Arabic becoming an endangered language

[Techno-Druid]

I'm sure @Shnider might know something about this topic, considering he's from Saudi Arabia and @Theodarzna might be interested in a good language discussion.

A few weeks ago I was learning a little bit about Arabic and I stumbled upon some interesting articles. In Lebanon, French and English are the languages used for education. A form of pidgin French/English/Arabic is commonly spoken in Lebanon.

In UAE, Arabic is only the third most spoken language after English and Hindi. Which makes sense considering the amount of migrant workers from India and the population of foreign expats in the emirates outnumbering the natives.

I think it's interesting how globalization is changing the linguistic evolution of certain countries.

[GennGreymane]

It most certainly is. English is a popular language due to US influence. Its also a rather simple language (to speak) compared to others.

[Freighter]

It most certainly is. English is a popular language due to US influence. Its also a rather simple language (to speak) compared to others.

What is your definition of simple? It's rather hard.

[Tackhisis]

Arabic is trying to impose a literature norm which no one speaks and no one thinks in. It needs a national revival that will replace it with several standardized dialects which are to become the official and literature standards.

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What is your definition of simple? It's rather hard.

English is the simplest European language by far, and one of the simplest IE language with few rivals. How can one think English is hard?

[Freighter]

English is the simplest European language by far, and one of the simplest IE language with few rivals. How can one think English is hard?

Because it's very different to my native language.

[Izalla]

It's generally accepted among linguists that english is one of the easiest languages. It doesn't have very man exceptions and conjugation or gender rules compared to other languages. (For example german has more than 3 word-genders iirc(?)).

Gendered words are annoying as shit, I hated that part of French in elementary school and that part of Italian in university.

[randomnamegenerator16]

What is your definition of simple? It's rather hard.

Hard? I don't think so, well, out of languages I learned (or tried to) this was by far the easiest one. And I apart from English I know Polish and was trying to learn French, Greek and Russian. You want hard languages? Take Latin or something from finno-ugric group.

[Shortsy]

It most certainly is. English is a popular language due to US influence. Its also a rather simple language (to speak) compared to others.

I agree with all but the bolded. English is renowned for being among the harder of the Latin-based languages (being that it also derives from Germanic tribes as well).

A good example would be that we commonly use adjectives before the nouns, and we have several meanings of each word with little to no variation in spelling, like the word 'read'.

[Radaney]

Arabic is trying to impose a literature norm which no one speaks and no one thinks in. It needs a national revival that will replace it with several standardized dialects which are to become the official and literature standards.

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English is the simplest European language by far, and one of the simplest IE language with few rivals. How can one think English is hard?

Sentence structure is English is random af. What's the difference between; 'a fascinating big badger' and 'a big fascinating badger'? Nothing but people would say there is only one correct way to say this sentence.

Some words don't make literal sense like in other languages, like Pineapple. It's not actually a Pine Apple.

The English language has a lot of exceptions to it's own rules, like i before e except after c and then you get the word science that breaks this rule.

Pronunciation in English is retarded. Example; Trough is pronounced Troff but Rough pronounced Ruff? There isn't a logical reason, that's just how it is.

Emphasis in words changes the entire dynamic of a sentence in English.

Theasurus Synonyms are not inter-changeable. Synonyms do not the mean same thing when put into the same sentence.

The English language uses a lot of Slang and Idioms, someone who is not native will not understand them.

Homophones like 'The door was too close to the table to close' are difficult to grasp.

English language has a lot of regional dialect, alongside other european countries.

This is why English is not particularly easy until you pick up it's patterns. To be honest the only reason it's seen as hard is because pretty much everyone in the world is trying to learn it but still it's not very easy to learn by any stretch, it's definitely not Mandarin, Japanese or Russian level of difficulty however.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Because it's very different to my native language.

What is your native language?

[Freighter]

This is why English is not particularly easy until you pick up it's patterns. To be honest the only reason it's seen as hard is because pretty much everyone in the world is trying to learn it but still it's not very easy to learn by any stretch, it's definitely not Mandarin, Japanese or Russian level of difficulty however.

Japanese isn't that hard to learn.

What is your native language?

Korean.

[Swalload]

Because it's very different to my native language.

That doesn't make it a hard language. It only means your language is really different. That is not what the difficulty of languages are based on. They are based on the number of rules and the amount of vocabulary, the exceptions, etc. English is well known to be among the easiest languages.

[Radaney]

Japanese isn't that hard to learn.



Korean.

Japanese is hard to learn. The Japanese writing system has 3 systems containing 2,000 - 3,000 Kanji characters and you must know all of them.

And it's completely different to the spoken system making it significantly harder to learn.

Significantly harder than the English language and most other languages in every conceivable way.

[yetgdhfgh]

With the world becoming more global and things like the internet helping people learn a new language becoming easier to access i expect that within a century one language will be spoken by 90percent of the worlds population and that language will either be English or Chinese Mandarin!

All other languages will slowly die out just like latin did

[Akka]

What is your definition of simple? It's rather hard.

It's extremely simple, regardless of the definition of "simple".

I agree with all but the bolded. English is renowned for being among the harder of the Latin-based languages (being that it also derives from Germanic tribes as well).

Actually it's renowed to be one of the simplest (if not THE simplest). Don't know from which you got your "renowned" but the only people I ever saw saying english was hard were people on the forums (who usually either only knew english at all, or who had a maternal language very different from english and only learned english).

The only somewhat tricky thing in english is pronunciation (because it's wonky link between writing and speaking), and it's still piss easy compared to, for example, japanese (which has a downright nightmarish link between graphical representation and speech).

[Rustedsaint]

English can be tricky li
The nurse wound the bandaid around the wound
or
All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.
Both are real sentences
Think I messed up the first sentence there.

[Rend Blackhand]

Arabic will not disappear. Even if Arabs start speaking English as an everyday language, Arabic will survive as the religious language of Islam similar to how Ecclesiastical Latin is still a thing.

[Tackhisis]

...

Sentence structure is English is random af. What's the difference between; 'a fascinating big badger' and 'a big fascinating badger'?
Most languages use some form of adjective ordering.

Pineapple. It's not actually a Pine Apple.
It is apple (= fruit) which looks like a pine cone.

like i before e except after c and then you get the word science that breaks this rule.
It does not, as the rule is about sea sound, and in science is it sigh

Emphasis in words changes the entire dynamic of a sentence in English.
Like in every other language.

The[sa]urus Synonyms are not inter-changeable. Synonyms do not the mean same thing when put into the same sentence.
Synonyms are words that mean the same thing, it does not imply they behave the same way grammatically.

The English language uses a lot of Slang and Idioms
Every language uses a lot of slang and idioms. Slang and idioms are not used much in official language, though. Likewise the phrasal verbs, about which you apparently forgot to post some drivel too.

The door was too close to the table to close are difficult to grasp.
That one is really funny, as "too" and "to" are exactly the same word which became spelled differently because as "too" it had a logical stress and as "to" it hadn't.
close-close as a pair where the final consonant is voiced in the verb is regular phenomenon in English too. Compare bath-bathe, advice-advice, etc.

English language has a lot of regional dialect
Every language has a lot of dialects, many of which are actually another languages which are just not recognized as such.

So English is hard just because it is a language?

Please try to learn another language before reposting some stupid meme picture.

[st33l]

Let it die. In fact, let them all die.
The faster we move towards one universal language, the better.

One language promotes greater communication, which leads to greater understanding - something this planet sorely needs.

[psyquest]

I have studies arabic for close to 20 years now.

Arabic is not going to dissapear anytime soon.

Arabic is the kind of language that is easy to get into and gets complicated as you get more and more knowledge. The vocabulary of classical arabic is extremely rich. As a exemple, in the extreme spectrum a poet (10th century Ahmad ibn Khalawayh) compiled 400 name for a lion...

In every arabic country where arabic is used in the administration, you will find a dialectal arabic and classical arabic for litterature, tv, dealing with the administration and official paper etc.

In most these countries what changes is the dialect, it gets enriched with other language.

In my view, OP, the arabic language is not in danger of disapearing even if english is becoming more and more the language of choice for business.