[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

The differences are certainly more than spelling, but there exists a
continuum for a variety like Egyptian Arabic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-creole_speech_continuum

I don't know if it would be accurate to classify Egyptian Arabic as a
creole, but such a continuum certainly exists AFAIK between the most
basilectal, rural varieties and more urban varieties that are more
influenced by education.

Word order in most regional varieties of Arabic is different from
Classical Arabic.

As far as the differences between "written" Egyptian Arabic and fus'ha
(standard), from what I have seen so far, much of arz.wp is written in
a style that is easily intelligible with fus'ha for me at least, but
then I've only studied the language for 4 semesters so I would defer
that question to native speakers.

Mark

2009/1/11 Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>> Most of the grammatical features you cited are shared with Standard
>> Arabic... that's not a list of differences, it's a general description
>> of Egyptian Arabic with a couple of differences noted. Written in
>> Arabic script, short vowels aren't distinguished most of the time, so
>> that's irrelevant anyhow.
>
> That may be so, but the rest of the linked page, and some other pages on
> that site, did answer most of my questions. The fact that MSA exists as a
> spoken form, and that standard written Arabic is an accurate rendering of
> it, certainly puts to rest my comparison with historical spelling in
> English. Also the fact that it has a different word order (SVO vs VSO)
> suggests that characterising the differences as "spelling" is not
> accurate. The section on literacy was also relevant. So my thanks to Milos
> for pointing it out.
>
> I think it sorts out most of the linguistic questions for me, so that just
> leaves the political ones, which as always are more complex and
> emotionally charged.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>