Armchair Literati

Posted By admin on June 21, 2009

So you’d like to learn Arabic. Got a decade or so? | csmonitor.com

The written Arabic is common to all Arab nations and is the language of the Koran – partly the mixing of a Meccan dialect with a poetic vernacular. It became fixed in the late 8th century, and has been more or less conserved since then. “I can’t think of another language which has not changed appreciably in 1,400 years,” says Wheeler Thackston, a Near Eastern languages professor at Harvard University.

Arabs themselves know this Arabic only through textbook education. It resembles what they grow up speaking at home as much as Latin resembles English, Professor Thackston says. They use it mostly to write and in more formal situations. It’s the language of politicians and journalists, for example.

On the other hand, the spoken dialects – though they share characteristics with the written standard – vary by region, nation, and often, even by village. And they’re constantly evolving.

As if that’s not complicated enough, most Arabs, depending on the extent of their education and the circumstances of a given moment, will mix and match their own dialect with this literary Arabic. Osama bin Laden spoke such a version of Arabic in his widely broadcast tapes. That means any translator hoping for a steady paycheck needs to know both the written standard as well as at least one dialect. Linguists say a minimum of three years is needed for mastery of the written language alone.

Most US language classes, however, teach only the written Arabic, also known as Fusha. That’s partly for practical reasons: On what basis does an instructor select from more than a dozen different dialects, each potentially fraught with political sensitivities?

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: