[wara23arish]

Im arab myself, hence the username :)

What I find fascinating myself is that no on actually speaks MSA, modern standard arabic. It is mostly used for written text that is meant to last? We dont text in standard arabic at all. Its used in government forms/legal documents etc..

This makes it such a challenge to teach ppl arabic since many books use MSA which can often sound alien to native speakers.

[TheFreim]

> which can often sound alien to native speakers.

Do you mean alien in terms of being an unusual accent or that it's hard to understand?

[wara23arish]

Very unusual accent. If you speak in MSA, I have to hold myself from laughing usually.

There are also definitely some words that I’ve never of that arent common in local dialects.

[an_aparallel]

MSA is used in newspaper, news reading and Quran is it not? (35 year migrated Aussie Palestinian here)