Archiving My Threads - About the Arabic Language

One of the conversations I had three weeks ago was about the Arabic Language and why (in my opinion) it isn't as hard to learn as it sounds. Below is a cleaner version of what I said in that conversation, along with the links to the original versions on LeoThreads.

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The main thread behind this conversation is this Poll by @janetedita:

"¿Which city would you like to visit?"

• Amsterdam
• Rio de Janeiro
• Tokio
• Paris

I commented on why I think Tokio is a funny name. It was too similar to a certain Japanese city. I was told that it's actually how Tokyo is written in Spanish, so I was kinda right.

This led us to talk about language, here are some highlights from that conversation:

[Me]: "My native language is arabic, but maybe I should learn some Spanish.

(My brother is better at Latin languages than me, he learns language basics as a hobby.)"

[janetedita]: "wow, Arabic is a difficult language, I like to see the writing...so sinuous...it's very pretty ...but distant from our language... do you want to know Spanish words?"

[Me]: "Arabic is actually easier than it looks there are only 28 letters, and while each letter can be pronounced in 4 ways, they all follow the same rules, if you understand 3 of them, you'll understand all the rest in a fraction of the time."

@janetedita asked about the four ways to read each letter so I expanded on it:

[Me]: "I should've said how the letter changes by adding one of four vowels.

Arabic has short vowels and long vowels. Usually short vowels aren't written, (we know them by context) which is why I said they're 4 ways." - [LINK]

"On the internet you might see a sentence like this:

سبحان ربّي الأعلى

If you write the short vowels it'll look like this, much easier to read but harder to write:

سُبْحَانَ رَبِّي الأَعْلَى

We know by context: سبحان should be read as سُبْحَانَ"

I was told to expand even further, I was getting tired at this point, (it was night after a long day,) but I enjoyed writing the next part...

[janetedita:] "Do you add circles on the sticks? (sorry for my ignorance)to me it looks almost the same except for those differences."

"You see, this "ز" is the "Z" sound in Arabic.

[Me]: "The four ways you can read it:

• The short "Za" as " زَ " & the long "Zaa" as "زَا "
• Short "Zi" as " زِ " & long "Zii" " زِي "
• Short Zu " زُ " & long Zuu " زُو "
• The "Azz" sound -> زْ"

[Me]: "All other Arabic letters follow the same rules.

...anyway, wanna teach me any quick fact about #spanish? (I'm enjoying this more than I thought I would.)"

--- This led to another conversation about Spanish.

[janetedita:] "woww and what do you use the long form and the short form for? is it like formal and informal?"

[Me]: "You can't read without pronouncing the short-vowels and the long ones in each word. Changing (even a non-written) vowel placement changes the meaning.

That's why you have to learn all of them. I'm just saying it's easier than it looks."

[Me]: "It's hard to read internet conversations because we omit them in informal text. (Making it hard for people to read unfamiliar words.)

I always write إن شاء الله and الحمد لله without vowels, but there's only one expected meaning for them."

[Me]: "When you learn, a teacher will tell you how to read any word correctly depending on its context even if short-vowels aren't written.

I should look up a teaching video about this for you."

I ended the conversation after giving her the video below.

It has all the knowledge someone new to Arabic needs to know. Even I, as a native learned a lot of things from this video when I first watched it: