Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 24

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 24

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)- how prevalent is it?

I know that MSA is the language of educated people in Middle East and North Africa. Most foreigners are encourage to learn MSA if they want to learn Arabic. I am curious as to what percentage of the population in those countries could actually speak or understand MSA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.100.190.62 (talk) 05:07, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's a completely anecdotal remark: When I was studying (Modern Standard) Arabic some nine years ago, I had a friend in my class from Tunisia. He spoke Tunisian Arabic fluently as his mother tongue. He told me that he could watch the soap operas and cartoons on Tunisian television, but he could barely understand a word of what the news anchors were saying — the latter were speaking Modern Standard Arabic. Gabbe (talk) 07:15, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

As is periodically proved on this reference desk, questions about mutual intelligibility of languages and dialects are pretty much restricted to anecdotal evidence, and people will argue vehemently and honestly completely different positions. That said, here's my anecdotal evidence: I work at a college in Oman. Educated Omanis have no problems understanding something like Al-Jazeera or Egyptian soaps, or reading MSA. There are people from other Arabic countries (Tunisians, Lebanese, Sudanese) working at the college, who as far as I can tell have no problems communicating with the Omanis. (I just asked one of my colleagues - "No problem understanding, just different accent". He said that even less educated Omanis would have no problems understanding these things). Henry^Flower 08:51, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

No one in the Arab world (educated or not) speaks MSA as an everyday language. Most people, especially the educated ones, will be able to understand it (per media exposure). Some educated people will be able to produce it (in speeches or other formal situations), but it is definitely not true for everyone and there will be a varying amount of dialect admixture. Here is my anecdote: On a visit to the University of Marrakesh, one Moroccan professor could speak freely in perfect MSA, even producing the correct case endings (which have disappeared from the spoken language centuries ago and are often omitted even in MSA). Another professor started an lecture in MSA, but obviously had great trouble with it, and within five minutes he had switched to Moroccan Arabic. --BishkekRocks (talk) 15:38, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

The word-final short vowel endings (noun case, verb mood, etc.), known as i'rab, are notorious because they're theoretically necessary for fully Classically-correct Arabic, but they're rarely written in MSA texts, and only a very small minority of people could produce correct i'rab vowels in fluent spontaneous speech. Moroccan vernacular Arabic has some of the least mutual intelligibility with other vernaculars of any major Arabic dialect... AnonMoos (talk) 22:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm reminded of one of Idries Shah's anecdotes, recounted in his book Darkest England - "At the end of a long tirade, when I was reproaching an official for negligence, he took my hand in his and murmured, to cries of assent from the crowd, "Beautiful Arabic, but I am afraid that I did not understand a word."" DuncanHill (talk) 11:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Spanish conjugation oddity

Hello there. I study Spanish and in certain expressions I notice there is not absolute agreement, but a kind of notional agreement (as some English speakers say, "the team are all excited"): for example, often one says todos compartimos la responsibilidad de proteger el medio ambiente; even though todos is technically a "they", compartir is conjugated in the first person plural ("we"), to include the speaker. Is it correct to say that it is used the same as in English notional agreement? That is to say, if for some reason I wanted to refer to myself in the third person in Spanish (assume my name is Jean), would I say "Jean llamo a su madre" rather than "Jean llama a su madre"? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 21:07, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK "todos" just means "all" or maybe "everybody". Whether it is "us all", "them all" or whatever you can see in the conjugation of the verb. And since in your example it is the first person plural "todos" here means "all of us".--Zoppp (talk) 21:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Right. As Zoppp says, the adjective todos agrees with the idea nosotros (us), but since Spanish is a pro-drop language, nosotros isn't realized in the sentence. You can also say sentences like Los trabajadores de esta empresa tenemos que respetar al jefe meaning "(We) the workers of this business have to respect the boss," even though the "we" (nosotros) doesn't appear in the sentence. In the latter case, it's like an appositive construction. I don't think it's quite the same mechanism, in any case, as collective agreement in English "The team is/are playing well in this match." As for the last part of your question, I don't think this construction works with singular subjects (at least I can't think of one). For instance, when you call someone on the phone and identify yourself, you say "Te habla Juan" (This is John speaking). Note the agreement.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

72.128.95.0 -- I think most or all languages with distinctive 1st-person plural verb forms would behave that way. Why is todos greatly different from otros in nosotros? -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's not unusual for pro-drop languages to allow an adjective to modify the suppressed subject pronoun. A famous example from Latin is morituri te salutamus "we who are about to die salute you". —Angr (talk) 10:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: from our article, I see that the 1st person plural version is attested only in Greek (χαῖρε, αὐτοκράτορ· οἱ ἀπολούμενοί σε ἀσπαζόμεθα), but "morituri te salutamus" is still grammatical Latin even if it isn't a genuine quote. —Angr (talk) 10:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

AnonMoos: "most or all languages with distinctive 1st-person plural verb forms": certainly not "all" - French has distinctive 1-pl forms but requires an explicit subject. Angr's "pro-drop language" is the appropriate clss. --ColinFine (talk) 17:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if subject pronouns are not ordinarily omitted, what 72.128.95.0 would call "third person" words are still allowed to be in apposition with a non-third pronoun... AnonMoos (talk) 22:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I can see

Back in the day at grammar school when I was learning English, there used to be a simple construction to avoid the difficult existential "there is/are" phrases which require plural, namely: "I can see three cats". This might be a common first step to learn new words in English: you look at the pictures in a book and tell the teacher what you can see. I was wondering why the clause needed the modal verb, why couldn't you just say "I see three cats." After a while, when do's and don'ts came along, the initial problem was forgotten. Now as this question was put to me by a person who is just starting to learn English, I found myself without an answer. Would you please explain why "I can see" is more idiomatic than the plain "I see"? If Jack 'can see' three cows in the field and Jill 'sees' only two, what is the difference? Try to use a vocabulary of - say - 50 words... (smile) --Pxos (talk) 22:09, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I can only guess it's because modal verbs like can don't inflect in the 3rd person singular present the way other verbs do. "I see three cats" vs. "Jill sees three cats" requires more thinking on the part of the learner than "I can see three cats" vs. "Jill can see three cats". —Angr (talk) 23:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Marvellous! Couldn't see that, but now it is obvious. Luckily English at the very basic level is such a simple language that you can advance great lengths by adding the "s" in appropriate places! Thanks for the answer, now I can explain the facts of life to the person. --Pxos (talk) 00:41, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Post scriptum: the answer might be regarded as wrong, inadequate and/or beside the point, but at least I have now a few million English-speaking people to back me up! (grin) --Pxos (talk) 00:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating issues arise at this desk.

This is a supplementary question. To me, "I see three cats" means the same as "I can see three cats". However, "I chase cats" and "I can chase cats" have quite different meanings. The first, that I actually do chase cats; the second, that I'm capable of chasing cats whether or not I actually do so. Is this a real difference or is it all in my head? --Wanderer57 (talk) 01:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The basics of the question lies in the untranslability (is this a word?) of languages. The supplementary question is to the point: in Finnish, the phrase "I see" is equivalent to the sentences "I see" and "I can see" in English, but the Finnish version of "I can see" is rather an exception; "I can see three cats" really translates as 'I am capable of seeing the three but the other two are obscured by the trees', or my eyesight is so poor that I can see only three cats but Jill can see all five of them. So the nine-year old is really asking why is there a necessity to use the word "can" as if she couldn't see properly. :) --Pxos (talk) 02:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Not "untranslability", but I believe "untranslatability" is a valid word. Paradoxically Ironically, some translators may encounter the untranslatability of the word "untranslatability", as a single word. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Side-notes that may or may not be relevant: (1) For many verbs, it's actually relatively unusual to use the simple present for its simplest meaning in spoken English. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying "I eat" or "I sing" or "I walk", but for the simple act it's usually more colloquial to use the present progressive, "I'm eating", "I'm singing" or "I'm walking". The simple present in these cases usually carries some other connotation: e.g. "I eat" (all the time), or "I eat" (a great deal) or "I sing" (rather than dance) or "I walk" (customarily, instead of driving). (2) When I was taking the beginning of first-year French, similar short-cuts were taken, such as always using the perfect tense (j'ai écrit) in place of other pasts such as the imperfect (j'écrivais) or using "going to..." (aller) plus the infinitive (je vais écrire) in place of the simple future (j'écrirai). —— Shakescene (talk) 02:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

An interesting question. Angr's answer is cunning, but I think not the whole answer - it explains why the formulation is useful for learners, but not why it's more idiomatic for native speakers (and I think it is). Other verbs of perception are the same ("I can hear music"; "I can smell coffee"). I suspect that the fundamental reason ties in with Shakescene's point about present simple and continuous in that verbs of perception are generally state verbs, which are not usually used in the continuous. On the other hand, the "can" formulation is not used with all state verbs (not "I can have a wife"). So in summary I'd say it's used for verbs of perception, but I don't know why. :) Henry^Flower 05:40, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Even more interesting (and another point for the "purely idiomatic usage" arguement) is that in most cases, the words "can" and "could" are interchangable with little change in meaning. "I can have a wife" is almost identical in meaning to "I could have a wife"; whereas "I can see my wife" does NOT mean the same as "I could see my wife". --Jayron32 05:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

"I shall see a wife" does not strike less intimidating than 'I could have a wife?' Ends meet, hopefully. --Pxos (talk) 06:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, consider some of the other auxiliary verbs and conditional moods:

• I should see a wife (sounds like "I should see a doctor")
• I may see a wife
• I might see a wife
• I will see a wife
• I would see a wife (... if only...)
• I must see a wife
• I ought to see a wife

and compound forms such as

• Would that I could see a wife
• Would that I might see a wife
• Could I but see a wife

;-) —— Shakescene (talk) 06:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

And the nine-year old who would but cannot see the cats is left with a must and a should. Poor thing. :) --Pxos (talk) 08:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Can't find the woulds for the sees? —— Shakescene (talk) 09:44, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it comes down to pragmatics, and the question of whether the people in the conversation are all considered to have the same access to information. Taking examples from another sense, "I can hear voices" means there are people talking that anyone with normal acuity of hearing could hear, and it expects either agreement or disagreement based on whether other people detect the noise. "I hear voices" means "voices in my head that aren't there" (similar is "I see spots"). "I can hear my wife shout from the bottom of the garden" might be a statement about the the loudness of one's wife, and doesn't necessarily mean she is shouting now, although depending on context it may. --Colapeninsula (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Colapeninsula: for me the distinction you are making doesn't work, or not completely. I agree that I would be unlikely to say "I can hear voices" for voices in my head; but both are possible for me when hearing real voices, the difference being that "I hear voices" is more formal, "I can hear voices" more colloquial. --ColinFine (talk) 17:30, 26 April 2011 (UTC)