Spelling is wrong fasiha
The word "Arabic", pronounced "Arabi" in Arabic, comes from the extended word: "Al-Rabi" ..which means: "The Teachings" or "From Teachings", hence "Rabi" for Teacher in Hebrew.
wait a second...the official language of iraq is Arabic it isnt a co-official language....fix the map
Isn't the English word "assassin" a common word derived from the arabic language?
Interestingly, I get a wholly blank table when I watch this page. Is it me or is there something wrong with it? Muhamedmesic 21:37, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
I read the second paragraph and couldn't find fault with it - it is clear and lucid. What is bothering you about it?
Setting up a separate page for each sound of the Arabic language seems really excessive. All the necessary information can easily be kept on a single page. Eclecticology
It's going to be a fairly major project to fill in all the concepts in Islam or the Arabic culture that don't translate directly into English (now all listed).
Spelling deserves a note: I have used a single coherent spelling scheme here that comes all from one book. Older spellings ulema and tarika (for ulama and tariqa using the new spellings) come from a book 20 years older. A native speaker of Arabic might be better to identify which spellings are more correct given the pronunciation. Rather than change them in this file, please use redirects for alternate spellings, as I am sure multiple spellings of some of these words are extant.
An important note: the term "Muslim" must replace "Moslem" or "Mohammedan" unless one is specifically quoting some text written by some English guy. I should probably have included "Mohammedan" as a 'just don't use it' word. I also could have (but didn't) mention that G. W. Bush made both gaffes in the speeches he made just after 9/11 - no wonder the Arabs won't join him now!!! What a moron.
When can one see a wikipedia in arabic language [[ar:]] ??
In a very popular Arabic language newspaper, there was an article today about wikipedia. The author of that article praised the extensive amount of information on this encyclopedia, but ended it by saying that its not available in Arabic. I think that this common mistake, among Arabic speaking people, can be fixed if there was a direct link from the encyclopedias homepage of www.wikipedia.org to the arabic version of ar.wikipedia.org . It might, also, help develop the number of Arabic articles, I've noticed that the Arabic articles are nowhere near as many, nor as detailed as the English version.
I think
"Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to the Hebrew language. "
can be abit misleading. While I concider both very beautiful languages, I think it rings abit like: "French is an indo-european language, closely related to Russian. ".
Arabic and Hebrew has very different grammer, and very different phonology, for example, the one has noun case conjugations, while the later does not, tenses differ, etc
In fact, it's more like saying, "French is indo-european, closely related to spanish" -- while this is not particularly relevant, it's certainly correct. In fact (according to the classification of SIL, which is fairly standard, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=3 ), Arabic and Hebrew are both southern central semitic languages. "Central" semitic contrasts with Southern (Ethiopian, 'South Arabic' (which is *not* Arabic, viz. 'Arabic' is here a geographic, not a linguistic specifier) and with (extinct) Akkadian. Dbachmann 11:25, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"Due to the great rift between the Colloquial and the Literary Arabic, Salman Masalha, former professor of Arab Literature Department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, states regarding illiteracy in the Arab world: "I say that it is over 80%. Practically speaking, even those defined as not illiterate because they completed eight years of schooling, I consider illiterate. In this century, anyone who finishes elementary school can't really read." [1]" Given that, as an Israeli citizen, there are very few Arab countries he can even visit legally, this statement lacks credibility. Nor is it supported by the CIA world factbook literacy figures, and it contradicts the evidence of my own eyes - comprehension of literary Arabic has massively increased in recent decades due to TV (including dubbed cartoons), and even small children can generally understand the standard language quite well by the age of 11, if not much earlier. I have removed it. - Mustafa, April 5 2004.
"Their mutual comprehensibility is very limited. The reason behind the vast differences in spoken languages or dialects of the groups mentioned herewith is that they are mixes of many languages. Ancient languages spoken by non-Arab population of these countries continue to survive in the dialects/languages of everyday life and the roots of the older languages of the Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Assyrian, Coptic...etc. are still evident. [1]" As anyone following Lebanese politics will be aware, the question of the origin of the dialects is highly political in Lebanon, where the guy quoted is based; and, while phoenicia.org contains some good historical info, it is no authority on linguistics. This should be replaced with a better quote. Oh, and "mixes of many languages" is not even controversial among linguists; it's false. Many Arabic dialects are full of words taken from other languages, but " mixed language" implies considerably more than that in linguistics; the only universally agreed-upon mixed language seems to be Michif. Mustafaa 03:41, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't the masses of Arabic alphabet and writing info be left to the Arabic alphabet page? - Mustafaa 18:05, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
what about the arabic grammar stub? should we kill it? or should we move the 'grammar' section over there?
also, we need a transliteration scheme. over at Ibn Fadlan, I used standard transliteration, using the Latin Extended Additional (1e00) codepage (underdots). This page (or the grammar page) needs to explain the sounds and how they are transliterated.
I suggest we list the sounds in a nice table, putting arab letters, standard transliteration and ascii schemes and whatnot next to each other, so that people can be referred here if there is a transliteration issue anywhere.
alright, I realize such a table (using 1e00-transliteration) is at Arabic alphabet (other transliteration schemes, such as Buckwalter ascii, should be added and discussed). Maybe this page needs to turn into a clean collection of links, to grammar, alphabet, dialects, literature etc.?
- -- Dbachmann 11:33, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What's that? ?al luGat ul?\arabi:yat ulfus'X\a: ? Is that right or a problem in my computer? Manuel Anastácio 14:04, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
However accurate it may be to put things in X-SAMPA, I'm sure there's a nicer way to romanise Arabic. I don't have a problem with including X-SAMPA values as well, of course.
Is there an article dealing with the details of the grammar of Modern Standard Arabic?
It's my understanding that "Ard" is the Arabic word for "Earth". Any idea as to how it would be modified to become either masculine or feminine?
ard, plural aradin (arḍ, arāḍin) is feminine gender. what do you mean, modify? and how does this relate to this article?
This sentence:
seems contradictory. The popularity of Middle Eastern films would make Middle Easterners easier to understand. Surely the statement should be that Middle Easterners have trouble understanding Maghrebis? - And in fact Varieties of Arabic has this:
Which is correct?
-- joe 15:30, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting that! I was trying to restore an incorrect edit, and somehow forgot to re-reverse "Middle Eastern" and "North African". - Mustafaa 18:45, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I read in the article: "however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively), but now sound very different." I have some doubts about the meaning of this: 1. What do you mean about "retention" = change of meaning - is that true? 2. If retention is the change of meaning of a classical form, what were the original meaning of three words in the example? If it is the same ("there is") where are the change of meaning?
Excuse me if my english is not very good... Manuel Anastácio 01:17, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It say in the piece
"The term Modern Standard Arabic is sometimes used in the West to refer to the language of the media as opposed to the language of "Classical" Arabic literature; Arabs make no such distinction, and regard the two as identical."
Is that true I always thought Arabs considered them distinct? ---
We call them both fus'ha, as oppose to the spoken language, which is darija or aammiyya. - Mustafaa 21:46, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
fwiiw, English distinguishes 'Quranic', 'Classical' and 'Standard' Arabic. And they are quite different, of course. Read the Quran. Read a newspaper. About as different as Shakespeare and the NYT. I realize that's not the issue here, though. 'Mubassatah' seems practically unknown to google. dab (ᛏ) 08:56, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have just heard an english friend try to say I was artistic in the the turkey market only in winter in Arabic -- PHussein 19:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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Did they not originate in India? — mark ✎ 12:40, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've seen Arabic transcribed into latin letters online, mostly in messageboards and filesnames. The transcription contains case sensitive latin letters as-well-numbers. Could someone please explain this transcription and it status, adding it to the article? A quoted example, quoted (I do apologise, for I do not understand what's written here,hopefully nothing volgar) "Ma fii far2 baynetna! Ne7na 3arab bi baYdna"
There is the Buckwalter Arabic transliteration scheme [2], but yours seems to use 3 rather than E for ayin. See also SATTS. dab (ᛏ) 10:27, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It's good to have the phonology table in IPA. My version (1999) of the IPA handbook uses ˁ to indicate pharyngealization: I wonder if the article should follow suit. I changed the transcription of the voiced pharyngeal fricative (`ayn) to ʕ from ʔ, which seems to make more sense. However, the handbook suggests that a pharyngealized glottal stop, ʔˁ, would be a better transcription of `ayn. This simply doesn't make sense to me (you should hear me trying to pronounce it in different ways!). Any thoughts? Gareth Hughes 23:28, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm puzzled by this statement on p.53 of the 1999 IPA handbook:
/ʕ/ is a Retracted Tongue Root glottal stop. This realization is supported by Gairdner (1925), Al-Ani (1970) and Kästner (1981) as well as extensive observation of a range of speakers from different regional origins residing in Kuwait at present (1990). Nowhere have we observed a pharyngeal fricative.
It seems clear enough, but it still doesn't sound quite right to me. Gareth Hughes 14:39, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have just made a stub article about the vegetable molokhiya, giving the Arabic name as "ملوخية". I don't read any Arabic at all; I just copied and pasted this from a web page. If it's wrong, could you correct it for me?
Thanks, Pekinensis 16:52, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I need some help with the arabien word for monsoon (season). There are different Versions between the Wikis and it would be nice to know the background of the following words:
-- Saperaud 17:11, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The key word is the same in all cases: موسم mawsim = season. Whether the phrase was "seasonal winds", "wind season", etc. is a moot point. - Mustafaa 02:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This page has (had?) a strong Arab POV in it. MSA and CA are *not* the same, and should *NOT* simply point to FuSHa. First of all, FuSHa is a word in a foreign language; we need to stick to standard terms. So I delinked the MSA and CA are created stubs that describe these languages and (in the case of MSA) give some info about the changes from CA.
Benwing 06:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The first sentence is sort of ambiguous. I think it needs to be clarified to which language Arabic is more similar. Yuber (talk) 01:38, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As many of you know, there is no one standard way of transliterating from Arabic to Roman letters. This can be quite a hassle on Wikipedia, but it's just the way it is. I'm trying to organize a wikiproject to discuss these sorts of questions, develop standards, and make it easier for people to find pages on Arab topics. If you're interested, sign up at Talk:Arabic name#An Arabic name project. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 15:40, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
Image:Robin_Williams.jpg Arabic? What does it say? ¦ Reisio 04:07, 2005 July 23 (UTC)
the current situation is rather a mess. in particular, much of stuff just called "arabic" refers to classical arabic; that stuff doesn't distinguish modern-standard, koran, etc. the main "arabic language" article talks somewhat about all arabic varieties and somewhat about MSA. etc.
I propose:
I plan to start this in a few days, barring objections. In the process of doing this, I'll rewrite/expand stuff as needed.
Benwing 17:38, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
you may want to check out Talk:Greek language where they are facing similar problems, although in the case of Greek mostly diachronic. They came up with the very nice Template:History of the Greek language. dab (ᛏ) 17:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
"MSA" and "Qur'anic" Arabic are of course different in some ways; no one denies that. But that misses the point - which is that they are far more similar to one another than either is to any of the "dialects", and are considered by their users to be little more than different stylistic registers of the language they learn at school. The idea that these are the same language is not political, it's common sense, on a par with calling King James Bible English and 20th-century media English the same language. Colloquial Arabic, dialectal Arabic, Fusha, Classical Arabic, are all fine, being widely used terms - but Formal Arabic, as a label for Fusha, strikes me as something of a neologism, descriptively accurate but not appropriate as an article title (only 642 ghits.) Also, Darija is pan-Maghreb, not just Moroccan, while 'ammiyya covers the Mashreq. - Mustafaa 20:20, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
The infobox states that Arabic is an official language in Israel, but it doesn't tell that it's spoken in Israel, unless it is by small minorities. If this is the fact, why is it an official language? CG 12:32, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
The info box states that Arabic is spoken "by a majority" in Israel. It is not. Although an official language of the State, a "majority" of Israelis do not speak it. In total, probably no more than 30% of Israel speaks Arabic (constituting Israeli Arabs and some older Mizrahi Jews). I changed this inaccuracy, but it was removed within minutes as vandalism.
I have read both comments written by CG above and I'm confused by them. It seems that CG wants to have his/her cake and eat it too. In the first comment CG seems to wonder why Arabic is an official language in Israel, if Israel was, apparently, not in the "sopken in" list. Then, cg seems to be offended by the notion that a language of "small minorities" should become an official language of that country. Then in the second comment CG want to delete the entire sentence regarding Arabic being a language of a minority in some countries. How very big of you cg. But wait, this seemingly progressive thougnt is followed by a call to imperialism. By which I mean CG's insistance that we change the lands of the Arabic language from the very appropiate "Arab World" to the euro-centric "Middle East". Well CG Arabic is an official language in Israel becuase the government of that country has deemed it so, if you are offended by that you should take it up with the them. I think its great that the 1.26 million Arab Israeli's have their native language as an official language.(see the CIA world fact book) Also, besides the Arab minorty (20%) some of the Jewish population does speak that language making the entire population of Arabic speakers close to 30%. As regarding your second comment of "Middle East" vs. "Arab World" its a no-brainer: the "Arab World" all the way. The "Middle East" was a term concoted by imperial Europe during its hay day to differentiate between the "far" and "near/middle" easts. What does it exactly include? Who the hell knows. Generally it the countries of the penisula and Iran (which does not include Arabic as an official language), sometimes Afghanistan and Pakistan have been thrown into the mix (and again niether of these two muslim countries have Arabic as an official language). The "Arab World" is a much viable option because it was coined by arabs (not europeans) and it includes, as its name suggests, all the countries where Arabic is perdominantly spoken. So the heading should definatly read "Arab World". If some of wikipedia'a readers are, again offended by this, then we can add "and other countries". After all there are arabs spread all over the globe thanks to the Palestinian Diaspora.
While the Maltese language is related to Arabic, no Maltese speaker would consider Arabic and Maltese to be the same. Arabic is taught as a foreign language in Maltese schools, and has zero official status within Malta. Consider also that Polish and Russian are far more closely related, yet are regarded as distinct languages. I have edited the infobox accordingly, and removed the reference to Malta. Rhialto 13:07, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Spelling is wrong fasiha
The word "Arabic", pronounced "Arabi" in Arabic, comes from the extended word: "Al-Rabi" ..which means: "The Teachings" or "From Teachings", hence "Rabi" for Teacher in Hebrew.
wait a second...the official language of iraq is Arabic it isnt a co-official language....fix the map
Isn't the English word "assassin" a common word derived from the arabic language?
Interestingly, I get a wholly blank table when I watch this page. Is it me or is there something wrong with it? Muhamedmesic 21:37, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
I read the second paragraph and couldn't find fault with it - it is clear and lucid. What is bothering you about it?
Setting up a separate page for each sound of the Arabic language seems really excessive. All the necessary information can easily be kept on a single page. Eclecticology
It's going to be a fairly major project to fill in all the concepts in Islam or the Arabic culture that don't translate directly into English (now all listed).
Spelling deserves a note: I have used a single coherent spelling scheme here that comes all from one book. Older spellings ulema and tarika (for ulama and tariqa using the new spellings) come from a book 20 years older. A native speaker of Arabic might be better to identify which spellings are more correct given the pronunciation. Rather than change them in this file, please use redirects for alternate spellings, as I am sure multiple spellings of some of these words are extant.
An important note: the term "Muslim" must replace "Moslem" or "Mohammedan" unless one is specifically quoting some text written by some English guy. I should probably have included "Mohammedan" as a 'just don't use it' word. I also could have (but didn't) mention that G. W. Bush made both gaffes in the speeches he made just after 9/11 - no wonder the Arabs won't join him now!!! What a moron.
When can one see a wikipedia in arabic language [[ar:]] ??
In a very popular Arabic language newspaper, there was an article today about wikipedia. The author of that article praised the extensive amount of information on this encyclopedia, but ended it by saying that its not available in Arabic. I think that this common mistake, among Arabic speaking people, can be fixed if there was a direct link from the encyclopedias homepage of www.wikipedia.org to the arabic version of ar.wikipedia.org . It might, also, help develop the number of Arabic articles, I've noticed that the Arabic articles are nowhere near as many, nor as detailed as the English version.
I think
"Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to the Hebrew language. "
can be abit misleading. While I concider both very beautiful languages, I think it rings abit like: "French is an indo-european language, closely related to Russian. ".
Arabic and Hebrew has very different grammer, and very different phonology, for example, the one has noun case conjugations, while the later does not, tenses differ, etc
In fact, it's more like saying, "French is indo-european, closely related to spanish" -- while this is not particularly relevant, it's certainly correct. In fact (according to the classification of SIL, which is fairly standard, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=3 ), Arabic and Hebrew are both southern central semitic languages. "Central" semitic contrasts with Southern (Ethiopian, 'South Arabic' (which is *not* Arabic, viz. 'Arabic' is here a geographic, not a linguistic specifier) and with (extinct) Akkadian. Dbachmann 11:25, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"Due to the great rift between the Colloquial and the Literary Arabic, Salman Masalha, former professor of Arab Literature Department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, states regarding illiteracy in the Arab world: "I say that it is over 80%. Practically speaking, even those defined as not illiterate because they completed eight years of schooling, I consider illiterate. In this century, anyone who finishes elementary school can't really read." [1]" Given that, as an Israeli citizen, there are very few Arab countries he can even visit legally, this statement lacks credibility. Nor is it supported by the CIA world factbook literacy figures, and it contradicts the evidence of my own eyes - comprehension of literary Arabic has massively increased in recent decades due to TV (including dubbed cartoons), and even small children can generally understand the standard language quite well by the age of 11, if not much earlier. I have removed it. - Mustafa, April 5 2004.
"Their mutual comprehensibility is very limited. The reason behind the vast differences in spoken languages or dialects of the groups mentioned herewith is that they are mixes of many languages. Ancient languages spoken by non-Arab population of these countries continue to survive in the dialects/languages of everyday life and the roots of the older languages of the Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Assyrian, Coptic...etc. are still evident. [1]" As anyone following Lebanese politics will be aware, the question of the origin of the dialects is highly political in Lebanon, where the guy quoted is based; and, while phoenicia.org contains some good historical info, it is no authority on linguistics. This should be replaced with a better quote. Oh, and "mixes of many languages" is not even controversial among linguists; it's false. Many Arabic dialects are full of words taken from other languages, but " mixed language" implies considerably more than that in linguistics; the only universally agreed-upon mixed language seems to be Michif. Mustafaa 03:41, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't the masses of Arabic alphabet and writing info be left to the Arabic alphabet page? - Mustafaa 18:05, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
what about the arabic grammar stub? should we kill it? or should we move the 'grammar' section over there?
also, we need a transliteration scheme. over at Ibn Fadlan, I used standard transliteration, using the Latin Extended Additional (1e00) codepage (underdots). This page (or the grammar page) needs to explain the sounds and how they are transliterated.
I suggest we list the sounds in a nice table, putting arab letters, standard transliteration and ascii schemes and whatnot next to each other, so that people can be referred here if there is a transliteration issue anywhere.
alright, I realize such a table (using 1e00-transliteration) is at Arabic alphabet (other transliteration schemes, such as Buckwalter ascii, should be added and discussed). Maybe this page needs to turn into a clean collection of links, to grammar, alphabet, dialects, literature etc.?
- -- Dbachmann 11:33, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What's that? ?al luGat ul?\arabi:yat ulfus'X\a: ? Is that right or a problem in my computer? Manuel Anastácio 14:04, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
However accurate it may be to put things in X-SAMPA, I'm sure there's a nicer way to romanise Arabic. I don't have a problem with including X-SAMPA values as well, of course.
Is there an article dealing with the details of the grammar of Modern Standard Arabic?
It's my understanding that "Ard" is the Arabic word for "Earth". Any idea as to how it would be modified to become either masculine or feminine?
ard, plural aradin (arḍ, arāḍin) is feminine gender. what do you mean, modify? and how does this relate to this article?
This sentence:
seems contradictory. The popularity of Middle Eastern films would make Middle Easterners easier to understand. Surely the statement should be that Middle Easterners have trouble understanding Maghrebis? - And in fact Varieties of Arabic has this:
Which is correct?
-- joe 15:30, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting that! I was trying to restore an incorrect edit, and somehow forgot to re-reverse "Middle Eastern" and "North African". - Mustafaa 18:45, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I read in the article: "however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively), but now sound very different." I have some doubts about the meaning of this: 1. What do you mean about "retention" = change of meaning - is that true? 2. If retention is the change of meaning of a classical form, what were the original meaning of three words in the example? If it is the same ("there is") where are the change of meaning?
Excuse me if my english is not very good... Manuel Anastácio 01:17, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It say in the piece
"The term Modern Standard Arabic is sometimes used in the West to refer to the language of the media as opposed to the language of "Classical" Arabic literature; Arabs make no such distinction, and regard the two as identical."
Is that true I always thought Arabs considered them distinct? ---
We call them both fus'ha, as oppose to the spoken language, which is darija or aammiyya. - Mustafaa 21:46, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
fwiiw, English distinguishes 'Quranic', 'Classical' and 'Standard' Arabic. And they are quite different, of course. Read the Quran. Read a newspaper. About as different as Shakespeare and the NYT. I realize that's not the issue here, though. 'Mubassatah' seems practically unknown to google. dab (ᛏ) 08:56, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have just heard an english friend try to say I was artistic in the the turkey market only in winter in Arabic -- PHussein 19:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
An
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The following sentence was removed from the article by User:A.Khalil:
Did they not originate in India? — mark ✎ 12:40, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've seen Arabic transcribed into latin letters online, mostly in messageboards and filesnames. The transcription contains case sensitive latin letters as-well-numbers. Could someone please explain this transcription and it status, adding it to the article? A quoted example, quoted (I do apologise, for I do not understand what's written here,hopefully nothing volgar) "Ma fii far2 baynetna! Ne7na 3arab bi baYdna"
There is the Buckwalter Arabic transliteration scheme [2], but yours seems to use 3 rather than E for ayin. See also SATTS. dab (ᛏ) 10:27, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It's good to have the phonology table in IPA. My version (1999) of the IPA handbook uses ˁ to indicate pharyngealization: I wonder if the article should follow suit. I changed the transcription of the voiced pharyngeal fricative (`ayn) to ʕ from ʔ, which seems to make more sense. However, the handbook suggests that a pharyngealized glottal stop, ʔˁ, would be a better transcription of `ayn. This simply doesn't make sense to me (you should hear me trying to pronounce it in different ways!). Any thoughts? Gareth Hughes 23:28, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm puzzled by this statement on p.53 of the 1999 IPA handbook:
/ʕ/ is a Retracted Tongue Root glottal stop. This realization is supported by Gairdner (1925), Al-Ani (1970) and Kästner (1981) as well as extensive observation of a range of speakers from different regional origins residing in Kuwait at present (1990). Nowhere have we observed a pharyngeal fricative.
It seems clear enough, but it still doesn't sound quite right to me. Gareth Hughes 14:39, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have just made a stub article about the vegetable molokhiya, giving the Arabic name as "ملوخية". I don't read any Arabic at all; I just copied and pasted this from a web page. If it's wrong, could you correct it for me?
Thanks, Pekinensis 16:52, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I need some help with the arabien word for monsoon (season). There are different Versions between the Wikis and it would be nice to know the background of the following words:
-- Saperaud 17:11, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The key word is the same in all cases: موسم mawsim = season. Whether the phrase was "seasonal winds", "wind season", etc. is a moot point. - Mustafaa 02:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This page has (had?) a strong Arab POV in it. MSA and CA are *not* the same, and should *NOT* simply point to FuSHa. First of all, FuSHa is a word in a foreign language; we need to stick to standard terms. So I delinked the MSA and CA are created stubs that describe these languages and (in the case of MSA) give some info about the changes from CA.
Benwing 06:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The first sentence is sort of ambiguous. I think it needs to be clarified to which language Arabic is more similar. Yuber (talk) 01:38, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As many of you know, there is no one standard way of transliterating from Arabic to Roman letters. This can be quite a hassle on Wikipedia, but it's just the way it is. I'm trying to organize a wikiproject to discuss these sorts of questions, develop standards, and make it easier for people to find pages on Arab topics. If you're interested, sign up at Talk:Arabic name#An Arabic name project. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 15:40, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
Image:Robin_Williams.jpg Arabic? What does it say? ¦ Reisio 04:07, 2005 July 23 (UTC)
the current situation is rather a mess. in particular, much of stuff just called "arabic" refers to classical arabic; that stuff doesn't distinguish modern-standard, koran, etc. the main "arabic language" article talks somewhat about all arabic varieties and somewhat about MSA. etc.
I propose:
I plan to start this in a few days, barring objections. In the process of doing this, I'll rewrite/expand stuff as needed.
Benwing 17:38, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
you may want to check out Talk:Greek language where they are facing similar problems, although in the case of Greek mostly diachronic. They came up with the very nice Template:History of the Greek language. dab (ᛏ) 17:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
"MSA" and "Qur'anic" Arabic are of course different in some ways; no one denies that. But that misses the point - which is that they are far more similar to one another than either is to any of the "dialects", and are considered by their users to be little more than different stylistic registers of the language they learn at school. The idea that these are the same language is not political, it's common sense, on a par with calling King James Bible English and 20th-century media English the same language. Colloquial Arabic, dialectal Arabic, Fusha, Classical Arabic, are all fine, being widely used terms - but Formal Arabic, as a label for Fusha, strikes me as something of a neologism, descriptively accurate but not appropriate as an article title (only 642 ghits.) Also, Darija is pan-Maghreb, not just Moroccan, while 'ammiyya covers the Mashreq. - Mustafaa 20:20, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
The infobox states that Arabic is an official language in Israel, but it doesn't tell that it's spoken in Israel, unless it is by small minorities. If this is the fact, why is it an official language? CG 12:32, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
The info box states that Arabic is spoken "by a majority" in Israel. It is not. Although an official language of the State, a "majority" of Israelis do not speak it. In total, probably no more than 30% of Israel speaks Arabic (constituting Israeli Arabs and some older Mizrahi Jews). I changed this inaccuracy, but it was removed within minutes as vandalism.
I have read both comments written by CG above and I'm confused by them. It seems that CG wants to have his/her cake and eat it too. In the first comment CG seems to wonder why Arabic is an official language in Israel, if Israel was, apparently, not in the "sopken in" list. Then, cg seems to be offended by the notion that a language of "small minorities" should become an official language of that country. Then in the second comment CG want to delete the entire sentence regarding Arabic being a language of a minority in some countries. How very big of you cg. But wait, this seemingly progressive thougnt is followed by a call to imperialism. By which I mean CG's insistance that we change the lands of the Arabic language from the very appropiate "Arab World" to the euro-centric "Middle East". Well CG Arabic is an official language in Israel becuase the government of that country has deemed it so, if you are offended by that you should take it up with the them. I think its great that the 1.26 million Arab Israeli's have their native language as an official language.(see the CIA world fact book) Also, besides the Arab minorty (20%) some of the Jewish population does speak that language making the entire population of Arabic speakers close to 30%. As regarding your second comment of "Middle East" vs. "Arab World" its a no-brainer: the "Arab World" all the way. The "Middle East" was a term concoted by imperial Europe during its hay day to differentiate between the "far" and "near/middle" easts. What does it exactly include? Who the hell knows. Generally it the countries of the penisula and Iran (which does not include Arabic as an official language), sometimes Afghanistan and Pakistan have been thrown into the mix (and again niether of these two muslim countries have Arabic as an official language). The "Arab World" is a much viable option because it was coined by arabs (not europeans) and it includes, as its name suggests, all the countries where Arabic is perdominantly spoken. So the heading should definatly read "Arab World". If some of wikipedia'a readers are, again offended by this, then we can add "and other countries". After all there are arabs spread all over the globe thanks to the Palestinian Diaspora.
While the Maltese language is related to Arabic, no Maltese speaker would consider Arabic and Maltese to be the same. Arabic is taught as a foreign language in Maltese schools, and has zero official status within Malta. Consider also that Polish and Russian are far more closely related, yet are regarded as distinct languages. I have edited the infobox accordingly, and removed the reference to Malta. Rhialto 13:07, 30 October 2005 (UTC)