Why Regional Arabic Dialects Matter More Than Modern Standard Arabic for Daily Communication

When learning Arabic, you will be given two usual choices. The first is MSA, or Modern Standard Arabic, taught in schools and used in formal or international settings. The second is the local dialect, inherited as mother tongue, varied across regions, and used in daily communication.

While there are features commonly shared between them. There are also some visible variations. Primarily due to the regional ways of naming things, foreign biases, nuances in pronunciation, and pace and notes of delivery.

For learners aiming to converse with natives in daily contexts, local dialects offer more edge than MSA. Why? This article outlines some benefits of learning a regional dialect and a few limitations of MSA if you want to look and sound relevant and natural when interacting with natives.

When Should You Choose Local Dialects in the First Place?

Arabic dialects’ courses are thriving. More people are learning Arabic than ever, and for good reasons. Mastery over a dialect, beyond monetary, has diverse other rewards. Consider the opportunity to live in an ever-diverse and rich culture. Let’s find out a few others:

• Daily Life Conversations: People burst out in anger, cry in utmost happiness, and radiate love using their mother tongue. To connect them in such great emotional moments, to share the joy, to console sadness, and to assuage anger, the usual and familiar tone serves the best. Otherwise, you may sound too formal and odd.

• Better Chance at Blending in: For anyone planning to live among locals, it will be of great help to surprise the local community by speaking their vernaculars. It’s a common nature of people to feel at ease around and welcome people who not only understand by also speak in their native way.

• Deeper Research and Education: Students focused on the history and culture of a particular anthropological group should prioritize local lingo. It will allow them to get closer to the natives, ask them better questions, study through a wider range of resources beyond books, crack into the ancestral stories, and understand and link references.

• Getting into the Pop Culture: The Arabic pop industry has always been in fashion. With worldwide patrons and viewers, songs, dramas, and other programs produced in these regions have come a long way. And all of them are made and broadcast in local dialects. Even in channels on YouTube and other social media, locals use their own dialects. If you create one for yourself, targeting the audience of a specific region, or want to enjoy popular shows, local tongues should be your first choice.

• Easier and Quicker Learning: Unlike formal, native expressions care less about grammar. The flow of meaning often depends on the tone and punches of the delivery. Like it does in any other spoken form of language. You can differ a question from a statement just by reckoning the rise and fall of the sounds, chords, and notes of the speaker’s vocal. Learning without delving into the nuts and bolts of the grammatical ties and obligations gives you some freedom. So it takes less time to master a dialect.

• Profitable Bargaining and Dealing: When you appear and sound foreign, local vendors may take advantage of it. Even if they don’t, you won’t be able to tell the differences between two similar products described by local sellers, will depend on your guts when making a choice, and can’t come up with the right price to reply with against what is demanded.

When Shouldn’t You Choose MSA?

Between MSA and Dialect, the choice should be made upon your sole, unique, or long-term goal. Keeping daily communications as the backdrop, MSA suffers a few limitations. Like:

• Unusual and Occasional: Who recites words from books when addressing a friend or buying from a vendor? None, if not they have to, right? So is the case for MSA. In homes and on roads, people use it only to keep things formal and brief or to attend an emergency. Otherwise, the mother tongue is how they do it.

• Heavy on Grammar: If the very idea of getting involved with the strict grammar scares you. If you deem it not necessary to learn the nitty-gritty to talk fluently, you can bypass MSA with a dialect choice.

• Publication and News: If your job doesn’t require you to write, edit, publish, read, or broadcast formal documents and news, MSA won’t do you much help. In the spoken world, dialects rule the Arabian realm.

Wrapping Up

It should be pristine clear by now that the argument over MSA and dialects is not contradictory; rather, it depends on how and where you want to apply the language. For verbal communications, MSA comes as more of a second choice. When dialects come naturally as the first, expressing the very heart of the locals by translating emotions in their purest statements. So, for you, as a spoken Arabic learner planning to make an abode in a specific region, the choice is clear and evident; go for dialects.