A Conversation for Arabic

Writing Workshop: A711208 - Arabic

Post 1

PseudoRandom

Entry: Arabic - A711208
Author: PseudoRandom - U191240

The Arabic language


A711208 - Arabic

Post 2

Monsignore Pizzafunghi Bosselese

Just one question: WHY???










Why on Earth did you put this one into the Writing Workshop? For all I can say, it's *finished* and ready to go into the Guide. There's one thing left for me to do. I'm going to have the whole Workshop thing removed from the face of this planed.


A711208 - Arabic

Post 3

PseudoRandom

Suits me - thanks! I'll submit it soon.


A711208 - Arabic

Post 4

Gnomon - time to move on

This is an excellent entry and will have no problems in Peer Review. Before you submit it, you might like to tidy it slightly:

A few headings such as "Dialects", "Features of the Language" and "Literature" will make it look much nicer. If you know how to do them in GuideML, that's great. If not, just put them on separate lines with a blank line before and after them.

It needs a footnote to say what the Kaaba is.

The following sentence is badly phrased:

"For the former, it - the 'Udhari school especially, as seen in such romances as Kalilah wa Dimnah - is said to have been the first to make romance in the strict sense (courtly love, chivalry, lots of sighs and pure devotion to unattainable beloveds) a literary trope, whence it came to Europe via Spain and the troubadours of Provence."

For a start, you can't use "former" and "latter" when referring to a list of three things. Secondly, it is just too long and a slow reader will have lost track by the time they get to "a literary trope". Finally, the word trope is not common in English, so it probably needs a footnote. Using a different word might help. It would be better to break this sentence up into two or three smaller sentences.

You're not supposed to say "I" or "me" in Edited Entries, so instead of "I shouldn't really even attempt..." say "it is difficult to even attempt...".

Some typos and grammar points:

widely spoken --> widely-spoken
Hebrew and Aramaic and Akkadian --> Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian
more than series --> more than a series

Well done!


A711208 - Arabic

Post 5

Monsignore Pizzafunghi Bosselese

Hey Gnomon, please leave some comments for Peer Review! If there's nothing left to comment then the PR thread might sink down immediately smiley - winkeye


A711208 - Arabic

Post 6

PseudoRandom

Thanks for the suggestions! Most of them I just fixed.


A711208 - Arabic

Post 7

Monsignore Pizzafunghi Bosselese

Fine! smiley - biggrin

May I suggest you remove this thread from the NotWorkshop (see the discussion here: F47999?thread=180625) and re-post it to Peer Review? As I said before, putting a *perfect* entry to PR runs the danger of it sinking down immediately, and it'll *have to* stay there for at least a week before a Scout may pick it.


A711208 - Arabic

Post 8

Researcher 188007

Hi Pseudo Random,

As I said (er, on the 'Very Good' thread after the entry) I have some language-related points I'd like to make. (Don't worry, Sir Bossell, I can probably come up with one or two more for PR)

smiley - star Mention Arabic is one of the six official UN languages.
smiley - star Arabic isn't that closely related to Hebrew or some of the others here - Ethiopic in particular IIRC. Sorry to be picky.
smiley - star (aside) Linguistics is terrible for trotting out the same old examples again. You'll find 'kataba' in any linguistic text on Arabic.
smiley - star American or Continental handwriting. Explain?
smiley - star You could mention how much of the poetic & rhetorical force of the Koran is lost in translation.
smiley - star Arab Spain > Moorish Spain.

Hope this helps,
Jack


A711208 - Arabic

Post 9

PseudoRandom

Good point about the UN languages and the Koran! And yes, kataba is way too boringly standard - but hey, it was the first thing that came to mind smiley - smiley Saying Moorish Spain is perhaps fairer to its large non-Arab population, but in this context surely Arab Spain is more self-explanatory.

However, I'm going to have to argue with you about Hebrew and Ethiopic; my ongoing learning of Hebrew has been made vastly easier by the fact that most of the commonest words are cognate (more so, I would guess offhand, than English and German.) To take the standard example, every word in the first sentence of Genesis has an Arabic cognate:

Hebrew:
bere'shiit bara' 'eloohiim 'et hash-shamayim w'et-ha-eretz

Arabic:
bi-r-ri'asi bara'a allaahu as-samaawaati w-al-arDa

('et doesn't translate here, but 'iyyaa- is its Arabic cognate.)

I don't speak Geez, sadly, but the main current debate in classification of Semitic languages is on whether to group Arabic with South Semitic (Geez, Tigre, Tigrinya, Amharic, and the South Arabian languages such as Mehri and Soqotri) on the basis of shared grammatical features such as internal plurals, or with Northwest Semitic (Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.), so it can't be that distant. Certainly the few samples I've seen of it have been pretty easy to puzzle out using just Arabic. I mean, it even still retains two out of the three proto-Semitic cases! The Semitic languages are at least as similar to each other as, say, the Germanic languages or the Romance languages, despite the longer timescales involved.


A711208 - Arabic

Post 10

FABT - new venture A815654 Angel spoiler page

Well *I* think think it's ready for peer review......


A711208 - Arabic

Post 11

Researcher 188007

I may have looked before I leapt there. I my memory I had Amharic down as a Cushitic language, which it isn't, despite the influence Oromo has had on it (I looked that bit up!)

Fair comment. The triconsonantal structure has been pretty impermeable through the centuries, and though Modern Hebrew shows European syntactic influence, the words are still similar to Arabic. In fact, words from Arabic were borrowed during Hebrew's resuscitation - case closed really. Anyway, that's all by the by - it's definitely ready for peer review. smiley - smiley


A711208 - Arabic

Post 12

PseudoRandom

um, see my comment on Dellys - how do i go about putting it up for peer review if no review button is available for the entry?


A711208 - Arabic

Post 13

Gnomon - time to move on

I think you have to withdraw it from Writing Workshop first, since the entry can't be in two review forums at the same time. At the top of this page you should see the message "This is the Conversation Forum for Writing Workshop". Click on Writing Workshop. At the bottom of the page, you should see a list of entries in the Writing Workshop, with your one somewhere near the top. You should see the word "Remove" beside your entry. Click on this. Now you will be able to Submit the entry to Peer Review.


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