perhaps less than %1 of America and no more than 10% in Enland. But the majority of the Arab world is only familiar with their own dialect with the exception of the Egyptian dialect which is widely known due to television.

There is a BIG difference!

[Cleopatra]

Just because a language has many different forms does not make it in any way 'absurd'. Italian, for example, differs - or at least it did until quite recently - from region to region to the extent that a Sicilian speaking her own dialect could not communicate with a Milanese. That does not make italian 'absurd', it's just a reflection on the social and historical background of the language. Same goes for Arabic.

[scot47]

Go and hear for yourself ! Belive me you are in for a surprise when you go to Her Majesty's Realm. Try South Shields, Newcastle, Barnsley.

It is truly amazing how diverse real spoken English within the UK is.

[Mark100]

Well i am sitting here with Arabs from Jordan , Egypt ,Saudi,Lebanon and Syria and they reckon they can all understand each other perfectly well despite some acknowledged regional differences. I think it is more a matter of fluency in the language. They are all native Arabic speakers so their command of the language is so good that they can easily handle the regional differences. Similarly as native English speakers we can understand most of the different regional varieties of English.
As an interesting aside i remeber speaking to some migrants to Australia who were fluent in English but not native speakers who said they were shocked when they first arrived in Australia because they couldn't understand anything the locals were saying.

[Albulbul]

My former colleague Professor Jana Molhova of the University of Sofia in Bulgaria told me that she was in a state of shock for days after first arriving in England in the 1950's. She had studied English for years and found after arriving in London that she could not understand anything that was said to her.

She had studied Literary English - the English equivalent of "Al-Logha Fuhsa" in Arabic - and was then confronted with demotic English. That is my understanding of the meaning of diglossia - where two forms of one language coexist but are so different that they are like separate languages. In Modern English we might want to think of this as "polyglossia."

In Arabic no one speaks Standard Modern Arabic outside the Newsrooms of TV and Radio stations. However speakers of Modern Colloquial Arabic seem to understand each other pretty well.

And when I speak about unitelligibly of speakers of English in Barnsley or Newcastle I do not mean people who speak Standard English with an accent. I am speaking of people who speak a Dialect that is very different from the other varieties that we have heard.

The Commie Smurf should go to these places to experience it for himself (herself ?)