ELL: Re: indigenous

[sidahmed]

Dear friends

I'm a Nubian from Sudan , with an arabic culture as well and live in an
arabic country (UAE)..However from my readings , personal experience I
failed to find this "genuine arabic" !! Who is the "genuine arab"!!!!! ?
The one who has a citizenship of one of the 23 or 24 Arabic league(AL)
countries citizenship (Somalia is one, Djibouti , Comoros island , ,my
country Sudan with some 1/3 of population are non-arabic speaking and
several bilingual as myself ) or the one who just talks arabic? There
over 100 millions -more than the population of 50% of the AL member
countries population- in West Africa who master arabic..??  In Far East
there are some millions who talk arabic fluently..!!???  I prefer
arabized than arabic!!!   Ottoman's (Turks and Albanian) ruled all
countries  called nowadays arabic countries  for centuries!! As such the
movement in between them  to and from the areas (of arabic language and
culture)and intermarriage  helped  a good number to acquire the language
and culture and several also from those countries ruled by them moved or
forced to move to Turkey for s several reasons (cheap
labours/Translators/Arabic craftsmen,alligraphers and artists to
decorate Mosques and palaces....etc)...Several of the Population of
Egypt (mainly cairo) are of Turkish Origin and some hold dual
citizenship!!! Their families are split in between the two countries
(Turkey and Egypt), same with Syrian,Jordanian ,Saudia,  and it is a
miracle if someone can just identify who is who when they talk
arabic..??????????????..The Berber in North Africa  are bilingual!! and
hard to distinguish from others who talk only arabic (same as in Sudan!
among Nubian /Beja in the north and East)
Hope the respected scholars/ researchers and  ethnologists in this list
shed more light on this issue

best wishes
abubakr

Joan Smith/Kocamahhul wrote:
>
> kebo0002 wrote:
> >
> > Joan Smith/Kocamahhul wrote:
> >
> > > This is partly my reason for asking - the community I'm interested in
> > > are Arabic speakers in Turkey. As far as I've been able to find out the
> > > communities were originally Aramaic- and Greek-speaking (Greek in the
> > > cities, Aramaic in the rural areas), but there have been Arabic-speakers
> > > in the Area for approxiamately 1000 years, whereas the Turkish-speakers
> > > are comparatively newcomers. Is this the Guarani problem again? Somehow
> > > I think the tendency is to disregard Arabic as an 'indigenous' language
> > > either because so many people speak it or because it is an 'oppressor'
> > > language (even though in Turkey it isn't).
> > >
> >
> > There is still an Arabic speaking minority in the region of Hatay ( south
> > Turkey; near the Syrian border ). Most of them are Alevi´s ( a Shiite group
> > of Islam ). These people are genuine Arabs. Other Arabic using minorities
> > are Kurds and Assyrians. In some regions of the Assyrian settlement, Arabic
> > has replaced Assyrian completely.
> Arabic speakers can be found in the area around Adana and Mersin
> (Cilicia) and also in the areas bordering Syria and Iraq. Hatay is the
> area I'm particularly interested in.
>
> The larger cities and towns in the Area were founded by Greek-Speakers
> (hence Iskenderun/Alexandretta for example). According to Trimingham
> (1979:47-8) prior to the Islamic expansion the cities were
> Greek-speaking and the rural areas were the Aramaic-speaking (I presume
> this is Cem's Assyrians). According to Courbage and Fargues (1997: 46)
> by the time of the first crusade (1098) the Christians were Arabs
> culturally and linguistically. At some time in between there was the
> schism which resulted in Aramaic-speaking Christians moving to the area
> they traditionally occupy (Mardin, in the predominantly Kurdish area).
> This 'breakaway' Church is sometimes referred to as something like the
> Antiochene Orthodox church, even though they aren't in Antioch.
>
> >
> > Arabic hasn´t a tradition of more than 1.000 years in this region.
>
> I didn't mean Arabic in the whole of Turkey, just the areas where Arabic
> is (still) spoken. In Hatay it has a history of at least a thousand
> years as the language of the community. Werner Arnold's work (1998) has
> shown that there are still traces of Aramaic in some of the dialects.
>
> Only the
> > south of present day Turkey was influenced by Arabic. Turkish appeared in
> > the region in 1071.
> >
> > Arabic has a religious status in Turkey as most prayers pray in Arabic. I
> > wouldn´t define Arabic as an indigenous language. I would define "an
> > indigenous" language as a non-governmental language, which has very young
> > literal tradition or only oral tradition.
> But the point is that speakers of Arabic in Hatay are mostly not Sunni
> (in addition  the Alevi, there are Christians and Jews), and do not
> attend services in mosques as a result. In other words, the one place
> where the use of Arabic is sanctioned is the one place (native) Arabic
> speakers are unlikely to go.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Cem Bozdag
>
> Sana da selamlar
>
> Arnold, Werner. Die arabischen Dialekte Antiochiens. Wiesbaden:
> Harrasowitz Verlag, 1998.
>
> Courbage, Youssef and Philippe Fargues. Christians and Jews under Islam.
> London: I.B. Tauris, 1997.
>
> Trimingham, J. Spencer. Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic
> times. London: Longman, 1979.
>
> --
> Joan Smith/Kocamahhul
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Canterbury
> Private Bag 4800
> Christchurch
> NEW ZEALAND
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abubakr sidahmed<abubakr at i-cias.com>
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