SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

7/30/2019 SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

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SOME DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ARABICAn assignment written for English guided by

Rina W. Setyaningrum, M. Ed

Introduction to Linguistic

Written By :

Maisyatul Hasanah

NIM. 201010100311270

English Department

Faculty of Training Teacher and Education

University of Muhammadiyah Malang

East JavaIndonesia

2011


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INTRODUCTION

Linguistics is the science of language, requiring and precipitating the study of

human and animal languages and speech with their origins. As the purpose of language is

to communicate, any study of communication is a study in linguistics by nature whether

so asserted or not. The written word, speech, Braille, sign language or the barks of a dog

are all parts of the infinite study of Linguistics.

In this paper, I would like to compare English with Arabic. Both of them has a

different pronounciation and grammatical function. In Arabic there are a lot of symbol

that can give some meaning in sentence structure which has influence each other. It has

unique symbol and different pronunciation with English. Arabic is a language vastly

different from English, and this can make learning it quite challenging. This case related

to Linguistics because linguistics is science that is tied in so many ways to so many other

areas of study.

I realize that Linguistics inherently also a developer of several talents. These

talents include the use and discipline of personal logic, analytical and critical thought as

well as skills of organized debate. Thats way I study Linguistics and try to show that

Linguistics may also help us if I learn about a foreign language. Linguistics can help us

make and keep peace between us and many other peoples by showing how a word in our

language means something else altogether in theirs. And it can help us to realize that

someone who seems to talk funny actually speaks quite intelegently, in their own tongue,

and not funny at all.


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Main Research

A. Definition of ArabicArabic is from the Semitic language family, hence its grammar is very

different from English. The Arabic script is written from right to left, in a cursive

style, and includes 28 basic letters. Because all letters usually stand for

consonants, it is classified as an abjad. The script was first used to write texts in

Arabic, most notably theQurn. Modern dictionaries and other reference books

is used :

y w h n m l k q f s z rd t b a

B. Definition of EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of

England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the

influence of theAnglianmedieval kingdom ofNorthumbria.

C. Some Differences1. Grammar

Arabic has some extreme differences from English in this area (even more

than other languages). In English, our sentences follow the SUBJECT +

VERB + OBJECT pattern.

Example : Rudi read the book

Subject verb object pattern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursivehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur%27anhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur%27anhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur%27anhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anglo-Saxon_Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotlandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbriahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbriahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbriahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbriahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotlandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anglo-Saxon_Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur%27anhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive


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Many other languages, both related and unrelated to English, have the

same structure. Arabic, however, follows a VERB + SUBJECT + OBJECT

structure, which is almost certain to cause confusion.

Example :Verb + Subject + object pattern

English Meaning : Muhammad wrote a short letter

And to make it doubly confusing, an Arabic sentence does not need a verb

(while in English that is the single most important part of the sentence). Arabic

grammar has two categories: morphology and syntax. Morphology studies the

forms of words and their transformations to intended meanings. Syntax studies the

case endings of words and their positions in the sentence. An Arabic sentence

consists of words. The word be a particle, a noun, or verb. Case ending in Arabic

will show in three examples below :

First Example : Transliteration: ha.daramuhammadun

English meaning: Muhammad came (or Muhammad (has) come).

Dictionary: [ ]: came, [ ]: Muhammad.

Second Example : Transliteration: ha.dartu muhammadan

English meaning: I brought Muhammad (or I (have) brought Muhammad).

Dictionary:


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Dictionary: [ ]: I came, [ ]: with,

[ ]: Muhammad

The noun [ ] has appeared with three different endings.

These situations are named as follows:

Regularity (nominative) as in [ ] Opening as in [ ] Reduction (genitive) as in [ ]

The end-markers of the words are called short vowels or diacritics. There

are rules for placing markers on nouns and verbs. These rules depend on the role

of the noun (subject, object, reduced,etc), the tense of the verb (past, present, ..)

verbs do not get the reduction end-marker -, the particle used, etc. It is common

that end-markers which do not change the shape of the words by adding or

deleting letters are not explicitly drawn.

2. Pronounciation

Arabic has a number of sounds that don't occur in English. A lot of these are the

glottal sounds that English speakers often mock for sounding like throat clearing.

These are real sounds, however, represented by letters in the alphabet. And they

will be challenging to pronounce at first, probably giving a stutter. Keep in mind

that the p and v sounds are not found in Arabic. English has about three

times as many vowel sounds as Arabic, so it is inevitable that beginning learners

will fail to distinguish between some of the words they hear, such as ship /sheep


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orbad / bed, and will have difficulties saying such words correctly. Phonetics

differences between English and Arabic are :

a. Sound CombinationThe sound combinations found in Arabic are also quite different from

those found in English. Even though Arabic is a consonant-heavy

language, English uses many more consonant clusters to form words.

Consonant clusters refer to phoneme groupings, not alphabet letters. Some

two-consonant clusters are found at the beginning of Arabic words, but

Arabic does not have any initial three-consonant clusters. English also has

numerous three- and four-consonant clusters found at the ends of words,

whereas Arabic does not. To compensate for this difference, Arabic

speakers often insert a short vowel sound to break up consonant clusters

when speaking English. For example, they might say nexist instead of

"next."

b. Word StressWord stress is very regular in Arabic. In English, word stress changes

frequently and can alter the meaning and lexical category of a word. For

example, object is a verb but ob'-ject is a noun. In Arabic, a change in

stress is never used to change the meaning of a word. Instead, a word is

pronounced with a different short vowel even when it is spelled the same.

Because of the irregularity of stress in English, Arabic speakers often have

a hard time learning and understanding the differences in English words.

c. Sound Elision


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The elision of sounds is a common phonetic feature of English that is not

found in Arabic. Elision is the dropping of a sound in the middle of a

word, or between words, when verbalizing a sentence or phrase. This often

occurs with initial or final word vowels, or sometimes with entire

syllables. Some examples of elision are capn instead of captain and

wanna instead of want to. In Arabic, spelling is much more closely

related to sounds, and because of this, sounds are rarely omitted.

Conclusion

From this paper we can know that if we want to generate Arabic text an Arabic

Grammar is needed. Although there are similarities between different languages like

English. In Arabic there are a lot of symbol that can give some meaning in sentence

structure which has influence each other. There are some differences between English and

Arabic even from the grammatical structure and from the phonetics distinction such as :

sound combination, word stress, and sound elision.

There is a large potential for errors of interference when Arab learners produce

written or spoken English. Arabic has a three consonant root as its basis. All words (parts

of speech) are formed by combining the three-root consonants with fixed vowel patterns

and, sometimes, an affix. Arab learners may be confused by the lack of patterns in

English that would allow them to distinguish nouns from verbs or adjectives, etc.

Of course, the differences between Arabic and English don't end here. We need

some exploration to have a detail information about this distinction.


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References

Yule, George.1999. The Study of Language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Second Edition.

Newman, Daniel. 2009. Arabic-English Tematic Lexicon. Property Right of Routledge.

London : Francis Group. Fourth Edition.

Boxer, Diana. Cohen, Andrew D. 2008. Studying Speaking To Inform Second Language

Learning. Property Right of Multilingual Matters. Cambridge : Elanglab

http://digilib.unsri.ac.id/jurnal/computer-science/arabic-character-recognition-using-

structural-approach-/mrdetail/1344/

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26281/is-there-a-known-reason-that-english-

has-so-many-short-words

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definiton of English

http://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_01-

Alphabet_El-Abgadeya.html

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5564

www.learnamazingarabic.com.
http://digilib.unsri.ac.id/jurnal/computer-science/arabic-character-recognition-using-structural-approach-/mrdetail/1344/http://digilib.unsri.ac.id/jurnal/computer-science/arabic-character-recognition-using-structural-approach-/mrdetail/1344/http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26281/is-there-a-known-reason-that-english-has-so-many-short-wordshttp://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26281/is-there-a-known-reason-that-english-has-so-many-short-wordshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabethttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitonhttp://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_01-Alphabet_El-Abgadeya.htmlhttp://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_01-Alphabet_El-Abgadeya.htmlhttp://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5564http://www.learnamazingarabic.com/http://www.learnamazingarabic.com/http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5564http://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_01-Alphabet_El-Abgadeya.htmlhttp://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_01-Alphabet_El-Abgadeya.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabethttp://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26281/is-there-a-known-reason-that-english-has-so-many-short-wordshttp://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26281/is-there-a-known-reason-that-english-has-so-many-short-wordshttp://digilib.unsri.ac.id/jurnal/computer-science/arabic-character-recognition-using-structural-approach-/mrdetail/1344/http://digilib.unsri.ac.id/jurnal/computer-science/arabic-character-recognition-using-structural-approach-/mrdetail/1344/

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SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ARABIC