Talk:Arabic language

greek cypriot? what the hell.

arabic has no influence on greek cypriot what so ever. greek cypriot is a kinde of greek slang. if ever turkish cypriot has influences of arabic. get it right.

Topic-Comment Structure in Arabic

99.110.86.55 (talk) 08:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Many of the articles on Arabic have mentioned a shift from VSO word order in Classical Arabic to SVO word order in Modern Standard Arabic and the modern Arabic dialects. However many prominent linguists specializing in Arabic strongly disagree with this assertion. Their explanation is that the apparent shift from VSO word order to SVO word order is actually the result of topic-comment structure, which is found in all varieties of Arabic, and the different types of discourses that are available and analyzed in historical texts versus modern texts and speech. For example, Dr. Kristen Brustad's "The Syntax of Spoken Arabic: A Comparative Study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian and Kuwaiti Dialects", Georgetown Univ. Press, 2000, states "However, no frequency studies of modern Arabic have yet been undertaken to either support or challenge this assumption. Both VSO and SVO are common enough in all varieties of Arabic to be considered "basic;" a thorough study of word order typology in all varieties and registers of Arabic would be necessary to show if or how the basic typologies of Arabic have changed over time. Until such a study is conducted, the discussion must remain limited to indirect evidence.” Dr Brustad proceeds to present evidence that VSO remains a basic word order in the modern Arabic dialects and that fronting of nouns (subjects and objects) in all varieties of Arabic is best explained by a topic-comment structure of a topic-prominent sentence structure rather than the contrasting the subject-prominent sentence structure of the VSO word order.

Many others have also suggested similar analyses and this may even be becoming the more-accepted view among linguists specializing in Arabic. Although the topic-comment structure in all Arabic varieties is widely recognized, the articles on Arabic only mention VSO vs. SVO and increased usage subject initial sentences in MSA and dialects. It would be beneficial if someone could please add information about the topic-comment sentence structure in Arabic. (The article on Tuareg Languages mentions the option for the topic-comment sentence structure in those languages/dialects that may be a useful example that could be expanded.)

In reality, the word order in Arabic doesn't matter, it's just a recent habit in modern Arabic speakers to use VSO, it is the basic form without side-meaning so the Arabs' mediocre speakers use it all the time as a method instead of declination to distinguish between the subject and the object because of their novice skills in declination, because of that habit, some of them think that it is a syntactic rule. In some dialects we find SVO like Tunisian. The word order is a syntactic rule only in dialectical/colloquial, but in literal/formal Arabic it is for ordering words by importance, or by knowledge of the listener. 1.they speak their dialects in everyday talk but not formal Arabic (there is no grammatical case in dialects) 2.they usually neglect the case declination when speaking formal Arabic thus they don't distinguish between genitive, nominative and accusative anymore and forgot the rules of Arabic grammar studied in primary school!

for example, to say in Arabic "the boy broke the glass": kesera'lweledu'zzujeje (SVO): emphasis to the verb ie what is important is that something is broken, ezzujeje kesera'lweledu (OVS): emphasis to the object ie what is important is that it is the glass that broke and not something else, elweledu kesera'zzujeje (SVO) emphasis to the subject so that the boy did the action and not another person

to say "Zaid gave a book to Salih": aata Zaidun Salihan kiteben (VSO1O2): the listener does not know anything until he hears this phrase; kiteben aata Zaidun Salihan (O2VSO1): the listener knows that Zaid gave something to Salih but does not know what it is so we put what he doesn't know first; Salihan aata Zaidun kiteben (O1VSO2): the listener knows that Zaid gave a book to someone but do not know who

So the Arabic is unclassifiable with that word order classification --A.ouerfelli (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Section on Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic

I noticed that someone had wrapped parentheses around the heading for the section on Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic. This had the effect of moving the entire section into the lede. I removed the parens and allowed the section to fall back down to the main article, because the lede already mentions Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic (in the first sentence, as another commenter astutely noted). I think the article flows better now. Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 15:10, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The author says Arabic borrowed faruk "savior" from Aramaic which is true. It is not true that other derivatives in Arabic happenned via the process, folk etymology after borrowing. The root f.r.k is Semitic, and Arabic employs the root in many words like farq "difference", mufaraqah "coincidence", tafriq "dispersal", furqah "feeling nostalgic", fariq "team" firqah "unit" and other words. Why the autor says that all the words I listed were brought by the influence of folk etymology is quite puzzling. This mistake harms the overall integrity of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.45.20.176 (talk) 16:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Sudanes arabic

According to Charles A. Ferguson,the following are some of the characteristic features of the 'koine' that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula the is some features aren't applied to Sudanese Arabic :

• Change of a to i in many affixes
• Conversion of separate words lī "to me", laka "to you", etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes
• changes in the cardinal number system, e.g., ḫamsat ʾayyām → ḫams tiyyām (it's ḫamsat ʾayyām in sundaes Arabic)

beside some of these feature are applied to modern dialects inside the Arabian peninsula like:

• emphatic ṭ in the numbers 13-19
• and there is some lexical items like ʾēš (in Yamen)

also I don't know about ɮ sound in Arabic. I am Sudanese born in Saudi Arabia.

Sudanes arabic

According to Charles A. Ferguson,the following are some of the characteristic features of the 'koine' that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula there is some features aren't applied to Sudanese Arabic :

• Change of a to i in many affixes
• Conversion of separate words lī "to me", laka "to you", etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes
• changes in the cardinal number system, e.g., ḫamsat ʾayyām → ḫams tiyyām (it's ḫamsat ʾayyām in sundaes Arabic)

beside some of these feature are applied to modern dialects inside the Arabian peninsula like:

• emphatic ṭ in the numbers 13-19
• and there is some lexical items like ʾēš (in Yamen)

also I don't know about ɮ sound in Arabic. I am Sudanese born in Saudi Arabia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abudreas (talk • contribs) 16:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)