As an English speaker w/Arabic training, Swahili or Farsi easier to learn?
October 20, 2008 by Admin · 7 Comments
I am a American student with a few semesters of training in modern standard Arabic. For any Farsi or Swahili speakers out there, do you think one of these languages could be easier to learn than the other for me (since both have some vocabulary similar to Arabic)? Thanks for your feedback
Already three answers have suggested that Farsi might be easier because they use the Arabic script which you already studied. I would like to add that you already know the Swahili script also, and probably even better, because they use the same as we use right here and now, namely the Latin script.
I don't know which language might actually be easier for you. They are both unrelated to Arabic but heavily influenced by it. In Persian around 50% of the vocabulary is derived from Arabic and in Swahili around 40%. However, if you read a normal Persian text, the percentage of loanwords is rather something like 20-25%, because the more common words are more likely to be original Persian words. I would guess the same is true for Swahili, but I don't have the number.
Farsi might have an advance from being related to English (being Indo-European), but on the other hand Swahili is more influenced by English (they have a considerable nuimber of English loanwords, and also Persian loanwords, by the way), both from the historical influence from Christian missionaries (who also made them change from Arabic to Latin script) and from the continuing influence from English (which is an official language together with Swahili in several countries).
I would rather choose on the grounds of usefulness, depending on for what and where you want to use the language. Persian opens the door to a rich literature of 2,000 years but is not used in many places outside Iran (and very closely related languages in Afghanistan and Tadzjikistan), whereas Swahili don't give you much old, historical literature, but lets you communicate with people in many different African countries.
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