Arabic-L:GEN:response to American Diplomacy article

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 30 Oct 2002
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1) Subject:response to American Diplomacy article on Arabic

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1)
Date:  30 Oct 2002
From: Michael Fishbein <fishbein at humnet.ucla.edu>
Subject:response to American Diplomacy article on Arabic

I looked up Curtis F. Jones' article, "The Arabic Language: Its Place
in the Middle East's Culture and Politics," cited in arabic-l on 22 Oct
2002

--http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2002_07-09/
jones_arabic/jones_arabic.html

What I found was quite curious. I can only hope no one is recommending
the article as an introduction to non-specialists. Although the
author's concluding sentiments are laudable -- "Surely the evolution of
a universal form of Arabic will help attenuate the endemic inter-Arab
discord and promote the spirit of commonality on which the well-being
of any region of the world depends" -- and he includes some pleasant
anecdotes, there are so many historical errors and judgments of dubious
validity studded through the article that the article could best serve
as a test for students to discover and correct its errors.

Here are a few amusing examples.

"Early Egyptian was one of the many offshoots of the Semitic language
family."

In Mesopotamia, [Aramaic] was the medium for the dissemination of the
epic of Gilgamesh."

"In 1071 the Seljuk Turks completed the conquest of Anatolia up to the
walls of Constantinople. Most of the previous inhabitants abandoned
Christianity for Islam and Turkish for Greek."

There are gross oversimplifications of complex issues:

"[The] political and cultural influence [of Hebrew] is greatly enhanced
by Israel's full membership in the community of advanced societies. The
other countries of the Middle East are largely mired in medieval habits
of thought and autocratic systems of government."

Finally, there are the examples that do not prove what they are alleged
to prove, for example:

"Arabic provides a pointed example of Arab society's ingrained
discrimination between males and females. The masculine noun "ghazi"
means "warlord" -- a prestigious occupation in that culture. Converted
to the feminine "ghaziyah," the term assumes an appropriately
subservient woman's role -- 'dancing girl.'"

Most languages with grammatical gender can provide similar examples.
Even English can do so. When the Anglicans began to ordain women as
priests, the new female clergy were called "priests," not
"priestesses," because of the pagan and negative connotations of the
feminine form of the English word. These  connotations could be taken
as evidence of English society's "ingrained discrimination," but that
would be to overestimate the importance of language in impeding change.
When a majority of Anglicans decided that the time had come for women
priests, they were not held back by the history of English. Likewise
Arabic speakers: when they decide that women can be warlords (to use an
unfortunate example) they will find a way to make them warlords,
regardless of what they may call them. The instances in which the
Arabic feminine form of a word has negative connotations are hardly
more numerous than the English "priest/priestess" contrast: one has to
search hard to find them.

--
Michael Fishbein, Undergraduate Advisor
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
376 Kinsey Hall, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1511
voice: (310) 206-2229         fax: (310) 206-6456

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End of Arabic-L:  30 Oct 2002