A poet slips

Thu Sep 30 14:43:30 UTC 2010

Aya,
I ask them constantly if they think they are Arabs (60% of my students
are Arabic speakers and this is a central topic of many classes that I teach)
and almost without exception they do. The only exceptions are some Druze
(mostly males) and most Maronites. I am aware that 100 years ago Arabic
speakers living in this area did not consider themselves to be Arabs (except
for the Bedouins), but the situation has completely changed.

It is totally unrealistic to put Israeli Arabs as a group into Hebrew-speaking
schools. No one wants it, not the Jews and not the Arabs. There are a tiny
number of Arabs who for one reason or another send their children to
Hebrew-speaking schools (for example the author Sayed Kashua) but this
is insignificant.

I don't know what the situation was when you were a child, and I don't know
about the situation among religious Jews, but secular Jewish children do not
learn to read by reading Genesis today. They learn to read with secular texts
in 1st grade and go on to the Bible in 2nd grade, but far from learning to
read by reading the Bible, teachers have to explain what's written in the
Bible to the students. NO ONE can understand it without an explanation from the
teacher or their parents.

Ron--I agree with everything you say except that I believe that the radical
difference between spoken and written Arabic definitely is a serious problem
for literacy. I would not be so quick to dismiss the effect of the Arabic
writing system--we had a conference on this topic in Haifa in May and the
general consensus of people who sounded like they knew what they were talking
about was that it is a significant problem-- but they hadn't done
cross-linguistic research and this isn't something I know enough about to have
strong opinions one way or the other. Also, the usage of written colloquial
Arabic is basically universal among all Israeli Arabs under the age of 25 who
have a cellular phone.
This is definitely not just a privileged section of the population, it's most
people of the relevant age group.

John

Quoting "A. Katz" <amnfn at well.com>:

> John,
>
> These people you speak of are not Arabs. Some of them are Moslem and they
> read the Quran in the original. Some of them are not Moslem. All of them
> speak a local dialect of Arabic. Ask them sometimes if they think they are
> Arabs.
>
> Trying to turn every dialect into a separate language with a separate
> writing system is a way to try to disunite people. But a common language,
> however differently it is pronounced, unites disparate people. Australians
> and Cockneys and Indians and Americans speak sometimes mutually
> unintelligible versions of English. Using the same writing system and
> the same classic texts unites them.
>
> Instead of telling people they should magnify every difference, why not
> offer to share your language with them? Hebrew could be a uniting factor
> if spoken in all Israeli schools.
>
>      --Aya
>
> http://hubpages.com/hub/ISRAEL-The-Two-Halves-of-the-Nation
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
>
> > Learning the classical language is like pulling teeth for Arabs kids also.
> They
> > just can't publicly say it because that would make them bad Arabs. It's
> just
> > ridiculous. I have an even better plan for the Jewish kids--teach them to
> use
> > the written version of the spoken language which Arab kids are using for
> > Facebook. That's how kids make friends these days anyway.
> > Best wishes,
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> When I learned to read Arabic on the kibbutz (Maabarot) as a child, our
> >> textbook was of written COLLOQUIAL Falastini Arabic. We never got to
> >> Classical (after 1949 things changed...).  That book may still exist,
> >> you might track it down. It was easy, a cinch really. I concluded it was
> >> really just Hebrew with a few trivial transformations in Phonology &
> >> Grammar. (I was 7 years old & a bit naive then). Then 7 years ago I sat
> >> on a few sessions of a faculty study group at UO who were trying to
> >> learn Arabic (post 9/11...)--from a Classical Koranic grammar book. Boy,
> >> it was like pullin' teeth. But Leonard Bloomfield said it already, and
> >> well, in 1939 (or was it 1943?).
> >> Cheers,  TG
> >>
> >> ==============
> >>
> >>
> >> john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> >>> Tom,
> >>> I've been trying for several years to get Israeli Arabs and Jews to
> >> seriously
> >>> consider the possibility of educating Israeli Arabs in a written version
> of
> >>> their spoken language, as you suggest, at least through 3rd grade. I can
> >> send
> >>> you some things I've written on this topic, with a lot of
> cross-linguistic
> >>> data. But thus far, it isn't working. As with most aspects of 'the
> >> situation'
> >>> here, politically active Arabs think that the solution is to pursue the
> >> same
> >>> self-destructive strategy which they've been following for almost a
> century
> >> but
> >>> with even more vigor and steadfastness (e.g. Masalha points the blame at
> >> the
> >>> Arab media because they do not 'provide the linguistic richness of formal
> >>> Arabic') while Jews are basically content to let the Arabs stew in their
> >> own
> >>> juices so that they can reap the benefits. There may, however, be hope
> for
> >> the
> >>> future in the form of the radically increased usage of written forms of
> >>> colloquial Arabic dialects in electronic media such as Facebook, blogs,
> >> emails,
> >>> etc., by Arabic speakers below the age of 30, which will soon come to
> >> seriously
> >>> threaten the status of classical Arabic in the same way that the
> invention
> >> of
> >>> the printing press overturned the linguistic hierarchy in Western Europe
> by
> >>> overthrowing Latin. I'm working on this too. We'll see what happens.
> >>>
> >>> I realize that Masalha as well as the researchers he referred to don't
> >>> necessarily know what they're talking about regarding the brain. But the
> >>> general point is still potentially significant--that the connected script
> >> which
> >>> Arabic uses as well as the multiple forms which many Arabic letters have
> >> may be
> >>> a significant obstacle to literacy, however this may be related to
> >> processes in
> >>> the brain.
> >>> Best wishes,
> >>> John
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>                                       A GREAT POET CAN STILL GET IT
> WRONG
> >>>>
> >>>>          I  came  to know of Salman Masalha ("Arabs, speak Hebrew!",
> >>>> Haaretz/English, International  Herald  Tribune  9-27-10) accidentally
> >>>> by stumbling a on his truly  great quote:
> >>>>                "All fixed identities are imposed from the outside.
> >>>>                  Whoever  has a clear identity knows it can assume
> >>>> multiple forms".
> >>>> In the context  of Palestine/Israel, what a breath of  fresh, rare
> >>>> clarity.  Still, like the rest of us mortals, a  great poet can on
> >>>> occasion get it wrong  too, and Mr. Masalha--may he be forgiven; pun
> >>>> intended--surely got only one third of the story right. At first, he was
> >>>> led astray be the academic researchers he cited, who claimed that the
> >>>> lagging reading skills of  Israeli-Arab students is correlated  to
> >>>> lagging  R-hemisphere  activity,  then explained this neurological lag
> >>>> by suggesting that the Arab script requires more contextual analysis.
> >>>> But  it is the R-hemisphere of the human cortex that is more context
> >>>> oriented, less automated. If Arab-reading students required more
> >>>> contextual labor, it should have been registered as a higher
> >>>> R-hemisphere activity, not lower.
> >>>>           Works by M. Posner, S. Petersen, M. Raichle and S. Dahane,
> >>>> among  many others, have established  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that
> >>>> written words in all languages (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Amharic,
> >>>> Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) are  decoded automatically in an L-hemisphere
> >>>> module on the boundary of the occipital and temporal lobes (just past
> >>>> Brodman's Area 19), along the ventral visual object-recognition
> >>>> 'stream'  that flows  from the back to the front of the L-cortex. And
> >>>> the L-cortex is in general responsible for  the more automated--less
> >>>> context-dependent--processing of language (as  well as visual, motor and
> >>>> other skills). The visual word-recognition module is,  in turn,
> >>>> recruited  from  the pre-existing  visual object-recognition
> >>>> ventral-stream  module. A considerable amount of life-time practice and
> >>>> repetition is required to affect this late-cultural adaptation. The
> >>>> human brain is not (yet) genetically configured  at birth for
> >>>> visual-word recognition, only for visual-object recognition. A similar
> >>>> cultural adaptation, this one for math, has been shown for (Dahaene &
> >>>> Cohen, 2007; see recent article in The New Yorker by Oliver Sachs)
> >>>> in the L-pareita lobe, an area originally configured for analysis of
> >>>> object-location in space.
> >>>>               Mr. Masalha  then, on his own, points out to a more
> >>>> plausible right answer: Arab students, in Israel as well as all over the
> >>>> Arab world, are  not  taught literacy in  their native language
> >>>> (Falastini, Maghrebi, Masri, Yemeni, etc.), but in a frozen literary
> >>>> instrument harking back 1,400  years or more. That is, in a foreign
> >>>> language. The discrepancy would be  just as great  if  Israeli kids were
> >>>> taught  their Hebrew literacy  first in the language of Genesis; or if
> >>>> French  students  were taught literacy  first in the language of  La
> >>>> Chançon de Roland, Guilhome de Machaut, or Chrê tien de Troyes. Or
> >>>> English-speaking  kids in the language  of Beowolf. As far as my frail
> >>>> guessing powers go,  remedying the situation would be much easier by
> >>>> combining two well-known verities of second language acquisition: (a)
> >>>> Teach them  both early, together--'co-ordinated bilingualism'. And (b),
> >>>> teach literacy first in the student's spoken native language; only then
> >>>> gradually 'stretch' it to more literary genres.  This method, bhy the
> >>>> way,  was suggested in the late 1930's by no other than  L. Bloomfield,
> >>>> in a book outlining a  'phonics-first ' literacy  program for native
> >>>> English speakers. Rather than depriving Israeli-Arab students of
> >>>> literacy in their own--equally glorious--native language, just teach
> >>>> them smart.
> >>>>                For  his last culprit, the presumed--tho  hardly
> >>>> unique--vulgarity  of Arab media, Mr. Masalha lapses into well
> >>>> recognized  prejudices of  the educated classes. While readily endorsing
> >>>> his aesthetic sentiments about modern media, I would still like to point
> >>>> out that the 'vulgar' genre is  much closer to the Arab students'
> >>>> spoken native language, and  if anything should facilitate the easier
> >>>> initial acquisition of  native-language literacy. Respectuosamente,
> >>>> ma'-salaam,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>                                                       T. Givón
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >

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