A poet slips

[A. Katz]

Martin,

Language is a tool. People want to communicate and fit in. Ultimately, 
that's more important than the ornamental differences between one tool 
and another. As functionalists, we should be cognizant of that.

    --Aya

http://hubpages.com/hub/ISRAEL-The-Two-Halves-of-the-Nation


On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, Martin Haspelmath wrote:

> Could it be that linguists, who tend to be more interested in structural 
> forms, underestimate the social value of a particular form of a language?
>
> I'm a native speaker of a language (Common German of Germany) that didn't 
> have native speakers 150 years ago. It had a lot of social prestige, so the 
> southern dialects have been becoming more and more similar to it, and in 
> northern Germany, Low German (of which my father was still a semi-speaker) 
> has been abandoned in favour of the school language (which happened to be the 
> sacred language of protestantism). Nowadays there are millions of native 
> speakers oft this artificial language, whose front rounded ö and ü umlaut 
> vowels were kept alive by the spelling (the vernaculars lost them centuries 
> ago).
>
> From a linguist's point of view, this is a deplorable development, but the 
> speakers sometimes view things differently.
>
> Martin
>
> john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
>> Learning the classical language is like pulling teeth for Arabs kids also. 
>> They
>> just can't publicly say it because that would make them bad Arabs. It's 
>> just
>> ridiculous. I have an even better plan for the Jewish kids--teach them to 
>> use
>> the written version of the spoken language which Arab kids are using for
>> Facebook. That's how kids make friends these days anyway.
>> Best wishes,
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
>>
>> 
>>> When I learned to read Arabic on the kibbutz (Maabarot) as a child, our
>>> textbook was of written COLLOQUIAL Falastini Arabic. We never got to
>>> Classical (after 1949 things changed...).  That book may still exist,
>>> you might track it down. It was easy, a cinch really. I concluded it was
>>> really just Hebrew with a few trivial transformations in Phonology &
>>> Grammar. (I was 7 years old & a bit naive then). Then 7 years ago I sat
>>> on a few sessions of a faculty study group at UO who were trying to
>>> learn Arabic (post 9/11...)--from a Classical Koranic grammar book. Boy,
>>> it was like pullin' teeth. But Leonard Bloomfield said it already, and
>>> well, in 1939 (or was it 1943?).
>>> Cheers,  TG
>>> 
>>> ==============
>>> 
>>> 
>>> john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Tom,
>>>> I've been trying for several years to get Israeli Arabs and Jews to
>>>> 
>>> seriously
>>> 
>>>> consider the possibility of educating Israeli Arabs in a written version 
>>>> of
>>>> their spoken language, as you suggest, at least through 3rd grade. I can
>>>> 
>>> send
>>> 
>>>> you some things I've written on this topic, with a lot of 
>>>> cross-linguistic
>>>> data. But thus far, it isn't working. As with most aspects of 'the
>>>> 
>>> situation'
>>> 
>>>> here, politically active Arabs think that the solution is to pursue the
>>>> 
>>> same
>>> 
>>>> self-destructive strategy which they've been following for almost a 
>>>> century
>>>> 
>>> but
>>> 
>>>> with even more vigor and steadfastness (e.g. Masalha points the blame at
>>>> 
>>> the
>>> 
>>>> Arab media because they do not 'provide the linguistic richness of formal
>>>> Arabic') while Jews are basically content to let the Arabs stew in their
>>>> 
>>> own
>>> 
>>>> juices so that they can reap the benefits. There may, however, be hope 
>>>> for
>>>> 
>>> the
>>> 
>>>> future in the form of the radically increased usage of written forms of
>>>> colloquial Arabic dialects in electronic media such as Facebook, blogs,
>>>> 
>>> emails,
>>> 
>>>> etc., by Arabic speakers below the age of 30, which will soon come to
>>>> 
>>> seriously
>>> 
>>>> threaten the status of classical Arabic in the same way that the 
>>>> invention
>>>> 
>>> of
>>> 
>>>> the printing press overturned the linguistic hierarchy in Western Europe 
>>>> by
>>>> overthrowing Latin. I'm working on this too. We'll see what happens.
>>>> 
>>>> I realize that Masalha as well as the researchers he referred to don't
>>>> necessarily know what they're talking about regarding the brain. But the
>>>> general point is still potentially significant--that the connected script
>>>> 
>>> which
>>> 
>>>> Arabic uses as well as the multiple forms which many Arabic letters have
>>>> 
>>> may be
>>> 
>>>> a significant obstacle to literacy, however this may be related to
>>>> 
>>> processes in
>>> 
>>>> the brain.
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
>>>> 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>                                       A GREAT POET CAN STILL GET IT 
>>>>> WRONG
>>>>>
>>>>>          I  came  to know of Salman Masalha ("Arabs, speak Hebrew!",
>>>>> Haaretz/English, International  Herald  Tribune  9-27-10) accidentally
>>>>> by stumbling a on his truly  great quote:
>>>>>                "All fixed identities are imposed from the outside.
>>>>>                  Whoever  has a clear identity knows it can assume
>>>>> multiple forms".
>>>>> In the context  of Palestine/Israel, what a breath of  fresh, rare
>>>>> clarity.  Still, like the rest of us mortals, a  great poet can on
>>>>> occasion get it wrong  too, and Mr. Masalha--may he be forgiven; pun
>>>>> intended--surely got only one third of the story right. At first, he was
>>>>> led astray be the academic researchers he cited, who claimed that the
>>>>> lagging reading skills of  Israeli-Arab students is correlated  to
>>>>> lagging  R-hemisphere  activity,  then explained this neurological lag
>>>>> by suggesting that the Arab script requires more contextual analysis.
>>>>> But  it is the R-hemisphere of the human cortex that is more context
>>>>> oriented, less automated. If Arab-reading students required more
>>>>> contextual labor, it should have been registered as a higher
>>>>> R-hemisphere activity, not lower.
>>>>>           Works by M. Posner, S. Petersen, M. Raichle and S. Dahane,
>>>>> among  many others, have established  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that
>>>>> written words in all languages (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Amharic,
>>>>> Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) are  decoded automatically in an L-hemisphere
>>>>> module on the boundary of the occipital and temporal lobes (just past
>>>>> Brodman's Area 19), along the ventral visual object-recognition
>>>>> 'stream'  that flows  from the back to the front of the L-cortex. And
>>>>> the L-cortex is in general responsible for  the more automated--less
>>>>> context-dependent--processing of language (as  well as visual, motor and
>>>>> other skills). The visual word-recognition module is,  in turn,
>>>>> recruited  from  the pre-existing  visual object-recognition
>>>>> ventral-stream  module. A considerable amount of life-time practice and
>>>>> repetition is required to affect this late-cultural adaptation. The
>>>>> human brain is not (yet) genetically configured  at birth for
>>>>> visual-word recognition, only for visual-object recognition. A similar
>>>>> cultural adaptation, this one for math, has been shown for (Dahaene &
>>>>> Cohen, 2007; see recent article in The New Yorker by Oliver Sachs)
>>>>> in the L-pareita lobe, an area originally configured for analysis of
>>>>> object-location in space.
>>>>>               Mr. Masalha  then, on his own, points out to a more
>>>>> plausible right answer: Arab students, in Israel as well as all over the
>>>>> Arab world, are  not  taught literacy in  their native language
>>>>> (Falastini, Maghrebi, Masri, Yemeni, etc.), but in a frozen literary
>>>>> instrument harking back 1,400  years or more. That is, in a foreign
>>>>> language. The discrepancy would be  just as great  if  Israeli kids were
>>>>> taught  their Hebrew literacy  first in the language of Genesis; or if
>>>>> French  students  were taught literacy  first in the language of  La
>>>>> Chanחon de Roland, Guilhome de Machaut, or Chrך tien de Troyes. Or
>>>>> English-speaking  kids in the language  of Beowolf. As far as my frail
>>>>> guessing powers go,  remedying the situation would be much easier by
>>>>> combining two well-known verities of second language acquisition: (a)
>>>>> Teach them  both early, together--'co-ordinated bilingualism'. And (b),
>>>>> teach literacy first in the student's spoken native language; only then
>>>>> gradually 'stretch' it to more literary genres.  This method, bhy the
>>>>> way,  was suggested in the late 1930's by no other than  L. Bloomfield,
>>>>> in a book outlining a  'phonics-first ' literacy  program for native
>>>>> English speakers. Rather than depriving Israeli-Arab students of
>>>>> literacy in their own--equally glorious--native language, just teach
>>>>> them smart.
>>>>>                For  his last culprit, the presumed--tho  hardly
>>>>> unique--vulgarity  of Arab media, Mr. Masalha lapses into well
>>>>> recognized  prejudices of  the educated classes. While readily endorsing
>>>>> his aesthetic sentiments about modern media, I would still like to point
>>>>> out that the 'vulgar' genre is  much closer to the Arab students'
>>>>> spoken native language, and  if anything should facilitate the easier
>>>>> initial acquisition of  native-language literacy. Respectuosamente,
>>>>> ma'-salaam,
>>>>> 
>>>>>
>>>>>                                                       T. Givףn
>>>>> 
>>>>>
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>>>>
>>>>
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
>>
>> 
>
>
> -- 
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
> Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 
> D-04103 Leipzig      Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
>
>
>
>
>
>