Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial in the Curriculum

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 27 Jul 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum
2) Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum

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1)
Date: 27 Jul 2007
From:Munther Younes <may2 at cornell.edu>
Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum

Ms. Tressy Arts asks if one:

"could not learn MSA as a "second language" the same way as I
learned English, and become quite proficient in it, so that it becomes
nearly natural to speak it? Or is it necessary to hear it spoken as a
natural language for anyone to be comfortably using it in daily life?  
Would
a group of children raised in standard Arabic feel and use it as a  
natural
language, or are there elements in MSA that are foreign to natural  
languages?"


These are interesting questions, and I am not sure they can be  
answered in a satisfactory manner. However, it seems to me that an  
essential characteristic of a natural language is that it is used for  
ordinary conversation by a speech community.

An experiment in which children are raised speaking MSA would not be  
easy to complete for a variety of practical reasons,  and stories of  
parents trying to raise their children speaking MSA suggest that the  
practice generally ends in failure.

The evidence available strongly suggests that MSA (or Classical  
Arabic or Fusha) as we know it now and as we know it from the old  
books (with cases and moods and other features which are unique to  
it) was never the language of daily conversation for any speech  
community in the history of the Arabic language. In spite of this,  
attempts at imposing this variety of the language on Arabic speakers  
continue unabated amid accusations that it is lack of patriotism or  
intelligence or both that are responsible for their failure to master  
it.

Munther Younes
Cornell University

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2)
Date: 27 Jul 2007
From:"Ola Moshref" <omoshref at gmail.com>
Subject:Colloquial in the Curriculum

salaam

I remember one day some colleagues at one of the institutions I  
worked at
argued fiercely about whether this word or that would be classified as
colloquial or fusha. Even with an indisputable word like /haadha/,  
how many
times do natives use it in ordinary speech? There is no clear cut  
answer.
It depends on the speaker and the context. Whole standard sentences can
suddenly be uttered by a native Arab amid the flow of colloquial  
speech. How
are you going to teach that? How will the learner who spends years  
learning
colloquial alone or fusha alone follow up this very "natural" native  
Arabic
discourse?

Regarding the "unnaturalness" of speaking MSA in class, I think I  
disagree.
As an instructor, I do not feel unnatural, because the purpose is to  
sow a
foreign language into the learner's soil, and speaking, even if it is  
not
"natural" is highly necessary for internalizing a foreign language and
learning how to read and write it. When you plant, you do not only  
rely on
natural watering and sunlight, you manipulate all sorts of man made
illumination, irrigation and fertilizers!

Why not think along the "third language" notion advocated by late Tawfiq
al-Hakim raHimahu Allah? It is said that art is not to mimic real  
life, but
is a reformulation of it. Why should language instruction and  
learning mimic
first language acquisition? Learners are not natives who heard all  
varieties
of the target language while they were still embryos! The players are
different and the setting is different. And language learning is one of
the creative "arts".

Ola Moshref
TA- Linguistics
UIUC

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End of Arabic-L:  27 Jul 2007