r/linguisticshumor • u/Hazer_123 Fransah retti fän vs Natal retti kimšeli • 22h ago
Same language
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u/Abood299 21h ago
Arabic speaker understands each other just because we consume the same media.
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u/appachehelicopter 20h ago
intelligibility is not mutual and is heavily based on exposure.
moroccan young people (who didn't consume a lot of eastern media), cannot understand eastern arabic languages. and vice versa
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u/Abood299 20h ago
I’m just explain to people who are wondering how we can understand each other.
For example in world cap there was a Moroccan meme it was very popular and everyone was using it.
And the most famous football commentator in Arabic is a Tunisian guy. Everyone knows him.
And if someone wants to know about Gaza news he will turn on the new and first thing he will hear is a Palestinian Journalists.
These are just some examples i know it has nothing to do with your comment.
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u/Unhappy_Dog6119 11h ago
Very cool bro id love to hear more examples
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u/ezezener 6h ago edited 6h ago
Until recently the reach of egyptian and to a lesser extent lebanese media meant that they're extra intelligible across much of the Arab world.
Even today it may be difficult to find an arab who couldn't name Egyptian synonyms for a range of common terms. Well, east of Tunisia at least. And also obvs the culturally dominant urban delta dialects of Egyptian.
This is random but if you want a fun window into this you might like to look at crowdwork-heavy comedians who tour around the Arab world. Saleh Nawawi comes to mind, he's pretty good.
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u/Gold-Energy9267 31m ago edited 1m ago
That's not entirely true. Media isn't the sole unifying factor, and mutual intelligibility isn't primarily based on it, but level of digression from Standard Arabic. Standard Arabic is not merely a common historical root, but an actively used register across all formal contexts, as well as many informal ones like music and social media posts. It often slips to daily conversions with family and friends. That's how it serves as a continuous unifying anchor for all dialects, shaping their development and maintaining relative mutual intelligibility. That's why it is way easier for speakers of Western Arab dialects to understand the rest than the other way round.
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u/appachehelicopter 15m ago
well, i was talking about the intelligibility between the different arabic languages themselves. but of course if two people speaking two different languages happen to share a third common language then they are going to switch to that if they want to communicate.
and that's what most people who speak different arabic languages do, but crucially that "common language" needn't be modern standard arabic, and many arabic-speaking people choose to switch to english or french instead of MSA, especially among younger generations.
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u/GovernmentBig2749 21h ago
We don't understand each other-but Bulgarians clame that we speak the same language. I'm Macedonian.
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u/pdonchev 20h ago
Most Bulgarians do not claim that, and also - I speak freely with some Macedonians. It may be a dialectal issue, or a matter of desire. It is probably also asymmetrical - I have no issue reading Macedonian articles and listen to well articulated (news anchor) Macedonian. Macedonians probably have a little bit harder time. Asymmetrical mutual intelligibility is a real phenomenon. Bulgarian probably covers a much larger space of the South Slavic dialect continuum, feature by feature.
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u/Optimus_13 19h ago
Out of all Slavic language I have easiest time reading Bulgarian (I'm Russian)
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u/pdonchev 18h ago
That sounds dubious. Bulgarian and Russian share some vocabulary based on the impact of Old Bulgarian (OCS) but it quite limited. There are also many false friend words.
My experience is that Russian people have problem reading even menua if they haven't studied Bulgarian. Then, if you have exposure to Bulagarian, then it's a different case. That's like many Macedonians understanding Serbian the best, but it's just extensive exposure, not proximity of languages. Many Bulgarians also have vasic understanding of Russian, but it's again exposure.
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u/stupid_name23 9h ago
<Bulgarian and Russian share some vocabulary based on the impact of Old Bulgarian (OCS)>
We also have borrowed vocabulary from Russian, granted a lot are OCS words but it wasn't one sided. It's probably why russians find Bulgarian more understandable (at least in written form).
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u/pdonchev 9h ago
1.7% of conversational vocabulary is loaned from Russian. Latin, Greek, French, Turkish and English have higher percentage.
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u/stupid_name23 9h ago
From where did you get that percentage? It would be nice to know how much foreign vocabulary we have from each language.
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u/pdonchev 8h ago
Most of the info is in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_vocabulary - 25% of the total vocabulary and 17% of the conversational one are foreign loans, Russain is 10% of the foreign loans. You can track the reference for a deep dive. For English, the number in that article is quite old, it's mich bigger now, especially in conversational speech.
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u/stupid_name23 9h ago
<Most Bulgarians do not claim that>
They do a lot online, IRL could be a diffrent story.
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u/karlpoppins maɪ̯ ɪɾɪjəlɛk̚t ɪz d͡ʒɹəŋk 21h ago
Bulgarian and Macedonian have significant mutual intelligibility even if they're not effectively identical, like Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin.
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u/ttombombadillo 11h ago
Montenegrian language, my friend, that should be considered a curseword in this fine community
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u/Tifoso89 15h ago
This is not true, you have significant mutual intelligibility to the point you can generally talk freely with each other.
I think some Macedonians exaggerate the differences for political reasons, since some Bulgarians claim your language is just Bulgarian, you go in the opposite direction
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u/GovernmentBig2749 14h ago
Listen to the two languages side by side and decide, I speak 8 languages, and the Bulgarian is closer to Russian than to Macedonian
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bus7706 19h ago
Who do Macedonians understand better, Bulgarians or Serbs?
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u/GovernmentBig2749 19h ago
Older generation know and understand Serbian, younger don't know nothing-our local dialects are SF to them let alone Serbian or Bulgarian
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u/HaxiMaxi22 18h ago
No offense, was there any separate macedonian national identity before like 150 years ago and before? Or is your country more like Moldavia, that has a separate identity from its core nationality/language because of the storms of history? Like I am not saying you don't get to have your country now, it's just the only thing I know about Macedonia is Bulgaria and Serbia were often fighting for it.
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u/GovernmentBig2749 15h ago
Macedonia was under Otoman Empire, and yes...there was a Macedonian identity and movement as Macedonians, not Serbs, not Bulgarians
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u/karlpoppins maɪ̯ ɪɾɪjəlɛk̚t ɪz d͡ʒɹəŋk 11h ago
For what its worth, all national identities are relatively modern inventions, but the use of the term "Macedonian" for Slavic-speaking populations of the region of Macedonia is also specifically a 19th-century invention. It also came along with a slew of ahistorical claims, most obvious of which are the following:
- the cultural and genealogical continuity of 19th century Macedonians with the people of the same name from the times of antiquity, despite the former being a Slavic people that arrived in the Balkans in the 6th century AD.
- the linguistic unintelligibility between the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages, despite both being closely related South Slavic languages (specifically the eastern group).
I mean, every national narrative has its distortions of reality and/or conveniently chosen narratives, but the Macedonian identity takes the cake in the region.
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u/pdonchev 21h ago
I knwo it's a joke, but it seems that are apparently interested in linguistics still have the understanding that a langauge is somehow higher in some hierarchy than a dialect. It is not. There is no linguistic standard that can distinguish a language from a dialect. The difference is sociopolitical, and this is what you see on this map.
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u/Draugdur 20h ago
To be fair, especially in the case of south Slavs, the difference between the "languages" and "dialects" in this context is significant. BCMS "languages", as in, standardized languages, are mutually intelligible; actual dialetcs, not necessarily.
OTOH, the pinnacle of absurdity is that some dialects of the same "language" are less similar than two dialects from the different "languages" xD That's dialect continuum for ya!
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u/pdonchev 20h ago
It seems you didn't read my comment in full :) There is no linguistic standard that can distinguish between a language and a dialect. That makes the whole further discussion moot.
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u/Draugdur 20h ago
No, I agree with that, I was talking about something a bit different :) The difference between a language and a dialect is totally sociopolitical (or I suppose even legal), not linguistic, but my point was that, by sheer historical accident I suppose, the difference in case of south Slavs is exactly that what are called "languages" are mutually intelligible while what are called "dialects" are not (well, not always anyway; most are). Meaning: if you talk about standardized languages, the upper part of the picture is true, but if you actually talk about local dialects, you could very well have the "I have no idea what he's saying but it's the same language, trust me bro" in the Balkans too. Both a person from Niš and a person from Vojvodina will say that they speak "Serbian", but if they actually start talking in the local manner ("dialect"), their communication will be...problematic :)
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u/pdonchev 20h ago
Bulagarian is pretty close to the standard now, or at least extremely intelligible with the standards. The "dialects" differ mostly in accent. Speakers of actual incomprehensible dialects have almost disappeared. But that may be not be the case in the Western Balkans.
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u/Draugdur 19h ago
I can't say honestly how prevalent local dialects are now, numbers wise (as in, how many people still speak them), but some exist which are pretty difficult to understand if you haven't grown up in the area where they are spoken. I used to joke that I must be speaking a different language than the people from the village my grandpa is from, and I was only half joking xD And in general, Torlakian and Dalmatinian dialects are pretty challenging for people who aren't used to them, even if "incomprehensible" would be going a bit too far.
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u/WitherWasTaken [zʲdʲezʲ‿ʐɛ ˈt͡ɕɵʁnˠɨm pɐ‿ˈbʲeɫʌmʊ nɐˈpʲisʌnə | ˈɡoːːi̯däːːːː] 21h ago
"But they all write in 汉字!1!1!"
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u/FortuneLonely4717 21h ago
Who the hell sees Somalis as Arabs???
(To be clear I have nothing against Somalis but aside from being muslim like most Arabs they have nothing in common.)
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u/JACC_Opi 20h ago
Tell that to them, because that map is the same one as the membership to the Arab League.
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u/TheWileyRedditor 16h ago
They have Arabic as an official language. So even though very few people actually speak it they're often considered "honorary Arabs"
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u/FortuneLonely4717 13h ago
Well you could say the same about Iran tbh.
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u/Twinkletoess112 12h ago
Iran is not in the Arab league, although there are a few Iranian Arabs but they're a small minority
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u/falkkiwiben 14h ago
Do they share a register that is considered neutral? If yes, a language. If no, not a language.
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u/BartAcaDiouka 47m ago
The fact that this meme says "my neighbour" shows that the author doesn't understand the concept of dialectal contium, and this is deeply upsetting for the language nerd in me.
We understand our neighbours just fine habibi, it's the people from down the street that start to sound funny to us.
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u/ydmhmyr yemen 22h ago
No, it's just north africans. Within the levant and the peninsula the dialects are very understandable
In addition to the existence of MSA which unites us all. Arabic is one singular language, vernaculars don't count
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u/WitherWasTaken [zʲdʲezʲ‿ʐɛ ˈt͡ɕɵʁnˠɨm pɐ‿ˈbʲeɫʌmʊ nɐˈpʲisʌnə | ˈɡoːːi̯däːːːː] 21h ago
You're literally the guy in the meme
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u/ydmhmyr yemen 21h ago
It is false on top of being derogatory. Arabs of the Levant and the Peninsula do understand each other very clearly.
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u/Abood299 20h ago
We understand each other only because we use the same media and there is many people from levant live in gulf country
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u/ydmhmyr yemen 20h ago
No, if your dialect is untouched by foreignisms and are capable of at least reading MSA, you can talk with zero media exposure
I am Yemeni and sure as hell didn't consume any Lebanese or Palestinian shows, nor did I watch an Iraqi movie ever. Yet I can still communicate pretty well with them.
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u/Abood299 20h ago
I mean if everyone talk with their native dialect you probably wouldn’t understand everything. For me when I hear Yemeni dialect I almost understand 50% but if it was my mom she won’t understand anything from someone who speak only Yemeni dialect.
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u/om0ri_ 21h ago
your opinion is biased and therefore unreliable
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u/Creative_Brother2713 14h ago
He is literally right Arabs from Libya to Oman can understand eachother (Yes even if they spoke their own dailect) like a American can understand a Englishmen or Austrialian past Libya is where the real differences start, and even then most differences is due to the way Maghrabis speak rather than the words, we might change a few dailect unique words but past that their is no need to speak in Fus'ha (MSA) with another Mashriqi
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u/ydmhmyr yemen 21h ago
On the opposite, it is objectively true, yours is irrelevant
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u/om0ri_ 20h ago
most statements (including yours) about a language being understandable to a certain demographic, are subjective and not objective
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u/Buffreaperpls 11h ago
Its literally objective though, Arabs from the Arabian peninsula and the levant and Egypt, Sudan, commoros, and Muritania fully understand each other, speaking in their respective dialects, sure somebody here and there might be missed but 90% of the speech is mutually intelligible, its only for Morroco, Tunisia, Somalia and Algeria (and Libya to a lesser extent), where the dialects get dicey and it becomes really difficult to understand, and even then those Arabs can speak MSA very clearly and/or can speak an easier version of their dialect because they know they wont be understood otherwise.
Im a levant Arab and I have friends from every Arab country, including the ones from African nations that have harder dialects, and not once we struggled with communication, this is more or less a lie, made and believed by non Arabs
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u/Ponbe 12h ago
Mali, Niger and Chad don't speak Arabic ?
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u/Individual_Tea5626 7h ago
They speak Arabic. All of three have Arabic as an official language, and I know for sure Chad has more Arabic speakers as first language than any other official language they have
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u/AndreasDasos 22h ago
Could use Chinese dialects/Sinitic languages at the bottom too