I don't think cursive letters significantly "change their shape depending on what their neighbors are". There is more variation in personal cursive styles than due to neighbors in a single cursive style.
The only modification to letters are small lines joining them with one another, generally from the "feet" around the baseline.
> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
Correct for pronouns (especially in masculine "taking over" feminine as soon as a single male is included in the group), but french does not use different plural forms and verb conjugations for feminines (let alone distinguish between dual and further plurals).
> Not true.
How is it not true? You're saying exactly what he wrote: what are commonly known as arabic numerals aren't used in (middle-eastern) arabic.
> The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today.
There are no "real arabic numbers", North-Africa use western arabic numbers (what we call "Arabic numbers"), the middle-east uses eastern-arabic numbers ("Indic numerals"), western-arabic numbers progressively got their modern shape in Europe between the 10th and the 15th century (they got fixed with the advent of typesetting and print).
Not all the time. And if they do, there still are subtle variations in suffixes. For example:
- Kalb (dog) => Kilab (dogs)
- Liss (thief) => Losous (thieves)
- Karoura (bottle) => Kawarir (Bottles)
- etc.
> I thought the same thing for English and French, no? When I learn English and French in school, we join letters.
Yes, but that doesn't change the letter's shape as in Arabic, you just add a line to connect letters.
> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
Not quite: what you cite are just pronouns, but the conjugation and grammar doesn't vary. For instance, conjugating the verb manger (to eat) with feminine plural "elles" and masculine plural yields the same "mangent", whereas in Arabic you have different forms.
> Not true. The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today. The Indian numbers were used in the middle east region because of the strong Indian influence.
Agreed. I myself have a hard time reading numbers written in the Hindi numerals (٠ - ١ - ٢ - ٣ - ٤ - ٥ - ٦ - ٧ - ٨ - ٩)
It's mostly true that the verb form stays the same in French regardless of the gender of the subject. However, they are exceptions. If a verb conjugates conpound tenses with être, then the past participle is considered an adjective and must agree with the subject, e.g.:
Ils sont allés = They went (one or more male)
Elles sont allées. = They went (all female)
There are many patterns and forms in the broken plurals themselves which you can pick up on and learn so that you often can correctly predict new ones without memorization. For example, you give:
-liss => lusuus
And likewise, most doubled nouns of this form take the same plural:
-jadd => juduud
-hass => husuus
-hamm => humuum
Still... this is far from a hard and fast rule, and it also takes a lot of time to build familiarity and notice these patterns. It's also something that al-Kitaab (for example) doesn't ever mention.
(just explaining... not implying that you aren't aware of this)
No, English and French don't have a concept of "different characters for different places." The "c" in "cat", "act" and "topic" are all written exactly the same. It's not "cat", "a#t" and "topi*"
There are many languages, besides Arabic, that have a concept of distinct initial, medial and final characters. For example, the dozens of writing systems derived from Sanskrit.
Yes they do, at least the way handwriting is sometimes taught. For example, "s" in handwriting sometimes looks like a slash ("/") followed by a backwards "c".
Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Table_of_basic_...
You can write cursive but, generally, we don't join letters together (think online text like this comment).
> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
And for Spanish--Ellas y elllos--and for Italian.
The structural change is regular. That is you don't have to learn each name plural.
The Arabic writing system is exotic looking but easy to learn, which is a rare combination. The language uses a straightforward alphabet, but because letters change their shape depending on what their neighbors are it is quite impenetrable to the uninitiated.
I thought the same thing for English and French, no? When I learn English and French in school, we join letters.
Formal Arabic distinguishes between groups composed entirely of women and groups that contain one or more men, and has distinct pronouns, plural forms, and verb conjugations for feminine dual and feminine plural.
The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
What we call Arabic numerals aren't used in Arabic except in extraordinarily formal contexts. Instead, Arabic uses "Indian numerals", which look like this:
Not true. The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today. The Indian numbers were used in the middle east region because of the strong Indian influence.
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Well, if you are really interested in Arabic, then what you should learn is the Arabic poetry. It's one of the marvelous human inventions. It's very hacky, and quite hard to write. The wealth of books (old books) and poems written in Arabic are worth learning it.