[gmi01]

I am a native Arabic speaker, I enjoyed the article, however there are a few mistakes.

In 2. The exceptions are called plural exceptions which happen much less than the general rule, Otherwise most of Arabic follows a very specific rule to making plurals from singulars.

In 7. Adjectives have no gender, and therefore al-kutub hadra' (الكتب حضراء) "The books, she is green" this translates to the books are green (hadra is an adjective and has no gender)

In 9. Formally Arabic numbers are read right to left, i.e. we read the least significant digit first. Although very few people do this.

In 10. It is next to impossible to understand any written text which is a 1000 years by the average Joe, including the Qur'an

[idlewords]

2. About 41% of plurals in an Arabic corpus are broken (http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/acl2004/emnlp/pdf/Goweder.pdf). Since most feminine plurals are regular, this means most masculine plurals are not.

7. I don't know what makes you say this. Adjectives in Arabic agree in gender, number and case. The masculine of hadra' is ahdar.

10. This is true for the average Iosif, but if you study MSA (like American students invariably do) these texts really are accessible. A short sura from the Qur'an is taught in the second semester Arabic curriculum.

[saljam]

I'm a native Arabic speaker, and I agree with you on point 10. If you've learned formal Arabic properly - i.e. attended school - then even texts from the pre-islamic era should be accessible. (Mostly poems, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muallaqat)

However, there is a definite decline in the number of people who can fluently and eloquently use MLA. Keeping this (sad) trend in mind, you will definitely find native speakers who have trouble understanding not only the old texts, but even the more silver-tongued of the modern ones. This isn't unique to Arabic. Perhaps a parallel can be found in the constant confusion between the possessives and the abbreviated verbs with English pronouns even by native English speakers.

I'm not claiming that formal and eloquent Arabic is going to die any time soon, however the rise of movements such as Masry (http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8...) is a sure tell sign that maybe there aren't as many people speaking it as we thought there are.

And I believe something should be done about this.

[leviathan]

Re 7: In a way, you're both right.

Khadra' here is a form of plural, not the feminine of akhdar. The literal translation might be "she is green," but the correct translation is "the books are green." No native arabic speaker will think of the books as feminine while referring to them in plural, but in singular objects' gender is strangely ingrained in our minds:

kitab akhdar : green book (masculine)

tawila khadra' : green table (feminine)

[hasenj]

You're wrong on #7.

I'm a native Arabic speaker too.

First, khadra خضراء really is the femenine form of "green". The muscular form is akhdar اخضر

Second, it really is true that we use feminine forms when referring to multiple "it"s. You probably never consciously realized it, but think about it:

beautiful flowers ازهار جميلة

beautiful girls بنات جميلات

beautiful boys اولاد جميلون

Note how jameela is the singular feminine form of the adjective.

beautiful girl بنت جميلة

beautiful boy ولد جميل