Excerpts from Franck Salameh's "Does anyone speak Arabic?"
A groundbreaking article, that references
more than it states, yes, but it brings together ideas that I have never
thought of before.
**
STATEMENT 1:
Arabic is not a single, uniform language. It is, on the one
hand, a codified, written standard that is never spoken natively and that is
accessible only to those who have had rigorous training in it. On the other
hand, Arabic is also a multitude of speech forms, contemptuously referred to as
“dialects,” differing from each other and from the standard language itself to
the same extent that French is different from other Romance languages and from
Latin.
COMMENT 1:
What a language!
**
STATEMENT 2:
Monolingualism is no more a precondition or motivation for
cultural and ethnic cohesiveness than multilingualism constitutes grounds for
national incoherence and loss of a common identity. Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welsh,
and Jamaicans are all native English-speakers but not Englishmen.
COMMENT 2:
A Jamaican has no identity crisis, he is simply Jamaican. His
accent and patois, his ska and reggae and dub and dancehall, his
Rastafarianism, his mainstream Protestant faith, the beautiful island that he
calls home, is how the world sees him. And in some or all of that, he takes
pride. He or she is usually full of life and vigor, and is not affected by
neurosis or sensitivity to his own dignity. If you asked him where he is
originally from, he’ll tell you either from common folklore that he is from
mother Africa, or he’ll tell you about a DNA test he took to figure out his
ancestry; and he won’t lie about the results, which usually points to West
African nations. However, he never calls himself an Englishman simply because
he speaks English, and never calls himself half-English, or talks about his “English
composition and African composition”*, despite Jamaicans having trace
Anglo-Saxon and European mixture!
*would be extremely depressing and frustrating to hear a
Jamaican talk like that. That is our reality.
**
STATEMENT 3:
Even Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the fourteenth-century Muslim
jurist and polymath and arguably the father of modern sociology, wrote in his
famous 1377 Prolegomena that only the language of Quraish—the Prophet Muhammad’s
tribe—should be deemed true Arabic; that native Arabs learn this speech form
naturally and spontaneously; and that this language became corrupt and ceased
being Arabic when it came into contact with non-Arabs and assimilated their
linguistic habits. Therefore, he argued, “the language of Quraish is the
soundest and purest Arabic precisely due to its remoteness from the lands of
non-Arabs—Persians, Byzantines, and Abyssinians … whose languages are used as
examples by Arab philologists to demonstrate the dialects’ distance from, and
perversion of, Arabic.”
COMMENT 3:
Little wonder that Sudanese Arabic is one of the most corrupted
languages in the Arab world, if our lands belong to that part of the world.
Arabic in itself is a language group, much like Slavic and
Bantu. And in the group are Mudar (the language of Muhammad), Dhofari, Socotri
and a few other remnants. Today, the Mudar dominates the rest, and all that’s
left are a few languages. Why? Because Muhammad dominated the entire Arabian
peninsula by AD 632.
Gulf Arabic is a dialect of the standard Mudar, influenced by
the native Nabatean language; just like Southern Levantine Arabic and Egyptian
Arabic. It is like a Frenchman speaking English, that is, with a French accent,
and with numerous phrases and mannerisms brought over into his English speech.
The Gulf Arabic of Kuwait and Qatar and the Emirates is highly arcane to those
who don’t speak it, in addition to being unpleasant to listen to. I struggle to
understand an Emirati when he speaks in Arabic.
Yemeni Arabic is a dialect group, as the dialect in Ta’izz is
very different from the one spoken in Aden is very different from the one
spoken in Hadramawt. What fascinates me is the words they use to express
themselves. Baghä (want – simple past verb) becomes 3äyiz (I am in
need of – noun derived from verb “3äza”) and Däyir (I am looking for -
noun derived from verb “dawwara”); S.ära (become) is replaced by Bigat
(to remain – used as “to become”); Shinou (what) is used instead of the
Hejazi Eysh or Wesh; kida (like it) is used frequently
like a preposition; and so on. Those dialects are corrupt by Mudar standards,
because the Yemenis who submitted to Islam during Muhammad’s lifetime spoke
languages of their own, Arabic languages.
And in the same manner, the Levantine dialect cluster is Mudar
spoken by a speaker of Aramaic, as is Iraqi Arabic. Egyptian Arabic, however,
is a Yemeni dialect spoken by former speakers of Coptic. It is probably the
most corrupted dialect after Sudanese and Tchadian Arabic, both Yemeni dialects
as well.
Sudanese Arabic should be called Nubian Arabic. It is one
of Yemen’s dialects spoken by a Nubian, that is, with a Nubian twist, with many
words and phrases imported from old Nubian dialects. It spread to Darfur and
Tchad, creating Tchadian Arabic, Nubian Arabic with a Fur and Zaghawa twist;
and to South Sudan as a lingua franca, creating Juba Arabic, that is
Nubian Arabic as spoken by a Dinka, Nuer or Shilluk. To my surprise, a few Beja
clans speak Nubian Arabic as a first language.
Aa-y is the Sudanese Arabic word for yes, which
in Nöbïn corresponds to Eyyo. It comes from an old Nubian dialect no
doubt, and is a source of amusement and mockery from other Arabic speakers. Still,
they can’t pronounce it properly like we do. Zöl (man) is the hallmark
word of Sudanese Arabic, so much that Gulf Arabs call us zoal instead of
rajjäl (their word for man). Kadïsa, the Sudanese Arabic for cat,
comes from the Nöbïn kadïs. Samih. (nice or pleasant) and Samh.a
(beautiful and pretty) come from tasämuh. (tolerance and forgiveness), and
the two former words are not found anywhere in the Arab world, to my knowledge.
I fancy that it is a remnant of our pre-Islamic ancestors.
Bani Juhayn and Bani Abbas lived and were allowed in live and
Alodia and Makuria by Nubian kings, who for sure at one point softened towards
Arabs. The last names al-Abbasi and al-Juhani, as well as well as many other
Yemeni and Hejazi last names, are found all over historical Nubia and Gezira. These
two tribes originated from south Yemen. So little wonder about our dialect.
And for a language to improve, it must import words from time to
time. What the Arabs don’t understand is that language is a means of
expression, and expression is not an end in itself, and therefore language is
not an end in itself. And the spoken and written manifestation of language,
that uses words to compose sentences to express outer reality and inner
feelings, must submit to reality and inner form. Window dressing entire sentences
while saying nothing useful is not the way to expression.
**
STATEMENT 4:
In 1929, Tawfiq Awan had already begun making similar arguments,
maintaining that the demotics of the Middle East—albeit arguably related to
Arabic—were languages in their own right, not mere dialects of Arabic: “Egypt
has an Egyptian language; Lebanon has a Lebanese language; the Hijaz has a
Hijazi language; and so forth—and all of these languages are by no means Arabic
languages. Each of our countries has a language, which is its own possession:
So why do we not write [our language] as we converse in it? For, the language
in which the people speak is the language in which they also write.”
[…] Even Taha Hussein (1889-1973), the doyen of modern Arabic belles lettres, had come to
this very same conclusion by 1938. In his The
Future of
Culture in Egypt,14 he made a sharp distinction between
what he viewed to be Arabic tout court—that is, the classical and modern standard form of the
language—and the sundry, spoken vernaculars in use in his contemporary native
Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East. For Egyptians, Arabic is virtually a
foreign language, wrote Hussein: Nobody speaks it at home, [in] school, [on]
the streets, or in clubs; it is not even used in [the] Al-Azhar [Islamic
University] itself. People everywhere speak a language that is definitely not
Arabic, despite the partial resemblance to it.
COMMENT 4:
Until 2012, I have in my life ever heard an Egyptian man speak
in Standard Arabic. Whatever the situation, no matter how formal, he spoke in
Egyptian Arabic. Hosni Mubarak spoke in Egyptian Arabic, the sheikh of al-Azhar
University speaks in Egyptian Arabic, the person on the street speaks in
Egyptian Arabic, and media from music to soap operas to punditry is expressed
whenever possible in Egyptian Arabic. The only Egyptians who use Standard
Arabic consistently for formal settings are the Salafi sheikhs, that is, Arab
wannabes. I have heard attempts by Egyptians to speak in Standard Arabic, and
it comes out as a hodge-podge of Egyptian and Standard Arabic. I have also
never heard an Egyptian pronounce the letter ‘j’ in the Arabic language, and in
speaking other languages, the French ‘j’ comes out instead.
But strangely, when they write anything, on a book or newspaper
or a piece of paper, or read their constitution or laws out loud, they do so in
Standard Arabic!
And Taha Hussein is right. The difference between English spoken
at home and spoken in parliament is choice of words, even if one must use a
sweeter accent in parliament. There isn’t one language for home and one
language for the classroom.
**
STATEMENT 5:
Taha Hussein ascribed the decay and abnegation of the Arabic
language primarily to its “inability of expressing the depths of one’s feelings
in this new age.” He wrote in 1956 that MSA is “difficult and grim, and the
pupil who goes to school in order to study Arabic acquires only revulsion for
his teacher and for the language, and employs his time in pursuit of any other occupations
that would divert and soothe his thoughts away from this arduous effort … Pupils
hate nothing more than they hate studying Arabic.”
COMMENT 5:
Learning Arabic is torment and anguish. Five minutes into the
lesson, one is abused and humiliated several times by the teacher, because like
a bloodthirsty human-sacrifice-demanding Mayan deity, the language must be
revered by people who are still learning the language, by not making mistakes
while they learn to speak it! (I am seething in rage right now, so hold on.) I
would recommend learning the language from an Israeli teacher, and good if he
is an Arab, than from someone who is filled with rage and terror, and abuses
and mocks his own students for mishandling his hollow vase-like language. Really,
find a European linguist who specializes on the language, or an Israeli
teacher, and let him/er teach you Arabic. Plus, I’d learn Nöbïn, a Nubian dialect
similar to the one spoken by my ancestors, and one which I naturally gravitate
towards.
**
STATEMENT 6:
[…]In a recent article published in Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz, acclaimed
Druze poet and academic Salman Masalha called on Israel’s Education Ministry to
do away with the country’s public school system’s Arabic curricula and demanded
its replacement with Hebrew and English course modules. Arabophone Israelis
taught Arabic at school, like Arabophones throughout the Middle East, were
actually taught a foreign tongue misleadingly termed Arabic, wrote Masalha:
“The mother tongue [that people] speak at home is totally different from the …
Arabic [they learn] at school; [a situation] that perpetuates linguistic
superficiality [and] leads to intellectual superficiality … It’s not by chance
that not one Arab university is [ranked] among the world’s best 500
universities. This finding has nothing to do with Zionism.”
COMMENT 6:
Is it easier and more convenient to learn Hebrew or English?
Well.
**
STATEMENT 7: THE RESULT OF
ARABO-CLUSTER-*&^%
To wit, the 2003 report noted that the Arabic language is
struggling to meet the challenges of modern times [and] is facing [a] severe …
and real crisis in theorization, grammar, vocabulary, usage, documentation,
creativity, and criticism … The most apparent aspect of this crisis is the growing
neglect of the functional aspects of [Arabic] language use. Arabic language
skills in everyday life have deteriorated, and Arabic … has in effect ceased to
be a spoken language. It is only the language of reading and writing; the
formal language of intellectuals and academics, often used to display knowledge
in lectures … [It] is not the language of cordial, spontaneous expression,
emotions, daily encounters, and ordinary communication. It is not a vehicle for
discovering one’s inner self or outer surroundings.
[…] Yet, from all source-languages combined, the Arab world’s
330 million people translated a meager
330 books per year; that is, “one fifth of the number [of books] translated in
Greece [home to 12 million Greeks].” Indeed, from the times of the Caliph
al-Ma’mun (ca. 800 CE) to the beginnings of the twenty-first century, the “Arab
world” had translated a paltry 10,000 books: the equivalent of what Spain
translates in a single year.
**
STATEMENT 8:
In a metaphor reminiscent of Musa’s description of the Arabic
language, Shubashy compared MSA users to “ambling cameleers from the past,
contesting highways with racecar drivers hurtling towards modernity and
progress. …But perhaps the most devastating blow that Shubashy dealt the Arabic
language was his description of the lahja
and fusha
(or dialect vs. MSA) dichotomy as
“linguistic schizophrenia.”
For although
Arabs spoke their individual countries’ specific, vernacular languages while at
home, at work, on the streets, or in the marketplace, the educated among them
were constrained to don a radically different linguistic personality and make
use of an utterly different speech form when reading books and newspapers,
watching television, listening to the radio, or drafting formal, official
reports.
…[Shubasi notes that]…Why was it that
Spaniards, Frenchmen, Americans, and many more of the world’s transparent and
linguistically nimble societies, needed to use only a single, native language
for both their acquisition of knowledge and grocery shopping whereas Arabs were
prevented from reading and writing in the same language that they use for their
daily mundane needs?
[THE REACTION:]
As a consequence of the firestorm unleashed
by his book, Shubashy, an Egyptian journalist and news anchor and, at one time,
the Paris bureau-chief of the Egyptian al-Ahram news group, was forced to resign his post as Egypt’s deputy
minister of culture in 2006. The book caused so much controversy to a point
that the author and his work were subjected to a grueling cross-examination in
the Egyptian parliament where, reportedly, scuffles erupted between supporters
and opponents of Shubashy’s thesis. In the end, the book was denounced as an
affront to Arabs and was ultimately banned. Shubashy himself was accused of
defaming the Arabic language in rhetoric mimicking a “colonialist discourse.”
A deputy in the Egyptian
parliament—representing Alexandria, Shubashy’s native city—accused the author
of “employing the discourse and argumentation of a colonialist occupier,
seeking to replace the Arab identity with [the occupier’s] own identity and
culture.”
Ahmad Fuad Pasha, advisor to the president
of Cairo University, argued that the book “was added proof that, indeed, the
Zionist-imperialist conspiracy is a glaring reality,”
Muhammad Ahmad Achour wrote in Egypt’s Islamic Standard that Shubashy
has taken his turn aiming another arrow at the heart of the Arabic language.
Yet, the powers that seek to destroy our language have in fact another goal in
mind: The ultimate aim of their conspiracy is none other than the Holy Qur’an
itself, and to cause Muslims to eventually lose their identity and become
submerged into the ocean of globalization.
Even former Egyptian president Husni
Mubarak felt compelled to take a potshot at Shubashy in a speech delivered on Laylat al-Qadr, November 9,
2004, the anniversary of the night that Sunni Muslims believe the Prophet
Muhammad received his first Qur’anic
revelation. Mubarak warned, “I must caution the Islamic religious
scholars against the calls that some are sounding for the modernization of the
Islamic religion, so as to ostensibly make it evolve, under the pretext of
attuning it to the dominant world order of “modernization” and “reform.” This
trend has led recently to certain initiatives calling for the modification of
Arabic vocabulary and grammar; the modification of God’s chosen language no
less; the holy language in which he revealed his message to the Prophet.”
…
**
STATEMENT 9:
[…] ...Husri who, as early as 1955, had already been calling for
the creation of a “middle Arabic language” and a crossbreed fusing MSA and
vernacular speech forms: “|MSA is the preserve of a small, select number of
educated people, few of whom bother using it as a speech form. Conversely, what
we refer to as “dialectal Arabic” is in truth a bevy of languages differing
markedly from one country to the other, with vast differences often within the
same country, if not within the same
city and neighborhood … Needless to say, this pathology contradicts the
exigencies of a sound, wholesome national life! [And given] that true nations
deserving of the appellation require a single common and unifying national
language … [the best solution I can foresee to our national linguistic
quandary] would be to inoculate the dialectal languages with elements of MSA …
so as to forge a new “middle MSA” and diffuse it to the totality of Arabs …This
is our best hope, and for the time being, the best palliative until such a day
when more lasting and comprehensive advances can be made towards instating the
final, perfected, integral MSA.”
COMMENT 9:
I realized that my own dialect, Nubian Arabic, is seaming with
potential, that is, to become an eloquent language for higher expression, with
more vivid descriptions and more subtle statements. However, I wish to learn a
surviving dialect of Nubian, and develop that one instead, into a higher Nubian
language, borrowing from Coptic and Greek, and using the former Greek letters
instead of Arabic ones (which is extremely impractical). If that cannot be
done, we’ll have to stick with Arabic instead.
**
WORD OF THANKS:
I am indebted to Hanibaal Atheos for name-dropping Franck
Salameh. Most of the article consists of references to other works, yet the
article in itself is groundbreaking and revolutionary. I have never viewed the
Arabic language in such light, and I know now for sure, that the Egyptian Taha
Hussein deserves his great name.
