Arabic

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Daily Star,

Friday, January 07, 2005

Is the Arabic language 'perfect' or 'backwards?'
Among linguistic professors in the Arab world the debate is raging over
whether a modernization process is neededAmong linguistic professors in
the Arab world the debate is raging over whether a modernization process
is needed

By Zeina Hashem Beck
Special to The Daily Star



BEIRUT: hundreds of yearsIn the corridors of Arab academia a debate is
raging. It is not an argument about politics, not even about religion. It
is, rather, a debate about the Arabic language, (or Modern Standard Arabic
as it is today), and it is getting quite tense. Why hasn't Arabic
drastically changed in ? Is there a need to make any changes to it? What
are the suggested ways of altering, or as some put it, "modernizing" it?
And, is Arabic, like Latin before it, threatened by extinction?

The debate is an important one not just on a technical level but on a
social one - language is an expression of identity, culture and heritage.
Compared to some Indo-European languages such as English or French, Modern
Standard Arabic seems not to have undergone any drastic changes. If you
read a medieval English or French text, for example, it is difficult to
grasp its meaning.

Old texts written in Classical Arabic such as the Koran or ancient Arabic
poetry remain fairly comprehensible to the average reader today because of
their closeness to Modern Standard Arabic. Even the oldest Arabic
inscription (328 A.D.), an epitaph from a tomb located about 100
kilometers southwest of Damascus called the Namara inscription, is
extremely close to Classical Arabic.  "The vocabulary and syntax do not
differ noticeably from the "classical" Arabic of the sixth century,"
writes Dr. Terri De Young, professor of Arabic at the University of
Washington. Among the experts The Daily Star spoke to today opinion is
mixed. Some think that the steadiness of standard Arabic is a defining
characteristic, while others argue that it is past time the language be
"modernized." Some think that changes should be made only on the level of
the word or vocabulary, while others advocate a radical change of the
grammatical rules. Some want to go back to what they consider the
perfection of 11th century Arabic, while others look forward to
overthrowing the rules that Sibawayhi, the father of Arabic grammar who
died in 796 A.D., laid down during the second half of the eighth century.

"The Koran helped preserve the Arabic language: it is a divine text and no
one dares to challenge its grammatical rules. It is also the text of
prayers told by millions of Muslims every day," says Dr. Mohammad Tawfiq
Abu Ali, professor of linguistics at the Lebanese University (LU) in
Beirut. Whether or not Arabic is a holy and untouchable language is an old
debate that Arabic Literature professor Jawdat Fakhreddine, also at the
LU, illustrates in his book "Shekl al- Kasida al-Arabiyya" ("The Form of
the Arabic Poem").

He writes about the linguist Ibn Jenni (942-1002 A.D.), who cannot decide
whether Arabic is a human or divine language. Ibn Jenni pauses at the
Koran's words, "and He (God) taught Adam all the names," saying they could
be interpreted in two ways: either God himself created Arabic, or he
created in Adam the ability to produce this language. This mystery around
the Arabic language is not the only reason for its steadiness, however.
"Arabic has not changed much because it is a derivative language," says
Dr. Vahid Behmardi, professor of medieval Arabic literature and classical
comparative Arabic/Persian studies at the American University of Beirut.

Indo-European languages such as French and English are compound languages:
their words are formed by putting word parts together like "under" and
"stand" to make "understand." In Arabic, words are formed by derivation
from a tri-consonantal root, following what De Young calls "a surprisingly
regular (or at least it may seem so to Indo-European language speakers)
set of word patterns." This keeps Arabic from straying too much from its
original form. "I don't think that the Arabic language develops," says
Beh-mardi. "It grows."

He explains that when we say a language develops, we imply it is
primitive. For Behmardi to say that Arabic grows means that it is,
"already in a perfect state and that it grows (like a human being) to meet
the cultural demands of those who are using it." If you develop Arabic,
you change it drastically. If it grows, then it remains essentially the
same. If "modernizing" Arabic means growth and not development, change in
content but not in substance, then Behmardi is not opposed to it.

"There are several ways for language growth," he says. "One is
incorporating foreign words such as 'telephone' or 'computer' into the
Arabic language. This phenomenon is not a novelty. It has been happening
since the pre-Islamic ages. The Koran, which defines itself as a text "in
a clear Arabic tongue," has foreign words in it: Persian words such as
'deen' (religion) and Ethiopic words such as 'ma'ida' (table)."

Common errors are another manifestation of growth.  "They do not harm the
Arabic language. A famous error is better than a correct yet uncommon
expression," Behmardi argues. For him, common errors are often a result of
translation. Arabic, for example, had one word, "zawj," for husband and
wife, before acquiring "zawja" (wife) in addition to the former that now
only means "husband." But there are ways in which Arabic should not be
altered at all, according to Behmardi.

"Having ammiya (colloquial or spoken Arabic) replace fusha (Modern
Standard Arabic) is completely unacceptable." Some people, the most famous
perhaps being Lebanese poet Said Akil, have advocated the replacing of
fusha by ammiya. As De Young points out, Arabic is a "diglossic" language.
Diglossia, a term popularized in 1959 by Stanford University linguist
Charles Ferguson, means "two tongues."

"The example most familiar to English speakers would probably be the
co-existence of Latin with the Romance vernacular spoken languages like
French, Italian and Spanish in medieval Europe," writes De Young,
attempting to explain the difference between Modern Standard and
colloquial Arabic. An Arabic speaker will learn his regional colloquial
language (Moroccan, Egyptian) at home and fusha, or Modern Standard
Arabic, at school. But De Young adds that comparing fusha to Latin does
not mean that it is bound to be replaced by ammiya the way Latin was
replaced by French or Italian.

But Behmardi doesn't approve of changing the rules of Arabic grammar under
the pretext of making it easier or more accessible. "If you do this, you
will be ruining a heritage of 15 centuries. This will distance Arab
societies from their history and culture." Several contemporary writers
have published controversial books on this issue, notably Zakareya Ouzon
and Sharif Shoubashi.

In "Jinayat Sibawayhi" ("Sibawayhi's Crime"), Ouzon writes "some languages
(like English) were capable of invading the globe ... while our own
crippled Arabic language remained frozen or has rather declined to the
extent that even its own people do not care for it anymore." That students
fail to understand and apply grammar proves that Arabic (meaning Modern
Standard Arabic) is "neither logical nor reasonable."

"Arabic is the only language in the world with grammatical rules that have
not changed for 1,500 years," writes Shoubashi in "Litahya al-Lugha
al-Arabiyya... Falyaskot Sibawayhi" ("In Order for Arabic to Live...
Sibawayhi Should Fall"). "Language is a human being and our role is to
give it back its youth ...  for language's immobility definitely leads to
the mind's inactiveness."

Shoubashi makes radical suggestions for simplifying Modern Standard
Arabic. One way is to "unify" the numbers: instead of having a feminine
and masculine version for each number, let there be only have one version,
like in English or French. Another way of getting rid of "complications"
is to cancel the dual form, used in situations where nouns or verbs are
referring to two, and exactly two, things or actions. "What some people
consider complications," says the Lebanese University's Ali, "are actually
a sign of the richness of the Arabic language."

Dr. Haytham al-Amine, Arabic Linguistics professor also at the LU,
suggests that we should "save" today's "corrupted" Arabic by going back to
the texts of the 11th century. "Arabic developed after the Koran and
reached its peak in the 11th century. "It remained in a near perfect state
until the second half of the 20th century, when it began to decline."
Amine casts much of the blame for this decline on writers, especially
journalists, who ignore the proper grammatical rules of Arabic.

"In the process of translating, journalists change the rules of the Arabic
language, thinking they are being faithful to the original text," he says.
For example, the proper Arabic form "w and x and y and z" is replaced by
the foreign "w,x,y and z." But the Arab daily Al-Hayat senior journalist,
Mohammad Ali Farhat, believes the language of journalism is an advantage
to Modern Standard Arabic. He argues that it is an easy language that
reaches people. It has a presence unfortunately more potent than the
Arabic of books, he explains.  The language of the journalist will never
ruin Modern Standard Arabic but will always exist alongside that of
poetry: "The poet must be stingy, a stinginess that is opposed to the
generosity of the journalist,"  Farhat says. "The poet respects the rules
of the language and preserves it, whereas the journalist makes it more
accessible. This tension is necessary and does not harm, but rather
enriches, the language."  Ultimately all the disparate opinions converge
at one point: the state of the teaching of Arabic grammar in schools
across the Arab world today.

Dr. Laurent Seif for one, an oncologist with a huge interest in the Arabic
language, believes it needs desperately to be improved and is working
toward that purpose. A year ago, he started teaching Arabic grammar for
Arabic speaking adults at the Intercontinental Phoenicia Hotel as well as
the Unesco Palace in Beirut.

Seif taught his students all the rules of Arabic grammar in 12 hours: six
hours of theory and another six of practice on poetry. In August 2003, he
received a letter of encouragement from former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri, who hoped that his project would gain the interest of
educational institutions. Seif will soon be teaching Arabic to
communication students at the Lebanese University and plans on launching a
teaching program for foreigners this year. This program would enable them
to read an Arabic newspaper within 300 study hours. Seif says his new
method relies on understanding, logic and clarity rather than
memorization. He does not suggest any alterations to Arabic grammar per
se, but he avoids ambiguous terminology, replacing it with simple logical
terms. He states that Arabic hasn't changed because it already was, 2000
years ago, in its most perfect state, whereas other languages are still in
the process of development. For Seif, "Arabic is the fastest, clearest,
richest and easiest language in the world." It is the fastest language
because only in Arabic (fusha) "could one say something like 'we gave them
both' in one word: 'manahnahouma'."

"It is the clearest language because every letter is pronounced and every
sound corresponds to only one letter." In Arabic, there are not absent
sounds like "k" in "knife" or different spellings for one sound like
"flower/flour" or "pear/pair." It is the most flexible language because
the role of each word (subject, object) is determined by harakat, which De
Young defines as "special endings placed on nouns, adjectives, and
pronouns ... to indicate the function of these words in a sentence." In
Arabic, the subject of a sentence would be identified by the vowel "u"
placed at the end of the word, and it would remain the subject regardless
of its position in the sentence. This makes the Arabic sentence flexible
because words could change their positions without changing their
grammatical function.

Finally, Seif points to what he calls the "brevity" of Arabic on the level
of words themselves, which are shorter than their foreign counterparts:
"kasf" instead of "bombardment," "wazn" instead of "weight" and "adl"
instead of "justice." He asserts that, "the Arabic language, with its
logic, clarity, rapidity and flexibility is the language of the future,"
and that "making learning Arabic easier is one of our debts toward our
civilization. Keeping the old method of teaching, despite its failure, is
encouraging" the decline of the language. Behmardi has a similar
optimistic faith in the Arabic language: "In my opinion, attempts of
drastic 'modernization' will never succeed because Arabic has proved its
capacity for survival throughout the ages. It has survived the Mongols and
the Ottomans, and the past is the mirror of the future."



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