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The Most Useful Languages


Voinjama

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You will probably always be able to find somebody who speaks Arabic in the Muslim countries of the world though. That is a lot of places, and most of them north and east of Saudi Arabia (ie, Iran, Iraq, the "stans") have their own local languages.

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Few people in Southeast Asia speak fluent Arabic, if any at all.

I think it's analagous to Latin in the mediaeval Christian world, in that it is the lingua franca used for religious study. Peoples' knowledge of it may be rudimentary compared to the local languages, but it may do in an emergency.
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It is very good for us that the most powerful nation on the earth at the moment speaks English. I just feel we are all so lucky that we speak English, because it is literally everywhere around the world. Was watching some Spanish football and I saw some advertising hoardings in English and on the stadium/stand it said 'salida' and then underneath 'exit'. English isn't even an official language in Spain.

Funny, I saw a Chinese advertising hoarding at Villa Park that day. Not to mention that our matchday shirts all have Chinese words plastered on them. :lol:

Disclaimer btw: I'm not a Chinese chauvinist, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

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You will probably always be able to find somebody who speaks Arabic in the Muslim countries of the world though. That is a lot of places, and most of them north and east of Saudi Arabia (ie, Iran, Iraq, the "stans") have their own local languages.

mDJc2.png

Few people in Southeast Asia speak fluent Arabic, if any at all.

I think it's analagous to Latin in the mediaeval Christian world, in that it is the lingua franca used for religious study. Peoples' knowledge of it may be rudimentary compared to the local languages, but it may do in an emergency.

Yeah, but more so. Firstly I dont think I referred to South East Asia, which Indonesia aside is an Islam free zone but throughout the countries I did name check I dont think you would ever be too far from a man who speaks some form of Arabic. Like English, Arabic is a very wide spread second language.

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Firstly I dont think I referred to South East Asia, which Indonesia aside is an Islam free zone

Islam is actually the most popular religion in South East Asia, nearly 250 million people. It's the official religion of Malaysia.

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Is there just 1 arabic language, or many?

Several different dialects - Moroccan is different enough from Iraqi to almost be a different language, but Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used for the news in all Arab countries. If you can master MSA, then you should be able to have a conversation with most people, though you'll sound a bit odd and formal.

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The other thing you have to bear in mind when you're learning a language is who's going to be teaching it.

When I did an evening class here at the uni a couple of years ago, I was considering between improving my French, or starting out with Italian, Spanish, German or Russian.

Seeing as I have access to our staff database, I checked out the photographs of the lecturers for the respective courses: four hairy-arsed blokes and one very attractive young blonde lady.

German it was. :D

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The other thing you have to bear in mind when you're learning a language is who's going to be teaching it.

When I did an evening class here at the uni a couple of years ago, I was considering between improving my French, or starting out with Italian, Spanish, German or Russian.

Seeing as I have access to our staff database, I checked out the photographs of the lecturers for the respective courses: four hairy-arsed blokes and one very attractive young blonde lady.

German it was. :D

I see the German teacher has changed from when I was there!!!!

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