Well, maybe he meant that very few people are actually really good at formal arabic? I know I suck at it even though I'm Lebanese and it's supposed to be my mother tongue. Arabic speakers tend to have a colloquial form of Arabic that they speak which is a much simplified version of the formal Arabic language.
I would say the closest analogy is Lebanese is to Arabic what French is to Latin. Clearly derived from it, but very different and much simpler.
300 experts is definitely a very low estimate though. Should definitely be higher.
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Except Arabic is a living language and has 300 "expert" speakers :-P
300 million speakers, rather.
Interesting, where do you get that number?
Well, maybe he meant that very few people are actually really good at formal arabic? I know I suck at it even though I'm Lebanese and it's supposed to be my mother tongue. Arabic speakers tend to have a colloquial form of Arabic that they speak which is a much simplified version of the formal Arabic language.
I would say the closest analogy is Lebanese is to Arabic what French is to Latin. Clearly derived from it, but very different and much simpler.
300 experts is definitely a very low estimate though. Should definitely be higher.
PS: Hi Ramzi, long time no see :)
looks like typo. he corrected it.
What do you mean by 300 experts?