Classical Arabic makes a comeback

ABU DHABI // Classical Arabic is catching on as a spoken language, thanks to interactive news media, and shedding its aura as the preserve of religious and official circles, according to a leading linguistics professor.

Dr Ahmed Abdullah Ferhadi, the director of the Arabic language programme at New York University, said in Abu Dhabi last week that people were not merely recipients of news any more, but could make their own contributions via internet forums and television and radio programmes that invited audience participation.

For example, the Doha-based Al Jazeera network, one of the leading Arabic news channels, had made its airwaves available for Arabic speakers to comment on political and social issues.

In most such cases, he said, the participants used a form of classical Arabic in order to be understood as widely as possible across the Arab world.

“Classical Arabic is no longer the language of discourse whose usage is confined to formal occasions and limited to lecturers, religious leaders and news anchors,” Dr Ferhadi told an audience at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Research and Studies last week. It has now also become the language of the ordinary person.”

Classical Arabic is considered an inseparable part of the Arab identity, the only language, according to some, that ultimately unifies the Arab world, which is made up of populations from different ethnicities and religions.

It has also been argued historically that there is a religious duty to protect the language of the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed.

Dr Ferhadi noted that in the UAE, Arabic faced a particular challenge from the make-up of the population.

“The citizen to non-citizen ratio is one to seven, which is the highest in the world,” he said. “There are 200 nationalities, 150 ethnicities and 100 languages spoken in the UAE.”

He urged the Government to tackle the issue by offering incentives for people to learn the language rather than forcing them to. Incentives could include benefits for new employees with better language skills.

The debate over the dangers facing Arabic were usually focused on its formal or classical form, also known as al fus-ha. Most specialists who spoke and wrote on the issue expressed no concern over dangers facing everyday Arabic.

On the contrary, attempts to read news bulletins in colloquial Arabic in some Lebanese and Egyptian channels were fiercely criticised and sometimes accused of being part of a conspiracy against classical Arabic.

Although Dr Ferhadi viewed the interactive mass communication media favourably he still questioned the type of language used in these forums.

He gave examples of broken classical Arabic from a sample that he gathered from comments made on an interview with US President Barack Obama on Al Arabiya news network in January.

“Interacting with radio and TV made classical Arabic more common, but is it really classical Arabic? Classical Arabic is being slaughtered,” he said.

“The correct use of classical Arabic depends on the extent of the speaker’s commitment to, or rather awareness of, its grammar and morphology.”

Dr Ferhadi made it clear that preserving classical Arabic did not mean that the language should not change and develop.

“Language is democratic and it will change whether we like it or not,” he said, challenging some conservative theories that view the Arabic language as a holy lexicon that is inherently connected with Islam.

No one knew the Arabic word for “fridge” 100 years ago, he said, illustrating the language’s ability to accommodate newly coined words. He said even a word of internet blogs had already been coined.

He suggested that one way to make learning classical Arabic easier was through simplifying its grammar.

“We need some reasoning for grammar, rather than giving old examples to say that is why it’s the right way to say things,” he said, adding that examples of modern Arabic music using classical Arabic lyrics could be one way to stimulate interest in the learning process.