Should I learn Arabic or Farsi? Just for fun

*sigh*
And this is why I'm frustrated with the state of awareness about these things. Who told you that it is? Who is going around just fucking making it up that it is, and why would you believe it? Just because there isn't a government using it as the official language? I guess all the people in India speak "Indian" too then.

The parts of Syria speaking it are a fraction of all the speakers.

Aramaic is spoken by Jews from Kurdistan and Persian Azerbaijan, by some of the Mandaeans from around the Persian Gulf, by Christians from Kurdistan and Persian Azerbaijan, from around "Tur Abdin" in Turkey, from around Maaloula near Damascus, and from some colonies around the Caucasus, and by Muslims from around Maaloula. There is a large diaspora from all of these groups, particularly the Jewish speakers and Christians from the far southeast of Turkey.

The fact that I. S. I. S. just burned down one of the largest towns speaking it, Qaraqosh, a few years ago, and which had tens of thousands of residents prior to the attack, and there are still people who have never heard a sentence of it just go "uh, isn't it a dead language?" speaks volumes. You probably don't know Arabic isn't even the dominant language of the town's region either, but Kurdish.

For the record, I was sort of kidding about him learning it because - and again I can't avoid the topic of it not being dead because the facts just fly in the statement's face by themselves - so far from being dead, it has numerous spoken dialects. And if you're guessing by now that I am a speaker, you're correct.

No. See my post just now. There are actually several written forms used that way, known as Syriac, Targumic, Mandean, etc. and books in them were spread from Beijing to Paris in the Middle Ages.

Is it your first language tho? A dead language isnt a language which isnt spoken anymore. It is a language without any native speaker like latin or pre-israel hebrew

Farsi. If you learn it you learn a language spoken in at least one country.
If you try and learn arabic you in fact learn an irrelevant language cause every single arab country (more than 20) speaks a different dialect and when I say different it actually means you have to learn it.

But if you wanna have fun just choose what you like. Nowing arabic you know more than half of farsi in fact.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_folk/pop_music

Search any of these names on YouTube. Click on one of the songs with a million or more views from third-world folks and tell me if the music you hear sounds like it was made by a scholar, priest or historian who is speaking a dead language.

Man I just asked a simple question with either yes or no as an answer.There were also many jewish and yiddish folk songs yet it remainrd a dead language. I mean whether a language is dead or not depends whether there are native speakers or not. Its just that simple.

What do you need? A letter of certification? Not being dead is what made Aramaic different from Hebrew, Phoenician, and Akkadian which it replaced. Actually Hebrew is currently threatening Judeo-Aramaic with extinction. I listed all those groups that speak it as a native or first language. It would've been longer if I meant any groups that routinely teach and learn it.

wow I really want more like this one
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/Assyriananthem.ogg

this

Farsi.

Farsi is much easier and doesn't have fucked up grammar, semitic roots, unintelligible dialects or impossible-to-pronounce letters.

There are probably other 'anthems' more similar to that one than this, but you might like it, plus there is a translation.

learnassyrian.com/songs/lyrics-evin-betnahrain.html
learnassyrian.com/songs/music/evinagassi-betnahrain.mp3

This, Berber Arabic is basically a different language

It's just that every major dialect(maghrebi/berber, khaleji, yemeni, egyptian and levantine) use different phonology that's from their respective extinct languages, like south arabian, coptic, berber, etc.

On top of that, egyptians use weird fucked up word order where they place the question word pronoun at the very end of sentences.

I also apologize if I was being too harsh speaking to the one with the Germany flag. It's just that I see these myths and understatements all the time. The speakers have been genocided maybe 5 times in the last century, and it continues to be used and spoken daily, so the endless barrage of statements to the effect it vanished long ago with no real reason to believe that is preposterous.

Farsi is easier since it's an Indo-European language.

Then Arabic will be easy since it uses the same script and lots of farsi words come from Arabic.

Tldr: learn farsi, then Arabic if you have the motivation to

There are more factors for the difficulty of a language than being Indo-European or not. If anything a language being non-IE is another reason to learn as it gives breadth of knowledge.

Persian

Attached: a22dfbb24665cff151fbbe97ad8e3291.jpg (1024x683, 73K)

But just so you know, semitic grammar and how words are constructed in semitic languages are very different compared to indo-european languages.

Nah its fine. I didnt mean to insult you or anything I was just curious whether it is classified as a dead language or not. Either way it doesnt make any less significant for its speakers

You planning on suicide bombint for Allah?

You could just learn modern standard Arabic

>Learn "modern standard arabic"
>Come to Egypt
>Oi I can understand only 2/5 of what they say
>Come to Maghreb
>Oi I thought there should not be so many french words. It is arabic, right?

they just add some french words, Moroccan assume that every white guy is a french or speak french, even if you tell them that you aren't

Why is that?

>but Arabic is th language of the Holy Quran
so Farsi?

99 times out of 100, indo European languages are easier to learn. Indonesian and Swahili are two of the biggest exceptions, as they are relatively easy. Also German is relatively difficult.

Not useful at all

Arabic. But the real one (fus ha) not a dialect. If you learn fus ha you can chat with every one from morocco to iraq (and some parts of southern turkey, and western iran and afghanistan)

How hard is farsi compared to Russian for an English speaker?

>Should I learn Arabic or Farsi?
Which Arabic would you want to learn?

Are there arabs living in afghanistan

I wouldn't know if they were arabs but I know that they speak arabic. (The western part at least)

>not useful at all

European logic. Get the fuck out.

Arabic is a very diverse language and will not give you access to the entire arab world, however you will be able to learn dialects with time. Farsi is more isolated mainly in Iran however it is intelligible with many peoples of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. These languages are both in high demand by the Gov't, if you feel like going to warzones. As far as literature goes, both languages have a rich history, but much of it is heavily religious and requires an understanding of Islamic theology (which personally I find interesting). You may find their literature lacklaster as an Anglophone, and the novel format isn't really prominent. Arabic is definitely more in demand than Farsi if you don't plan on doing gov't shit. Many Arab nations are set to be major players in the world soon, or already are.
>t. jew planning on an IR degree

>t.

You didn't have to add the Jew part. This newfaggot schystery is enough to make it obvious.

farsi for easyness since it is indo euro language and also useful for getting persian qts but arabic for quran and also more widespread(but you have to learn different dialects of it)

How many Arabs have mastered every local and ancient dialect of Arabic and know all the traditions and varieties? Is there anyone famous for it? Did Arabic grammarians discuss the spoken language before Western critical scholarship or not?

Bump

Learn French instead

How many people speak aramic? How are you even going to use it except for reading a select number of texts. Farsi and Arabic on the other hand are much more useful where there many more people that speak the language and there are countless texts and poems.

>Actually Hebrew is currently threatening Judeo-Aramaic with extinction

No was really speaking Aramaic in Jewish community, so there's nothing to "extinct". Some Jewish prayers/blessings are in Aramaic and they will stay in Aramaic, that's all to it.

>How many people speak aramic?

Probably more than Tibetan and Chechen and Maltese, but less than Armenian and Greek. Probably as much as Bosnian. Judging by Wikipedia and what I know.

>How are you even going to use it except for reading a select number of texts.

It's not featured on Google Translate, so it can be used as a secret language. And like people have said about learning Farsi to make Arabic easier or learning Arabic to make Farsi easier, the same goes for Aramaic and several languages, especially Hebrew. And Aramaic has plenty of texts and unwritten material which many don't know about. It will also impress people more if you speak it because of its so-called "uselessness". The speakers are often of cultural backgrounds that would be considered rare, like "Nestorian", so learning it would help to understand those cultures. A Christian learner can also pray in it since it's believed to be the language of Christ and His Disciples. Jews place emphasis in learning the Talmud and its dialect of Aramaic, that they even celebrate when people finish reading it, so if you're a Jew that's a benefit. It might also be relevant in Iraqi politics. I can't think of much else. Oh, and you'd be able to read this image.

Attached: anim_art_exhbt.gif (248x200, 129K)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Kurdistan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Jews_in_Israel

How are you going to master the ancient dialects of Arabic? not even the modern dialects are used that much in writing outside of people chatting on the internet really, they've always been vernaculars even though linguistically speaking they are different enough as to constitute their own languages, especially the Maghreb variants.

Mastering the modern dialects is feasible.

Aren't there people who memorize the Quran and Hadith(s)? And how did it go from Quranic to the Fusha, if there is a difference?

Basically what I'm asking is, how much would a native Arabic intellectual/professional be expected to know? Is Arabic too much, or are the different 'languages' in it just kept far from each other? Just wondering.

I think you're under the impression that "quranic" and "fusha" are two different languages, which isn't true, sure there are certain literary styles that have fallen out of fashion in modern standard Arabic, but the difference is akin to that between the English used in a Shakespeare play and the one used by an English speaker in the 21st century, at best.

Thing is, Arabic itself experienced minimal change throughout the last 15 centuries compared to any living language today, it's a bit of a fossilized language particularly because of its relation to the Quran, what kept changing are the local dialects and that's what people use in speech.

An educated person should be able to read the Quran and any other religious text with complete comfort, while also being able to understand and communicate with anyone else from the Arab world, with the exception of the Maghreb region which can present certain difficulties (Maghrebis understand other Arabs but not vice versa).

I see. That's interesting. Is the situation of Maghrebis understanding and not being understood influenced or caused by being further from the center?

It's caused mostly by historical exposure to Middle Eastern media (Maghrebis produced much less media content in their own dialects until recently), as well as the fact that the Middle Eastern dialects are closer to Arabic itself, so knowing Arabic helps you more with understanding those that it does with understanding the Maghrebi dialects.