The difference between, say, BBC English (or Standard American, the "accentless" English variety used in newscasts in the US) in one side, and spoken English varieties (say, Californian skate-boarder English) in the other, may not look like much (particularly if you're a Californian skate-boarder). But to someone who has just started learning English, they might seem at first view to be completely unrelated languages.
In Arabic, the difference between the spoken varieties and the 100% pure correct form is even greater. So great, that some language teachers think that the teaching approach which works well for other languages (say, teach Standard Written American first, and later some spoken variety of American) does not make much sense for Arabic.
When someone wants to "learn English", there are basically two ways to teach her. One of them is starting with a real-life variety of spoken English. "Survival English", we might call it. If she's living in California, we'd start by teaching her the way to ask for a burger in a Californian MacDonalds well enough that the someone at the counter will understand her (for practical purposes, she's been "understood" if she gets the burger). Later we'd teach her to read English, which is a different matter altogether. Written English is more or less the same everywhere. You CAN learn to speak a foreign language being illiterate... it's not impossible, just harder than if you are able to take notes and use a dictionary.
The other strategy is teaching her "correct English" first, which is the kind of English used in books, and teach her to say "this is a book" and such sentences with an accent that (at least, according to the teacher's belief) will be understood in every English-speaking country. Of course you don't ask for a burger the same way (with the same words and the same accent) in California and in Australia, but by now we might just tell the student "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it".
Usually you'll use the pick-it-up approach if you've just landed in California and are in a hurry to speak with the locals, or you might choose to attend classes first and use an interpreter meanwhile. But if you are in Rumania and are attending English classes there, you won't have to worry. The teacher will decide which learning strategy is best for you. She will likely use the bookish-English-first approach. This usually works rather well, and, coincidentally enough, happens to be very convenient for Rumanian teachers who have never been to California, because written English is mostly the same everywhere.
When you decide to start learning Arabic, letting your teacher decide for you may be a really bad idea. It's you who should decide what do you want to learn first: to speak a certain dialect of Arabic with certain people, or to read Arabic (written Arabic is mostly the same everywhere). The problem here's that if you know how to speak Australian English, you won't have much problems to learn to speak Scottish English, or to learn to read Written English, because most varieties of English are very alike to each other. But Arabic varieties aren't.
(It's infortunate that I can't give a single instance of a sentence written in pure Arabic and in one of the dialects, or of an English sentence in Pure English and in Scottish English... I cannot by hope that these who say that Arabic dialects are more different than English dialects know well both dialect bunches.)
So, if you choose to learn reading and writing Pure Arabic first, you will be able to speak with literate Arabs everywhere. Not-so-literate Arabs will still understand most of what you say, because they have picked up a lot of so-called "correct" Arabic from newscasts and such, but you won't likely understand them when they speak normally. You will also be able to read Arabic newspapers and books from all Arab countries.
If, on the contrary, you decide to focus on Argelian Spoken Arabic first, you'll be able to speak with all Argelians, whether literate or not. You'll understand Moroccans not so well. On the down side, you won't understand at all the Lebanese or the Gulf people, and you will be illiterate.
Therefore, if your inmediate goal is becoming able to speak with the inhabitants of a certain Arab country, this website is probably not what you're looking for. You should instead look for some course of spoken Argelian Arabic, or Egyptian Arabic, or whatever.
the Arabic Alphabet the 'alfu.shhaa a Few Notes on Arabic Culture Modern Standard Arabic
Copyright © 2001-2004 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
Page revised 2004-01-16.
Self-link:http://purl.oclc.org/NET/arabe/diglosia.en.html