Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First
Dilworth Parkinson
dilworth_parkinson at BYU.EDU
Mon Jul 2 18:19:13 UTC 2007
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Arabic-L: Moni 01 Jul 2007
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1) Subject:Colloquial First
2) Subject:Colloquial First
3) Subject:Colloquial First
4) Subject:Colloquial First
5) Subject:Colloquial First
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1)
Date: 01 Jul 2007
From:Waheed Samy <wasamy at umich.edu>
Subject:Colloquial First
May I suggest bringing into this discussion specific linguistic
features in this discussion:
Lexicon
Morphology
Syntax
Phonology
For example, is there a reason that the relative pronoun illi should
not be introduced?
How about words like haaza, as opposed to hadha?
And what about the "bi" prefixed to the imperfective verb?
Arabic is quite often not even diglossic, rather it displays hybrid
qualities from the above linguistic features --so much so that one
is at times at a loss as to whether some spoken utterances are purely
standard or colloquial.
Waheed
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2)
Date: 01 Jul 2007
From:"Schub, Michael B." <Michael.Schub at trincoll.edu>
Subject:Colloquial First
Dear Colleagues,
The comments supporting the teaching of (some) dialect, before or
together with MSA, by Profs. Wilmsen and Mughazy, are all well taken.
Yet no one has mentioned the TEACHING TIME LIMITATION we have during
the regular academic year; and no one has dared to make an estimate
as to how many hours of CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION it would take a student
to become competent to dicipher today's Arabic newspaper (with the
aid of a dictionary; and with virtually NO ORAL INPUT) with
reasonable competence. Let me put myself out on a limb: If first and
second year Arabic are given as 5 hours/week classes, and third year
Arabic is the (vanilla) 3 hour/week class, (after more than a quarter
century in this business), I think that that it would take even the
most gifted of non-Arabic speaking students a minimum of three years
of MSA study to read the daily news (with the aid of a dictionary
[of which there exists NONE which is even remotely up-to-date]). Not
to mention the INTRODUCTION TO ARABIC LITERATURE, and the genius of
ARABIC CULTURE. Vishnu created summer vacations for Middlebury and
the Arabic dialects (all of which, as a linguist, I recognize as
fully developed and full-fledged independent LANGUAGES). Mike Schub
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3)
Date: 01 Jul 2007
From:haider bhuiyan <haider.bhuiyan.2 at m.cc.utah.edu>
Subject:Colloquial First
I believe the issue is not whether to teach both vernacular and
fusha. The issue is rather whether to teach vernacular only. Or teach
vernacular first and then fusha. In this respect I find it
counterproductive to the learning of a language, especially Arabic.
In one of my previous discussions, I stated that vernacular is almost
an independent language within the family of Arabic, although both
overlap each other very much, just like Urdu, Hindi, and Persian
languages do, but they each are independent language. If our
objectives are to teach vernacular only, well and good, we can do so.
But if our teaching and learning objectives are to learn Arabic with
special emphasis on any particular vernacular, say Egyptian, then we
are better off teaching the basics of fusha along with the
vernacular, and not vice versa, just like Professor Mustafa Mughazy
suggested in his (a) and (b) options. what I have been observing is
the fact that students who begins with vernacular suffer from lack of
confidence and ability to communicate effectively. On the other hand,
if they start with fusha followed by vernacular, they are better off.
So, I would maintain that it is alright to teach fusha and vernacular
together, but fusha first.All the best,
Haider Bhuiyan
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4)
Date: 01 Jul 2007
From:haider bhuiyan <haider.bhuiyan.2 at m.cc.utah.edu>
Subject:Colloquial First
I found Professor David Wilmsen’s explanation, against an expressed
view concerning students of Arabic, vernacular or fusha, being lazy
or incapable, very intriguing. In a bit twisted way I would
complement, students are just like the teachers, some of them are
lazy and incapable, while some others are hard working, capable,
dedicated, and successful. Since the learning process in the
classroom reflects the personalities and characteristics of both
students and teachers, (B. Davis, 1993) we, both, must take the
responsibility of students failure and success in learning of either
vernacular or fusha. That being said, I would like to share some of
my thoughts and experience with you.
In my view one can justifiably decide whether to learn
vernacular or fusha Arabic and he or she should do well in the
process of learning, on condition of student-teacher commitment in
and outside of the classroom activities. But it becomes a problem
when our curriculum is mixing these two, vernacular and fusha,
languages into one. We need to make up our mind in terms of which
language we want to teach or learn. Apparently, our discussion and
debates are being advanced in the view that both vernacular and fusha
are Arabic language. Yes, fusha is, but not the vernacular.
Take a scenario of Arab people from any geographical
area who is not educated in Arabic language or Islamic studies you
find that person is not capable of speaking Fusha with some one like
us who prefer to speak fusha, but fluent in the vernacular. If you
speak with the person in fusha, soon you will be told, ‘sorry I
cannot speak fusha well’ and keep struggling to keep up with you. Of
course, it will be a different story if the person is learned in the
fusha. This situation is widely acknowledged, as far as my
experience. What does it tell us? It tells us that vernacular and
fusha are two different languages within the same origin, although
overlap each other like any other languages. So, in my view,
stressing in favor or against of either of vernacular or fusha is
rather counterproductive and obscuring the very issue of teaching
language objectively.
If we continue thinking in the conventional way, I would
submit the following observation. We must prioritize the fusha over
vernacular. If not, we are not helping our students learn truly,
neither the vernacular nor fusha. A student learning vernacular
without mastering the fusha will bound to fail to learn the Arabic.
In the past two years I have encountered number of students who can
hardly speak the vernacular, and almost ignorant of fusha, in terms
of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. It may be counter
productive, because, I believe, it is not their fault, it is ours. We
are teaching them vernacular only, not fusha together with vernacular
which I think should be ok. To be more specific, I have come across 3
of my own students in the past two years who came to take with me the
same course they had already took in the past (course #1010 and 1020
of 1st and 2nd semester of 1st year). I was saddened to observe the
level of ambiguity about the structure of language in them, including
alphabets, vocab., accent, and comprehension, etc. Occasionally,
their only excuses were, ‘we did not learn this way, we learned
al-‘ammiya’. In the class, however, they did a bit better than those
other freshmen, but not significantly. I found them really confused
about how the learning of a language works. These students are so
enthusiastic to learn the language, but, in my view, were misguided.
On the other hand, the challenge that I take, it is not
that difficult of an issue for the learner of the Fusha to master any
vernacular in very short period of time. It is easy and comes almost
by default. Here I would like to quote Professor David Wilmsen’s own
statement. He wrote in his last critique:
It does not take much time to begin understanding a new vernacular
once the student has mastered one. This happened to me once in
Morocco: at first utterance my speech was not understood, as my
interlocutors expected me to address them in French, Spanish, or
perhaps English; when I repeated, they could understand easily and in
fact they would laugh because to them I sounded like Adel Imam. I
had a bit more of a problem understanding them; but after about a
week, I had learned most of the dialect differences in the functional
vocabulary of the Marakesh vernacular and we all got along splendidly.
He, however, put it in a different perspective than
mine. Regardless, he made it clear that learning vernacular is not
that of a difficult task. For a learner of fusha, it takes a week or
so to master any vernacular. Can it be vice-e-versa? I am convinced
to assure that it cannot be so. A student educated in vernacular will
not be able to learn the fusha, not even months. I am open to learn
otherwise. We must teach our students fusha first followed by
occasional practices in vernacular, not otherwise.
Best regards,
Haider Bhuiyan
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5)
Date: 01 Jul 2007
From:Abdulkafi Albirini <aalbirini at yahoo.com>
Subject:Colloquial First
This is an interesting discussion.
I believe there is something missing in the argument
for the colloquial first, which concerns students'
interests. My experience is that most students are not
learning Arabic just to speak it. In fact, many of
them want to have a comprehensive understanding of the
language and be able to use the language to read
different literary and scholarly texts as well as to
read the news. Moreover, the majority of the students
prefer to have a "language" that is understood across
the Arab world before they try to command a particular
dialect.
Thus, if we are to furnish our students with a better
and more comprehensive understanding of the Arabic
language (including the various skills of the
language), then we have to focus on the Standard
dialect first.
I recognize that there are some students who are
interested in commanding one dialect, who are a
minority among our students (or maybe the students
that I have taught thus far). For these students, we
can create courses that focus on these dialects.
Best
Abdulkafi Albirini
Coordinator of the Arabic Language Program at UIUC
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