Does it! That's fascinating, if not hugely surprising. I wish I knew more about the ancient languages of the area, but then I wish I knew more about just about every language in existence... Still, very cool.
I knew about Hebrew, at least sort of, in that I took a semester of conversational (modern Israeli) Hebrew in college. I've forgotten nearly all of it, but I remember noticing that, and also the variety of S and T sounds which our teacher told us to pronounce the same but which I instantly mapped to Arabic letters which do have distinctions.
I didn't know you knew Arabic.
I did my undergrad degree in Middle Eastern Studies, back in 2000-2004, so I studied Arabic for most of college, and spent a semester in Cairo. (Mostly I learned Modern Standard, but I acquired some bits of Egyptian dialect on the fly.) I'm woefully out of practice, and I've forgotten most of the vocabulary and grammar I once knew. It's been erased by both time and being in better practice with other languages. Still, some of the fundamentals have stuck around, and if I ever get free time and free brain to brush up on my Arabic, I might try. It's a fascinating language, and it always feels like such a waste to forget skills one used to have.
no subject
Does it! That's fascinating, if not hugely surprising. I wish I knew more about the ancient languages of the area, but then I wish I knew more about just about every language in existence... Still, very cool.
I knew about Hebrew, at least sort of, in that I took a semester of conversational (modern Israeli) Hebrew in college. I've forgotten nearly all of it, but I remember noticing that, and also the variety of S and T sounds which our teacher told us to pronounce the same but which I instantly mapped to Arabic letters which do have distinctions.
I didn't know you knew Arabic.
I did my undergrad degree in Middle Eastern Studies, back in 2000-2004, so I studied Arabic for most of college, and spent a semester in Cairo. (Mostly I learned Modern Standard, but I acquired some bits of Egyptian dialect on the fly.) I'm woefully out of practice, and I've forgotten most of the vocabulary and grammar I once knew. It's been erased by both time and being in better practice with other languages. Still, some of the fundamentals have stuck around, and if I ever get free time and free brain to brush up on my Arabic, I might try. It's a fascinating language, and it always feels like such a waste to forget skills one used to have.