Reading Arabic 'hard for brain'

BBC News ^ | 9/4/10 | Katie Alcock

[Nachum]

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read. The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort. The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail. (Snip) Both young children and adults call on both hemispheres to help them learn a new task. And using both hemispheres is the right thing to do when reading English or Hebrew -

[Spirochete]

Reading Arabic 'hard for brain'

Well, yes - it looks like writhing snakes.

[TigersEye]

The Black Speech of Mordor kills brain cells.

[MestaMachine]

“Ultimately, they would like to work out how to teach Arabic reading better to children, including helping them to tell letters apart and how to remember which sound goes with which letter.”

Why? Immersion in arabic shuts down the right hemisphere and renders it unusable after a time. It causes permanent brain damage.
Just look at obama. That is why clerics must learn the koran in the original arabic and they are incapable of logic or abstract thinking and have no sense of chronology.

[Myrddin]

It doesn't help that the language is written right to left, always in script and containing letters with initial, medial and finial forms. Comprehensively written Arabic has all the vowel marks included. Colloquial printed Arabic as used in newspapers omits the vowel marks. As in English, a practiced reader can discern the correct meaning even with omissions. "If u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb". A new learner has to contend with learning the syntax and semantics of the spoken language AND a new written script. That's a big wall to climb. Arabic also adds the complexity of being different depending on the gender of the person addressed and implementing this variant by inflection within a word. Asking a female if she understands Arabic is (phonetically) intee tarfee Aribee. Directed to a male it becomes, intave tarfee Aribee. The "r" is always "rolled or flapped".

I find Mandarin Chinese to be much easier to handle than Arabic. At least for the spoken language. The pictographs are a huge learning curve by themselves, but actually independent of the spoken language. The written form is understood by Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, yet their spoken language is vastly different.

[The Comedian]

The Black Speech of Mordor kills brain cells.

+1

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[TigersEye]

Plus one? I was saving that brain cell. :-(

[Myrddin]

The future tense is difficult in Arabic. It principally relies on periphrastic phrases in place of a clearly identifiable verb tense. That forces a broader command of the language to express a future tense. In a poorly educated society, that translates to few expressions with a forward looking aspect.

The Koran is one of the few documents that is written with full vowel marks throughout. The makes it a good text for a beginner to read. Too bad it is loaded with vile content.

I have a 1588 translation of the bible in Welsh. It was the source document that the Welsh used to preserve their language as the English sought to suppress it. They were forced to work 6 days a week, leaving only Sunday for worship and preserving their language. That was the origin of "Sunday School" in the Christian churches. I find it instructive an interesting to compare a King James translation side by side with the 1588 Welsh version that predates it. My next best "side by side" is a Harry Potter book. Even with my feeble command of Welsh I can see differences in wording in the Welsh Harry Potter book.

[Silentgypsy]

Are you missing a brain cell? I’m retired and I don’t use mine any more. Let me know if you need a few.
P.S. No warranties. :)

[I still care]

Sounds like you speak several languages. I’ve never been able to learn anything but English, which has always sort of bothered me.

[gogogodzilla]

The whole lack of vowels as well as the right-to-left writing is also found in Hebrew as well.

And it is a real pain in the butt for newcomers to learn without vowels. Which is why I gave it up and learned Korean.

Which has it’s own problems (like frequently dropping the subject in sentences, so you don’t know who their talking/writing about).

[Tamar1973]

The whole lack of vowels as well as the right-to-left writing is also found in Hebrew as well. And it is a real pain in the butt for newcomers to learn without vowels. Which is why I gave it up and learned Korean. Which has it’s own problems (like frequently dropping the subject in sentences, so you don’t know who their talking/writing about).

I have studied both Korean and Hebrew but I think I know Hebrew a bit better (mainly due to the fact I studied it consistently for a couple of years at a local synagogue). :)

[Azeem]

Arabic is not especially hard, just different. Unlike English, the letters that are written are pronounced. The lack of written short vowels is difficult at first but once you learn the root word and measures system, you can begin to pick out the pattern. There are only a handful of letters not used in the English alphabet. Most of them are just pronounced in the back of the throat.

The colloquial language can be even easier or more difficult, depending on the region. However, English beats any language in the use of colloquial terms.

اللغة العربية ليس صعبة.

[Myrddin]

Korean is a Turkic language. Of course it has a very different lettering
scheme from the latin or cyrillic forms used in Turkey. You might find it
pretty easy to add to you linguistic capability if you have a good command of Korean. A key concept in Turkish is vowel harmony. The first vowel in the word sets rule for the rest. It is very consistent compared to the front/back vowels of Irish Gaelic. Welsh is comparatively simple. You pronounce everything. The letter ‘y’ is a vowel that is pronounced two ways depending on where it is present in a word. In a final syllable it has the long E as in the English word “see”. In initial or medial syllables it has the “schwa” like the leading “u” in “under”

[Allegra]

I speak a little Arabic, but aside from numbers, I can't read it at all. I know what my name looks like from business cards that are English on one side and Arabic on the other and I have a cartouche.

I haven't tried to learn...I guess I could if I felt the need.

But I don't. ;-)

[Defiant]

so you don’t know who their talking/writing about

You've just unwittingly highlighted one of the problems that foreigners have with English. But I still like English best as a method of communication.

[sionnsar]

Sounds like you speak several languages. I’ve never been able to learn anything but English, which has always sort of bothered me.

My wife speaks 13. 20 years ago I was a complete monoglot, my high-school German having withered from disuse.

But on a lark I took a year of Latin -- it was an eye-opener and *really* helped when I started learning Gaelic a few years later, even though the languages are unrelated and *extremely* different.

The biggest difficulty with reading Arabic, as far as I can tell (I am slowly learning the Farsi alphabet which is similar but seemingly a bit simpler) is that letters often come in three forms: initial (beginning a word), medial (within a word) and terminal (end of the word). They're all related, but modified for cursive-like writing.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Nachum.

[child to father in 2050] “Dad, what was ‘Arabic’?”

[grey_whiskers]

The Black Speech of Mordor kills brain cells.

حلقة واحدة للحكم عليهم جميعا عصابة واحدة للعثور عليهم حلقة واحدة لتحقيق كل منها ، وفي ربط لهم الظلام

[grey_whiskers]

My wife speaks 13. 20 years ago I was a complete monoglot, my high-school German having withered from disuse.

But on a lark I took a year of Latin -- it was an eye-opener and *really* helped when I started learning Gaelic a few years later, even though the languages are unrelated and *extremely* different.

I am *DEEPLY* respectful and jealous.

(Congrats to you for landing such a fine woman...)

Cheers!