Yella!

[muckefuck]

It must be obvious to all that I've given up on Hindi/Urdu for the nonce. My language of the moment is one I've played around with for years without ever making any real progress in, namely Arabic. I know the letters (kind of), I can use a dictionary, but I'm nigh-hopeless at deciphering or constructing a sentence.

Still, I'm thinking I might make more progress this go around. For one thing, I've got a better book, one I picked up at a good pricewhen Savvy Traveller shut its doors a couple years back. For another, I'm focussing this time on a particular vernacular, only occasionally referring to the sections on MSA in order to compare-contrast.

Lebanese is the variety I picked for a number of reasons. First, it's relatively central, which hopefully means it will be more widely intelligible than more peripheral varieties like Khaliji or Maltese. Second, it's tied to a more familiar culture, one strongly influenced by both Christianity and European liberalism. The Lebanese were the first Arabs I ever met due to the small but significant Maronite presence in my hometown of St Louis.

As Arabic vernaculars go, Lebanese seems to command a fair amount of prestige. Although the cruel bouts of instability have badly hurt the entertainment industry there, Lebanese music still seems relatively widespread and popular. It also has a good web presence, with several English- and French-language websites that present information on the colloquial language. There's a lot available in romanisation, which is useful as I'm still not very adept at reading Arabic script.

In fact, there's even a movement to make "Lebanese" in Roman script the official language of Lebanon. Not a big one, to be sure, and one rather too closely associated with ultranationalists who are too often Christian chauvinists to boot. It's through their linguistic essays that I discovered the existence of Phoenicianism, which seems to be basically a Lebanese Christian reaction to Pan-Arabism.

In trying to deny an Arab origin for the Lebanese and their language, Phoenicianists play up the non-Arab Semitic elements. This leads to outrageous claims of a Phoenician or Aramaic origin to the "Lebanese language" itself. It's fun to note the sub- and adstratal influences on the vernacular of Lebanon, but of course these don't alter the genetic affiliations of the language any more than the divergent phonology of Maghrebi Arabic makes it a branch of Berber.

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I'm curious -- why not go for the big boy, Egyptian Arabic? Or even just standard Arabic and work TOWARDS a venacular?

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I'm currently learning Arabic.

Every native Arabic speaker that I've talked with tells me to start with fuSHa, and to go from that to the dialects -- but not the other way around. fuSHa is so important that half of my Arabic class are native speakers.

fuSHa is the language you'll find most on the Internet: most writing (including all newspapers), most radio and television.

One other thing... you will need to learn Arabic script. Yes, it's a little weird (up to four different ways to write a character), but once it's done, Arabic becomes far more intelligible. (Romanizations usually specify how to sound out a word more or less. Written Arabic gives you the three-letter root and the form -- if you know both of those, you may have a clue what the word means.)

Good luck.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

And yet, virtually every native speaker does it the other way around--vernacular first, then fuSHa--so what do they know?

FuSHa in Arabic script is what I've been dicking around with for two decades without making any progress. It's time to try a different tack.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Be7ki bish-shajret...

Because Lebanese men are hotter, that's why.

[hanskramladen.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I tried to learn Lebanese when I was working in Beirut, but never got really far (lazy, too many other projects, available materials sucked, and you get along too well speaking English and French). During my last half year I found a course with a good teacher and some nice people and really made advances, but then I had to leave. Haram!
In case you're still looking for a language course, I don't know whether you've come across this one (http://www.syrianarabic.com/) (I think I found the link on the ZBB or on studylangs). It's Syrian Arabic, so there are a few differences to Lebanese, but a Lebanese friend I showed it told me that it's close enough that you have to relearn mostly some vocabulary and idioms, while the grammar is near-identical.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! I'll have a look at it.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Munther Younes at Cornell teaches a very practical, very colloquial Palestinian Arabic course, from books he's put together himself. I'm guessing his structure (for beginners, with dribbled-out grammar and a heavy emphasis on phrasebookiness) is probably not what you're looking for, but I recommend him highly as a teacher who wants to get his students speaking and as an all-around good person to talk to on the topic.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

...also, Younes has put together a nice set of (somewhat simplified) Tales of Kalila wa Dimna, which are entertaining, and come as a book + CD of some tales being read aloud.

[wiped.livejournal.com]

i recently made a similar decision with my arabic studies. i've given up on ever becoming fluent in fuSHa, and instead am focusing on just memorizing more roots and derivational formulas, which helps tremendously with learning the vocabulary of the other arabic-influenced languages i study. meanwhile i've made great strides with the egyptian dialect (which in my experience is more widely understood than lebanese, but only just so) and am also picking up some iraqi from a friend. lebanese is the dialect i initially began with, and i think it's a solid choice.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

kif t3allama? deresta ma mdarris?

[wiped.livejournal.com]

ana bdrus aksar min as7aabi wa min kutub. li as7aab lebnani, 3iraqi wa ma9ri, bas 3arif a jumbled mixture of those dialects plus fu97a.

[pne.livejournal.com]

In trying to deny an Arab origin for the Lebanese and their language, Phoenicianists play up the non-Arab Semitic elements. This leads to outrageous claims of a Phoenician or Aramaic origin to the "Lebanese language" itself.

Heh, you see that sometimes with Maltese, too.

That, or the weakened version of saying that it's Semitic but somehow implying that it's a cousin (or something) of Arabic rather than a daughter.