Hello and welcome to this video, I'm Arabic Mike
I'm not an Arab but I learn Arabic, I speak Arabic, and I practice Arabic and I teach Arabic
and... today we're going to be looking at something
which I've wanted to talk about for a while and that's the differences between colloquial Arabic...
i.e. slang, and fusha Arabic, like formal Arabic which you'd hear on the news, on the TV, newspapers, etc., etc
now the clip that I've chosen to discuss this topic with
is this one here which you can see up up there
now...
It's about a Filipino boy who...
supposedly can only speak fluent Arabic
Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not but...
he certainly does speak a little bit of Arabic. It's not great, but it's pretty good
anyway, I'm not criticising him, he's only seven years old
so... let's go ahead and see what he's saying...
so it starts off with him speaking a little bit of Arabic, he's very sweet, he's very cute
you know, I can see why this video's done very well, by the way this channel 'Al Arabiya English'
it's a good channel for keeping up with a bit of news about the Middle East etc.... etc...
and... anyway, the two bits I'm focusing on in this video is here...
at about 43 second, where his friend speaks and then a little bit later about 1:11... 1:12
when his mum speaks in Tagalog, Filipino language
but it's translated into fusha, so I'm gonna focus on those two chapters... those two sections
this first bit here with the boy and then his mum
I'll actually do a second video which you can also watch which just translates the whole thing if you're interested
I've got it all written down but these are the two bits on focused on, so let's just go ahead
and... listen to this boy and then listen to his mum, so...
I'm just gonna play it's not that long
Now let's go and listen to the translation of his mother's speech
and see how it compares, maybe it sounds different... I think it does
Now... did you hear the difference between those two things? That boy speaking...
it's very, very colloquial
He's adding lots of ____, he says ___ instead of ___
he says ___ instead of ___, he says ___ instead of ___, he uses some terms which...
as a Arabic speaker like myself you can kind of hear the difference
now... maybe you're not so far in your journey of learning Arabic
maybe you're just beginning to appreciate the fact that there are different accents... different dialects
you're thinking what is fusha? So what is dialect? Well...
this is basically a good summary, which is why I've chosen this clip
it's a good summary of the differences in the sounds between the fusha
and the colloquial, okay? Now, let's bring up this word document here...
this is actually the whole dialogue which I'll go through in a separate video
but right now, I just want to focus on this bit here
which is what the boy says
and... then this bit here, which is what the mom says, so let's just... let's just read this through
I think that would be a good place to start, let's just read this through
He says...
so... I'm speaking... if this was fusha, he'd say, ___
he'd say ___
___ that wouldn't really change... 'about our friendship, ___
I'm talking about the friendship between myself and ___, this Filipino boys' got an Arabic name
we'll come onto that later
'...and how we spend our time together...'
again, that's pretty good
he's done pretty well that he's speaking quite good Arabic
'...and how...'
I mean... you wouldn't get that in a translation
I just said it there... I mean you wouldn't get that in a translation
because it's more colloquial... its spoken... it's not written
But ___ is a common thing...
people say all the time
'we spend our time together'
and then he says, '___
now this is quite 'slangy' here... ___
this is like, 'and you know...' as as people say or like like I mean, he's kind of like filling in the gaps here
If you can give a really good translation to this, then please do, give that in the comments
but to me, it kind of means, 'you know', it's looking for reassurances in 'you know what I mean?'
in English we say 'you know what I mean?... 'Did you get me?... Innit?'
we'd say things like that to kind of, look for reassurance and just to fill the gaps when you're speaking
you'd never write something like this, but you would definitely say it
now this again is colloquially
___ is a... it's a slang way of saying 'we go', in fusha, you say ___
now people don't really use the word ___
we don't really say that in in slang Arabic in colloquial Arabic, you're more likely to hear
___
... something like that, so ___ means 'go' in slang
in Arabic Arabic it's ___
___
you wouldn't really hear people say ___
...spokenly it just wouldn't really happen
and then he goes on to say, ___, now again, ___ is like a filler
it's like it means 'like' it's like like it means 'like'
it's kind of short for ___, which means like, ___ like
___ 'this is too plain' ___
___ makes it into 'we play' so___
is slang for
bikes or cycling, so in fusha, you's say ___, and in here we're saying ___
___ again ___ ... very very slang
so in fusha you'd say___
so he says, ___
'and to be honest, I consider him a brother... he's like he's like a brother to me'
that's what he's saying there which is very sweet and nice
But why not? You know, why not, ___ in fusha, this would be translated as
Okay, so that's the... that's basically a gist of what the boys saying
now let's compare that with what the mothers saying or at least translated
so that is the boy speaking, that's the boy speaking colloquial slang and...
it's very different to fusha and to be honest
when you first hear something like that and you've been learning fusha
it can be very confusing and you'll definitely notice... hang on a minute
I mean, I know that's Arabic but there's something funny going on there
I'm not quite entirely sure what it is, but it sounds a bit strange
now let's compare that to what the mother is saying...
so... yeah, that's just formal... formal, ___ 'and I'm very happy that...'
Because most the children here don't speak____ They don't speak Arabic
I'm not going to spend too long on the translation here because there's another video for that
but point being is that this is all just fusha, nothing confusing here...
Sometimes I talk to him in English or Philippine language, Tagalog
he says to me, 'I don't understand what you're saying' and I say to him
'You must learn to speak English language
or Philippine language because ___ You might face problems in the airport
So basically his responsible and quite sensible mother is saying look, it's great
you speak Arabic, but you've got to learn a second language because you're not an Arab citizen
you're going to be traveling to England maybe to the Philippines to english-speaking countries
you need to learn a second language because if you can only speak Arabic and then you go home to the Philippines then that's going
to be a problem for you. You're going to be... you're going to find it quite tough in the airport ___
That's basically it to be honest, I really just wanted to talk about the differences between colloquial Arabic and
formal Arabic and give you a bit of an introduction... a bit of an insight
into the slight subtle differences between these two, when I first saw this video, the first thing I thought of...
'wasn't 'oh, wow it's a Filipino kid who can speak English and he's really cute
He kind of talks of it
But actually I thought about the differences between the colloquial where the boy was speaking ___
that kind of thing
and hen the fusha Arabic,
___
that kind of thing, so it's an interesting video, I hope you find this useful
you can see more videos there and there I'm Arabic Mike
You can subscribe over that way, and I hope to see you again back here very soon until then. Bye