Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
On Oct 3, 5:42 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
On 2 loka, 19:57, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Oct 2, 10:23 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:

> > On 2 loka, 16:54, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Today, many years
> > > later, they still speak English and French well, and they have > > > learnt
> > > some other languages, but have forgotten their Arabic.

> > This might have something to do with the fact that street Arabic,
> > especially Maghreb Arabic which is reputedly almost as replete > > with
> > French loanwordas as Maltese is with Italian, is no use outside > > the
> > souk: exposure to it won't help you understand much of that > > artificial
> > Esperanto that is called Modern Standard Arabic. If the souk > > jargon
> > had been supplemented with study of MSA, then the kids might have
> > actually found some use for that Arabic.-

> Stick to Celtic.

Let's hear what was actually wrong in what I said.

"street Arabic"

"souk jargon"

"no use outside the souk"

Your epithets read like the worst sort of 19th-century Euro-
superiority ignorant trash. I naturally discount anything you might
have to say about an idiom for which you display such contempt.

But as for the question into which you inserted an insult of me, no,
Maghrebi Arabic would not be terribly useful in Baghdad.

The fact is, that
Arabic language mass media, from Aljazeera to Al Ahram, use MSA, and
another fact is, that MSA is an artificial Esperanto which nobody
speaks natively. The only way how those kids would have been able to
keep their Arabic would have been watching Arabic-language TV, videos,
and suchlike. But Maghreb souk jargon is no use if you try to watch TV
or read a newspaper in Arabic, because media Arabic is MSA,
practically a distinct language.-

I don't suppose you've ever bothered to discover what the very first
Arabic dialect of which a competent grammar was written was.

Nor does it interest you that it was probably a native language of two
of the greatest French Semitists of the 20th century, Marcel Cohen and
David Cohen (no relation).

One suspects that the variety of Maghrebi Arabic that you're thinking of here was rather different from that the children involved learned from their friends in the souk.

Panu: Obviously, Peter isn't rubbishing you for telling us that that the variety in question is hardly intelligible outside the street and the souk, since this is quite likely true. I'm just guessing, but perhaps he's criticising you for using the word "jargon". Like "pidgin", this has a perfectly respectable meaning in linguistics, but, also like "pidgin", it was originally a term of insult, and some non-linguists still use it as such.

John.


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?
    ... If the souk ... "souk jargon" ... keep their Arabic would have been watching Arabic-language TV, ... Nor does it interest you that it was probably a native language of two ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?
    ... If the souk jargon ... had been supplemented with study of MSA, ... keep their Arabic would have been watching Arabic-language TV, videos, ... Nor does it interest you that it was probably a native language of two ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?
    ... had been supplemented with study of MSA, ... keep their Arabic would have been watching Arabic-language TV, videos, ... But Maghreb souk jargon is no use if you try to watch TV ... practically a distinct language. ...
    (sci.lang)