Arabic-L:LING:Foreigner Talk References

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 08 Feb 2001
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1) Subject: Foreigner Talk References

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1)
Date: 08 Feb 2001
From: mushira eid <mushira.eid at m.cc.utah.edu>
Subject: Foreigner Talk References

There is an article on Foreigner Talk by Adel Tweissi in Perspectives on
Arabic Linguistics II (1990), edited by Mushira Eid and John McCarthy and
published by John Benjamins in Amsterdam.

Mushira Eid

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2)
Date: 08 Feb 2001
From: Kirk Belnap <rkb at email.byu.edu>
Subject: Foreigner Talk References

Here's what came up in a search of the ALS Bibliography (which hasn't been
updated for five years or so--all of these should have some connection to
Arabic):

Abu-Nahleh, Lamice. 1982. The scope and function of language repair in
foreigner discourse. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin - Utrecht 6(1):112-20.

Abunahleh, Lamice and others. 1981. The Scope and Function of Language
Repair in Foreigner Discourse. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin 6(1):112-120.

Jaworski, Adam. 1985. A 'Macro Scale' Attitudes to the foreigner's
language. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 20:135-40.

Tweissi, Adel Issa. 1987. Language simplification in foreigner talk and
second language development. Ph.D., University of Michigan.

Tweissi, Adel L. 1990. 'Foreigner Talk': Evidence for the universality of
language simplification. Perspective on Arabic Linguistics II, ed. by
Mushira Eid and John McCarthy, 296-326. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.

And here are two old Arabic-L postings of note:

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Arabic-L: Wed 27 Jul 1994
Subject: fem/masc
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <parkinsonD at yvax.byu.edu> [To post messages
to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]

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1) Subject: fem/masc

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Date: 27 Jul 1994
From: Martha Schulte-Nafeh <MSNAFEH at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Subject: fem/masc

When I lived in Cairo I was also adressed on occasion as "anta". In particular
I remember one incident when a ba'aal said to me "anta kwayyis?" My
interpretation of this phenomenon is/was that this was a kind of foreigner
talk. In other words, there seems to exist a register in Egyptian Arabic
that
encodes the stereotypical mistakes that foreigners make when speaking EA such
as overgeneralizing the masc forms to cover both masc. and fem. This kind of
simplification would indeed be predicted from second language learners of
Arabic. It's interesting that Egyptians are so accomodating when speaking to
foreigners that they will even make the same mistakes they do in the interest
of communication. Another example of this was related to me by my Arabic
teacher, Adel Gamal. He once overheard a foreigner ask the following
question:
	'amsik alautobiis feen?
wanting to know where to catch the bus and translating that idiom literally
into Arabic. The interesting thing was that the Egyptian responded with:
	'timsik alautobiis hinaak"
reinforcing the "mistake" if you will.
I have no doubt that the motivation for speaking to foreigners in a kind of
broken Arabic is a positive one but it does make you wonder if this can
interfere with the learning process. My guess is that it would not do so
seriously because in extended conversation it probably is not maintained. I
have heard this "khawaga Arabic" phenomenon referred to previously but have
never heard of any systematic study of it. Sounds to me like a great masters
thesis topic for someone in the TAFL program at AUC. Perhaps its already been
done.
	Another example of khawaga Arabic: (again from Dr. Gamal)
	foreigner: antu maftuHiin lighaayet imta? 	shop keeper: iHna
maftuhiin lighaayet xamsa. the correct lexical item in this exchange would
be "fatHiin" apparently.

It seems though that the fact that this kind of foreigner talk register exists
means that non-native speakers doing research on EA need to be very careful
about interpreting utterances addressed to them. They may or may not be be
indicative of the regularities of the speakers native dialect. Peace,
Martha
**************************************************************************** **
Martha Schulte-Nafeh
Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Second Lang. Acquisition and Teaching
Modern Languages Bldg. Rm. 445
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
e-mail: msnafeh at ccit.arizona.edu
or:	msnafeh at arizvms.bitnet
**************************************************************************** **
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End of Arabic-L: 27 Jul 1994

Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 16:11:13 -0600 (MDT)
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Subject: Arabic-L:LING:fem/masc
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Arabic-L: Wed 27 Jul 1994
Subject: fem/masc
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <parkinsonD at yvax.byu.edu>
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1) Subject: fem/masc

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1)
Date: 27 Jul 1994
From: Nicholas Heer <heer at u.washington.edu>
Subject: fem/masc

	Martha Schulte-Nafeh's experience in Cairo seems to have been very
similar to my own when I was living there in the fifties.  Egyptians
tended to speak to me in what they called khawagati, which was a sort of
pidgin Arabic spoken by and to foreigners.  Cairo was full of foreigners
in those days and khawagati was very common.  In khawagati distinctions
between masculine and feminine were more or less nonexistent.  I picked up
many expressions used by Egyptians when speaking to me, which I was later
told by friends and teachers were khawagati expressions and not Egyptian
Arabic.  It made learning Egyptian Arabic harder than it needed to be
since for a while I had to unlearn almost as many expressions as I was
learning. I wish I could remember some of those expressions now.

					Nicholas Heer

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