<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Arabic-L: Wed 07 Jan 2009</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To post messages to the list, send them to <a href="mailto:arabic-l@byu.edu">arabic-l@byu.edu</a>]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> unsubscribe arabic-l ]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Directory------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1) Subject:Teaching Colloquial with MSA</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 07 Jan 2009</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Joseph Norment Bell <<a href="mailto:joseph.bell@if.uib.no">joseph.bell@if.uib.no</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:Teaching Colloquial with MSA</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; ">Sometimes we must face the facts. While we all know that knowledge of a <br>dialect or of MSA alone is not sufficient, we seem to disagree on the <br>choice of dialect or whether we might use a blend of dialects.<br><br>The point in learning to speak Arabic well is to be able to play on the <br>full range of levels and nuances that Standard Arabic and your dialect <br>make available, according to the situation.<br><br>Few can be asked to do this with more than one dialect. Which one? Well, <br>if you know where you are going and where you are likely to stay, then <br>the best choice is most likely the prestige dialect of that area. But <br>most students of Arabic don't know where they are headed until they have <br>more or less finished their formal language training. (The French <br>experience is something of an exception here.)<br><br>So we ask whether there is a dialect that practically from one end of <br>the Arab world to the other might be in competition with MSA as a lingua <br>franca, even if often at different levels of formality. It would seem to <br>be there is, and pretty much everyone knows the answer.<br><br>Illiterate Arabs who may still understand some MSA, will also understand <br>you if you speak to them in Cairene Egyptian. Often they will even be <br>able to answer you in something resembling Cairene.<br><br>I don't know where this leaves the partisans of "blending." One speaks <br>of "leveling," and how Arabs from different countries, when together, <br>will leave out expressions they consider to be too dialect-specific to <br>be understood by the others. But at least in _middle level_ Cairene <br>there is little that needs to be left out for such reasons.<br><br>Other Arabic dialects cannot be imitated for the same reasons over the <br>same wide geographic area. A Jordanian imitating an Egyptian is very <br>likely doing it to be understood (the popularity of Egyptian jokes <br>notwithstanding), whereas when he imitates a Lebanese, for example, he <br>is indeed most likely telling a joke.<br><br>Telling jokes makes you popular. Maybe our dialect-blending students <br>will reap that benefit.<br><br>Joseph Bell<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">End of Arabic-L: 07 Jan 2009</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>