Arabic-L:PEDA:jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab responses

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 12 Apr 2000
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1) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response
2) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response
3) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response
4) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response
5) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response
6) Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

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1)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: Tim Buckwalter <tbuckwalter at tegic.com>
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

Benjamin:

This issue (and many others) are discussed in much detail in a book by Clive
Holes:
"Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties." (London: Longman,
1994).
I highly recommend it.

Tim Buckwalter

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2)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: Waheed Samy <wasamy at umich.edu>
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

There are indeed several Arabics of all flavors.  The differences
are especially clear in the sounds.  Modern standard Arabic is influenced
by colloquials.

Waheed

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3)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: Muallam at aol.comv
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

I would dismiss that as Egyptian confidence.

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4)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: dwilmsen <dwilmsen at aucegypt.edu>
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

The term "dialect" as it was originally used referred to the regional
variations in literary Greek.  So, in that sense, a dialectology of MSA is
quite appropriate.

I have just returned from Morocco where I have noticed a difference in the
lexis of the Arabic of newspapers.

There is a small body of work done with regional variations in MSA (and I
indeed do like to call them dialects of MSA - I think we as a profession ought
to adopt the term), mostly done by Dil Parkinson and Zeinab Ibrahim (or at
least so far as I am aware).

Dr. David Wilmsen

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5)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: aziz abbassi <moustique51 at hotmail.com>v
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

Strictly speaking, there can only be ONE MSA.
Your TA may be speaking about the surface realization of the same 'sound
system' by different groups of speakers (i.e., at the level of
"langue-parole" dichotomy). I am not sure whether this teacher is aware of
this phenomenon nicely addressed by Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah way before
de Saussure and Chomsky -- of course.
And It seems to me though that the 'slips' found in  al-Kitab by the
Egyptian narrator(s) would not be encountered if the person(s) were to
read/recite Quranic verses.

On the other hand if your TA is an avid 'dialectologist' or a sociolinguist,
then they are speaking a different language altogether
--no pun intended-- The question to ask perhaps (the TA and the
'traditionists') is: when are these MSA's (or dialects) going to demand
their independence at last?
Aziz Abbassi

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6)
Date: 12 Apr 2000
From: Dilworth Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject: jiim/giim in Al-Kitaab response

>>From an ideological point of view, there is no MSA dialectology by
definition.  From a sociolinguistic point of view, there are some
(admittedly minor, but still salient) differences in the ways MSA is used
in various countries, at least on the phonological and lexical levels.
>>From a pedogogical point of view, the question is one of authenticity, and
exposing students to what they are going to encounter when they are thrown
into real-life Arabic.  Even if one limits oneself and one's students
entirely to MSA (say to news broadcasts), even a little experience in the
Middle East will bring up rampant variability in the ways certain phonemes
are pronounced and the way certain words are used.  In Egypt you don't JUST
here /giim/ in news broadcasts, and you don't JUST hear /jiim/.  You hear
them both.  No matter what one makes of this from the ideological or
sociolinguistic (or other) points of view (dismissing might be appropriate
there) it certainly doesn't seem very appropriate to dismiss this
phenomenon from the pedagogical point of view.  How long can we keep this
from our students?  Should we insist that they never travel to the Middle
East or listen to authentic broadcasts so as to protect them from this kind
of mixed performance?
Certainly dialect confidence plays a role in the use of /g/ for /j/ in
Egyptian MSA, but a look at any of the mass of sociolinguistic data from
the last few decades indicates that the situation is a good deal more
complicated than that. (If nothing else, the whole idea of dialect
confidence only comes up in a cross-dialectal context.  For many Egyptians,
this variable situation is just the way it is, and would never be conceived
of as having anything to do with how Arabs from other regions perceive
them.  Matched guise experiements have demonstrated that for many Egyptians
the /g/ pronunciation is not heard as 'colloquial influence' but rather as
an acceptable, less religiously oriented fusha pronunciation of the
phoneme.)  Further, it would be a mistake to not look at similar variable
phenomena in the spoken MSA of other areas, most specifically the use of
/zh/ for /j/, variably of course, in newscasts from many parts of the Arab
World.  There are frankly many features of many dialects which locally
influence the majority of spoken MSA performances in those regions.  The
idea that the phenomenon is limited to Egypt is simply wrong.

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End of Arabic-L: 12 Apr 2000