Is Arabic a Single Language???

In this Langfocus #shorts video I talk about whether Arabic can be considered a single language considering the diversity of its spoken dialects.

[therebedragons]

Using the San Marino flag to represent Italian is hilarious and I love it

[rami-sep]

I’m an Arabic speaker .. and I tell you what you said is exactly 100% correct. I admire the way you explain

[Majd_Saad]

As an Iraqi, you %100 nailed the explanation, I’m glad someone finally explained that with this accuracy and truth

[eyadbereh]

As a Syrian, I can have normal conversations with Egyptians, people from the Arabian gulf, and other people from Levantine without switching to MSA, and I can understand them almost perfectly

[ogorangeduck]

That English comparison was quite apt!

[KyrieFortune]

Love how the representations of the Romance languages are Mexico, Brazil and San Marino instead of Spain, Portugal and Italy

[harfaudiobooks]

Hi @Langfocus ! It’s a linguistic phenomenon called Diglossia: “a situation in which two languages (or two varieties of the same language) are used under different conditions within a community, often by the same speakers. The term is usually applied to languages with distinct ‘high’ and ‘low’ (colloquial) varieties, such as Arabic.”

[kebabenjoyer]

While I speak gulf Arabic I understand Egyptian, Levantine and Yemeni dialects. Its the magrabi one to me that literally sounds like a different language and its the most that Arabs from everywhere struggle with the most.

[mqatari]

As an Arab from the gulf, I can confirm that the only way I will be able to understand an Arab from Morocco is through Modern standard Arabic.

[antjeeismann]

This is the most informative and best made short Out of all shorts that i've watched on YouTube

[Anonymouse]

I am Palestinian and when I visited Morocco I communicated in English with the locals. It was much easier😊. And honestly when I listened to them talking I could not even figure out the topic. Family stories or space program discussion, I couldn’t tell😂

[gerrardzack]

I am Syrian but i can understand and we can communicate with each other but you have countries like Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia their accent are very hard and we can't understand it well but accents like Egypt and gulf and levantine are easy for all of us

[ThivvyCassie]

i really like the phrasing of "speak like a book" to describe this, it's really apt

[OttoStrawanzinger]

The comparison with English was interesting, because I once witnessed a Mancunian in a Northern Irish pub trying to order a drink, and both the barman and the customer had seriously troubles understanding each other. And they were all from the UK, not thousands of km apart!

[ThatBernie]

Great summary, one added detail is that Arabic vernaculars form a "dialect continuum" such that closer neighbors can understand each other more easily while more distant ones have more difficulty. What this means is that even if we tried to chop it up into different languages, it wouldn't be possible to find clear-cut boundaries to make those divisions. And another factor is media exposure, especially nowadays in the era of the internet and social media, speakers of different dialects have quite a lot of exposure to media from other dialects and so the process of "meeting each other halfway" isn't necessarily mediated through MSA, but rather speakers will be directly aware of what features other dialects will have and may selectively adapt some of those features to make communication easier.

[mohammedjiuma]

Never seen someone explain more accurately 100% good job

[Langfocus]

Did you guys get notifications about this video? Or did you just see it appear in your feed?

[zaydalaoui]

I’m Maghrebi and this is 100% true. No one can understand me unless I try to speak like a book 😂

[khalidh]

You are absolutely correct, you can also add that Modern Standard Arabic is also slowly influencing the other Arabic dialects because its largely used in the Media.

[SequreContainProtect]

Spanish🇲🇽, Portuguese🇧🇷 and Italian🇸🇲.
Spain, Portugal and Italy: 😵😵😵