posted
She's talking about some old people remembering the glorious old past. She's describing how they sat at the Nile bank in the evenings blabla.
But she's speaking Sudanese, which is very difficult for Egyptians to understand..
Don't they have SudanSearch or something of the sort out there?
Sorry to be rude, but I wonder why people find her so cute. I don't like children who talk like grown ups.
Posts: 8756 | From: Tax-Free Zone | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I thought most Arab/North African countries had their own local versions of Arabic (i.e. Egyptian Arabic vs. Sudanese Arabic). And these can often be difficult for people to understand when speaking Arabic to someone from another country. My understanding is that in these situations, people resort to Classical Arabic to communicate, if they've learned it.
Posts: 8794 | From: 01-20-09 The End of an Error | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Naty, let me try to explain how the whole language thing is like in the Arab World.
Compare Arabic to, for example, Latin. It's a language that's not spoken anywhere, but still is the origin of several modern languages. Now, Classical Arabic is not spoken anywhere, except in the news on T.V. or written in the newspapers (which makes it more alive than Latin for that matter).
What's is spoken in the Arab countries in daily life, are dialects originating from Arabic.
Now, compare Egyptian to, let's say Spanish, and Moroccan to French, and Sudanese to Italian, and so forth. You see, a Spaniard can understand an Italian *a bit* but not totally. Get my point?
Now what if two people from two different Arabic countries meet? They mostly would communicate in Classical Arabic in order to be able to understand each other. But only the people who went to school understand Classical Arabic, therefore the illiterate people from different Arabic countries have trouble understanding other Arabs.
One exception though, ALL Arabs can speak Egyptian . Why is that? Because Egypt has been the Hollywood of the Middle East for decades. So Arabs have been watching our media productions for decades, therefore they do understand us. So if there's a group of Arabs who would like to communicate, among which an Egyptian or more are present, they usually end up speaking Egyptian (dialect that is).
Due to the satellite-channel hype, a new dialect is also coming up to compete with Egyptian, which is the Lebanese dialect. I was shocked to hear many Egyptians, even on T.V., using Lebanese terms in their daily talk. Not cute.
I have met so many foreigners who would be planning to go and live in Egypt, and they would go and follow Arabic language courses fro months, only to end up finding out that it was a waste of time, and that they hardly can understand anything they hear in the street based on what they took in school. They would understand the news though.
Does this explain it a bit?
Posts: 8756 | From: Tax-Free Zone | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Yes, it clarifies things a lot. Silly me, i should have realized this becuase i speak (cuban spanish), which is WAYYY different than people speak in argentina or spain. and we have a lot of west african influences in the way we speak.
Posts: 7 | From: Maryland | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by natyempress: Yes, it clarifies things a lot. Silly me, i should have realized this becuase i speak (cuban spanish), which is WAYYY different than people speak in argentina or spain. and we have a lot of west african influences in the way we speak.
Oh not silly you. EVERY foreigner I met thinks like you.
But even inside Egypt, for example a Lower Egyptian (from the north) wouldn't understand an Upper Egyptian (from the south) easily.
The above paragraph has no mistakes about it. It's just that everything Egypt seems to be upside down. Posts: 8756 | From: Tax-Free Zone | Registered: Jul 2005
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. Why is that? Because Egypt has been the Hollywood of the Middle East for decades. So Arabs have been watching our media productions for decades, therefore they do understand us. So if there's a group of Arabs who would like to communicate, among which an Egyptian or more are present, they usually end up speaking Egyptian (dialect that is).![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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