And “Kyrie eleison” isn’t even Latin, but Greek.
It depends on which ones you’re comparing. Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian dialects all share very good mutual intelligibility. Omani and Moroccan dialects have very poor mutual intelligibility. If an uneducated Omani and an uneducated Moroccan tried to talk to each other, they could slowly figure out a basic shared vocabulary, but could only understand each other’s sentences sketchily and after lots of repetitions and effort. A Palestinian and a Syrian could chatter away each in their own dialect with no comprehension problems.
A common misconception. The Gulf dialects are even more divergent from Classical Arabic than, say, Iraqi. I tried for years to identify which spoken Arabic dialect today is closest to Classical Arabic. I finally had to conclude: None of the above. Seriously. They’re all divergent. Iraqi dialect has preserved certain features from the classical language, while Yemeni has preserved certain others, but these become trivial compared to the divergences.
This is correct.
In fact, the only population that actually speaks Classical Arabic as an everyday living language might surprise you: it’s the Jews of Baghdad. Since that community is practically extinct, it means the extinction of Classical Arabic as a living language. The Jews of Alexandria also spoke a sociolect that preserved Classical features pretty well, but… ditto.
Sister Mary Joseph is spinning in her grave
Because I failed to learn anything
Appologies for amendum
Re: Latin -
I’ve heard people comparing the Arab world toda to Europe of the 14th century or so. Latin was still the language of education and religion, and most of the intelligenzia could still speak it; however, the common speach ws in the “vulgar” tongues, i.e. French, Italian or Spanish. In fact, it’s only for political reasons that Arabic is considered a single language.
I believe most Qurans, at least outside the Arab world, are written with vowel markings included, to allow pronunciation by non-Arabs. The original Quran lacked these, and so only those fluent in Arabic would know how to properly pronounce a word. Similar to how only an English speaker will know how to properly pronounce “tough” and “through”.
I have heard that among some non-Arab Muslims, the ability to read the Quran by sight is highly esteemed, but being able to comprehend what one speaks is not quite as important.
Total myth! This is a religion that wants converts, after all. It’s hard to spend much time in a Muslim society without people giving you Quran copies as gifts.
If it makes you feel better, what you’ll never see is a copy without the original Arabic next to the text in your language. I could see how that could become “they never translate it.”
Most Muslims I’ve met in the Gulf and North Africa believe in the Quran literally, in the manner of Christian fundementaists. This leads to a strong belief in angels (as it does here in the US!) and djinn, as well as in stories that should be familiar to you such as Noah and the flood, etc.
In Bosnia there seems to have been more of a range of belief. Just as in the Christian world, there are a number of approaches to the religion, and some societites are more secular than others.