Algerian Darja Notes from Lameen Souag; Also Issue of French in Schools

It's been a while since we've done anything on Arabic colloquials and related language issues. So here are some links. Algerian linguist Lameen Souag at the Jabal al-Lughat blog has been visiting his hometown of Dellys, and as usual has been writing linguistic notes on Algerian darja (colloquial Arabic usage in his home town. Here are his three posts so far:

"Darja notes: Elms and kids' morphology"

"Sara, Sara" (about immigrant language usage in Dellys)

"More Darja notes: oath complementisers, free choice indefinites, kids' morphology, finger rhymes"

Algeria not only faces the usual tensions between fusha (Modem Standard Arabic) and colloquial, but also wrestles with tensions between Arabic and the Amazigh or Berber languages, and the lingering cultural and social dominance of the colonial language, French. Recently it was suggested that math and science courses in secondary school be taught in French, to prepare students better to cope with university, where the subjects are taught in French. Here's a piece on the resulting controversy:

"Algeria's identity debate over adopting French teaching"

Two Posts on Diglossia in Algeria

A common theme here has long been diglossia, the problems created by the dichotomy between the spoken Arabics learned at one's mother's knee, and Modern Standard Arabic, the "Classical" or literary language used for writing and formal speech.

This is deadline week for our Spring issue, so in my own absence let me link to two more on that familiar subject from Algerian linguist Lameen Souag:

• "Lexical  Gaps in Diglossia: When You Can't Write What You Don't Know";

• "School in a Language You Don't Speak.".

More Resources for Arabic Colloquials

After my post yesterday about a language learning blog, reader Mohammad Taha commented that the University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center has an online portal with language learning materials, including Arabic dialects. Though access is by subscription, you can browse the available courses.

While we're on the subject, it's worth noting for those who may not know that the old Foreign Service Institute (FSI) language courses are public domain and that they include books and, on some online sites, tapes for learning a wide variety of languages,including, for Arabic, Written Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and Saudi Arabic (Urban Hijazi Dialect). There are also courses in Spoken Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew,  and some online sites include audio files of the tapes.

You can also find online courses from the Peace Corps and the Defense Language Institute online, offering an even broader range of dialect studies.

And speaking of  FSI, let me plug two little FSI booklets from the 1970s by Margaret K. Omar (Margaret K. Nydell) that I personally found valuable back in the day.

One, from 1974, is called From Eastern to Western Arabic, a 47-page guide for persons familiar with either Egyptian or Levantine Arabic and are tying to learn Moroccan, which at first seems impenetrable to those familiar with eastern dialects. As an introduction, it can be quite useful, and I used it before my first trip to Morocco.

The second, by the same author, is the 1976 Levantine and Egyptian Arabic: Comparative Study. Again it is only 50 pages but is intended for someone familiar with either Levantine or Egyptian and seeking to approach the other. Neither of these little books is a course or a descriptive grammar, but they are useful beginner's guides for those tying to navigate between dialects.

A Blog with Useful Material for Learning Arabic Dialects

I've stumbled across the blog of this language learning website and discovered  number of posts useful to students of Arabic, and particularly of the various colloquials. It probably deserves deeper exploration, but meanwhile a few selections:

How different is Moroccan Arabic to the other Dialects, Really?

Learning Arabic in Qatar and the UAE is Easy. Here's Why . . .

If I Stated Learning Arabic Again, This is How I'd Do It

and particularly, a selection of online Arabic TV and YouTube channels: 40 Excellent Arabic listening Resources in All Dialects

Judeo-Arabic Dialects in Morocco and Algeria

I'm a little late with this link from November but it tracks well with our own ongoing discussion of Arabic colloquials versus fusha: Lameen Souag over at Jabal al-Lughat writes about "Religion and dialect geography in Morocco and Algeria," about the differences between so-called Judeo-Arabics in those two countries and the adjacent Muslim Arabics. There's more on Morocco than on Lameen's native Algeria but it should interest anyone with an interest in dialect generally and darja/darija in particular. A useful look in fact at how community (religious in this case) may affect dialect more than geography or class.

Several Articles on Algerian Arabic

It's been a while since I've had a linguistic post, but one of the best linguistics bloggers out there, Algerian Lameen Souag at Jabal al-Lughat, had a productive August with numerous posts relating to Algerian Arabic (as well as a few ion other issues in Berber and Songhay). Since the whole colloquial vs. literary issue is a frequent topic here, all the Algerian Arabic posts are of interest as is one on the Arabic vs. French issue..

"Can Two Kids Change Algerian Arabic? (Probably Not, But Let's See.)"

"Algerian Arabic in schools? More smoke than fire." 

"Algerian Arabic in schools? Actions speak louder than words." 

"Teaching in Dardja before  colonial rule." (Dardja = Algerian colloquial.)

"Discrimination against Arabic in Algeria?"  This is about Francophone bias, the other big linguistic issue in Algeria (alongside classical/Dardja and Arab/Berber).  Lameen does note, "Attention conservation notice: The story below is probably being promoted as a distraction, to keep Algerians talking about language instead of about what happens when a succession crisis combines with a fall in oil prices, in a state almost entirely dependent on oil revenue. Nevertheless, while not the most immediately pressing problem facing Algeria, it deserves attention on this blog."

Standard Arabic, Algerian Arabic, and Kabyle

Lameen Souag at the Jabal al-Lughat linguistics blog has a piece called "The irrelevance of the standard in Algeria," citing a new study relevant to our ongoing discussion of Arabic diglossia. An excerpt:

I recently came across a nice little study of language attitudes among Kabyles in Oran, inheriting Kabyle from their parents and kin but living in an overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking context: Ait Habbouche 2013. The results will not come as a huge surprise to anyone familiar with Algeria, but they stand in stark contrast to a curiously widespread idea about Berber language endangerment: the notion that Berber is under threat from the government-imposed hegemony of Standard Arabic. What the survey answers reveal, time after time, is in fact the utter failure of government policies to create any meaningful space for Standard Arabic in daily life. It is no surprise to see that Standard Arabic is used by 0% of respondents with other Kabyles in the cafe or at home. But seeing that only 4% speak it even at work, and 0% in university, should be a shock to anyone who still imagines that Standard Arabic occupies a position analogous to, say, Standard German. The taboo on speaking Standard Arabic in any but the most formal quasi-academic conversation remains nearly absolute; 73% rated it as the language they used least. The only topics surveyed for which this option was selected by any significant number were religion and politics, and actual usage in both cases would probably reveal a mix of Standard words into a basically dialectal matrix. There are absolutely no signs that this group is shifting to Standard Arabic, or even sees this as a viable possibility. The language that has attained a large usage among these speakers, even with other Kabyles, is not Standard Arabic but Algerian Arabic - a language with no official status taught in no school, which was the least likely (2%) of any of the available languages to be rated as most beautiful or richest, and was rated by 42% as the language they liked least (nearly tied with Standard Arabic). Yet this little-loved language, dismissed as much by its speakers as by their rulers, is not only the main language they use with non-Kabyles but is extensively used even with fellow Kabyles (42% with their own siblings). 

Ibn Khaldun on Arabic Dialects and Classical Arabic

Ibn Khaldun (Tunis)

Ibn Khaldun never ceases to amaze. His Muqaddima is not just the first great work of synthesizing history but also a pioneering work of sociology. Arnold Toynbee, who attempted something similar himself (at much greater length and arguably with less success), famously said of him, in every author's dream of a book-cover blurb:

"Undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place . . . the most comprehensive and illuminating analysis of how human affairs work that has been made anywhere."--Arnold J. Toynbee, Observer

Of course, since Ibn Khaldun lived from 1332-1406, he wasn't able to use Toynbee's quote on his book tour.

Born in Tunis of a family that had fled al-Andalus (Spain) during the Reconquista, he was educated at Tunis and spent a career in North Africa, Granada, and finally Cairo. As I noted a few years ago, after Tunisian independence a statue of French colonial missionary Cardinal Lavigerie was replaced with a statue of favorite son Ibn Khaldun.

A frequent theme on this blog through the years (45 posts  with the label so far) has been the divergence between spoken Arabic dialects and the written language (Classical, Modern Standard, fusha), the phenomenon linguists call diglossia. Many classical Arab writers complained about it, but few tried to explain it. Ibn Khaldun tried to explain everything, of course.

As the excellent Algerian linguist/blogger Lameen Souag notes in a recent post on his Jabal al-Lughat blog, notes that Ibn Khaldun addressed the issue: "Ibn Khaldun: Arabic Dialects are Independent Languages." He translates the relevant section of the Muqaddima, and you need to read the whole post, but essentially he comes down to what I think linguists call a substratum and which he calls "mixing" with non-Arabic: languages:

You may observe this in the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb and Andalus and the Mashriq:

• As for Ifriqiya and the Maghreb, the Arabs there mixed with the non-Arab Berbers as they spread their civilisation among them. Hardly a town or a generation was isolated from them. Thus non-Arabness came to predominate over the Arab tongue which they had had. It became a different, mixed language, within which non-Arabness predominated for the reasons outlined. So it is further from the original tongue.
• Likewise the Mashriq. When the Arabs prevailed over its nations, the Persians and the Turks, they mixed with them. Their languages then spread among them through the labourers and farmers and captives whom they took as servants and nannies and wet-nurses. As a result, their own language was corrupted by corruption of their (linguistic) habits, until it became a different language.
• Likewise the people of Andalus, with the non-Arab Galicians and Franks.

All the people of the towns from these regions came to have a different language, specific to them and distinct from that of Mudar [=Classical Arabic], and distinct each from the other - as we shall recall. It is as if it were a different language due to their generations' mastery of the linguistic habit of it. And God creates and decrees what He will.

Diglossia Watch: Marzouki Lashes Out at Reporter for Saying "Plutôt"

We often discuss diglossia here, usually in terms of the interplay of colloquial Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. Bit in the Maghreb (and in Lebanon), the use of French, either in its own right or by peppering one's Arabic conversation with French words, is criticized by some linguistic purists, Lameen Souag at Jabal al-Lughat, the Algerian linguist who knows the territory well, has a post called "Good prescriptivism?" stemming from this interchange between Tunisia's current President, Moncef Marzouki (who ran second in the Presidential elections and is in this month's runoff) lambasting a reporter in October (I think) for dropping  "plutôt" in an Arabic sentence:

"Respect the Arabic language! Plutôt, what does plutôt mean? You say plutôt, what's that? My sister in Douz won't understand plutôt. [...] [Interviewer: It's a chance for her to learn...] No, she needn't learn - you learn the language of Tunisians!"

For those who know Arabic (and this mixes Standard and Tunisian colloquial) here's the exchange:

On Tawfiq al-Hakim's 116th Birthday

A Happy 116th Birthday to the late, great Tawfiq al-Hakim, born on this date in 1898. One of the true giants of modern Arabic literature, he was a pioneer novelist and playwright as well as a master of the short story.

Hakim was a pioneer in many fields of literature, but one of his innovations was also to introduce elements of colloquial Egyptian dialogue into his plays and fiction, seeking to reconcile the literary language with the spoken vernacular, in order to provide a more realistic dialogue.

He died in 1987, a few months short of his 89th birthday.

Arabic Diglossia Again (and Again, and Again)

People keep rediscovering what we all know: a SOAS Ph.D. candidate enlightens Slate on a subject we've talked about extensively: "Is Arabic Just One Language?"

Since this will be the 43rd blogpost here with the tag "diglossia," it won't be that big a piece of news to most of you. It's mostly well-enough informed (we can all find quibbles) and perhaps some will learn from it.

"Death of Arabic" Issue Gets a Lecture at Brown by a Fellow Skeptic

I can't resist plugging this, since the recurring meme "the Death of Arabic" has been a frequent topic on this blog (most recently two weeks ago). Professor Elias Muhanna at Brown University (he of the Qifa Nabki blog) is as skeptical as I am but is actually a specialist in Arabic literature and knows whereof he speaks, and will be giving a lecture at Brown October 8 entitled "The Death of Arabic is Greatly Exaggerated: Notes on the Future of a World Language."

The abstract;

Is Arabic dying? Across the Middle East, calls to forestall the language’s demise have taken the form of public advocacy campaigns, school curriculum reform, and a great deal of hand-wringing over the future of one of the great world languages. But just how dire is the crisis facing Arabic? Is it in danger of becoming merely a language of religious ritual, as some have wondered, or is it, conversely, becoming something it has not been in many centuries: a living language?

Any of you within commuting distance of Providence might want to take note. I don't qualify but I hope they post online video or a podcast or a transcript or something, or Elias does. (I promise to share it.) Here's the announcement:

Arabic Still Dying After All These Years? A New Lament

Longtime readers may recall that a couple of times a year at least, some Arab intellectual or literary figure laments the death (or moribund status) of Arabic, usually either because young people are speaking colloquial instead of fusha or because they're mixing it with foreign languages. You can find some of these earlier posts here. One of the better responses to this frequent theme was Elias Muhanna's 2010 "The Death of Arabic is Greatly Exaggerated."  He pointed to this quote from the lexicographer Ibn Manzur:

Ibn Manzur was driven by a belief that Arabic’s position as the ultimate language of social prestige, literary eloquence, and religious knowledge was under threat. “In our time, speaking Arabic is regarded as a vice,” he wrote in his preface. “I have composed the present work in an age in which men take pride in [using] a language other than Arabic, and I have built it like Noah built the ark, enduring the sarcasm of his own people.”

"The present work" refers to his massive 20-volume Lisan al-‘Arab, most extensive of the great medieval Arabic dictionaries. Ibn Manzur died in 1312 AD, so Arabic's death throes have been around for a while.

I presume the languages threatening Arabic then were Persian and Turkish.

But fear not! Arabic is still going downhill fast, as Lebanese novelist Iman Humaydan tells Beirut's Daily Star, in "Lost in Translation: Connecting Youths with Arabic":

“The Arabic tongue is deteriorating, not only because of globalization and the mainstream English language, but because the educational system in the Arab World is connecting the language to social values that are no longer convenient for the youth,” said Lebanese novelist and writing instructor Iman Humaydan.

Humaydan has presided over students from at least nine different Arabic countries -- with different cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds -- in an attempt to reintroduce the Arabic language to the classroom.

Many of her students were initially resistant to the Arabic tongue, with students refusing to participate at first because they believed that they were entering an purely English writing program.“What really was a serious issue was to make these students believe that their mother tongue is capable of reflecting their inner selves,” said Humaydan.

The novelist and writer expressed her view that orthodox educational methods have associated the Arabic language with religious values, and other conventional norms derived from old Arabic literature.

According to Humaydan, by eliminating contemporary Arab writers from the school curriculum and simply exposing youths to the same conventional references and teaching methods have, in turn, contributed to the death of the Arabic tongue.

I have no doubt that her comments reflect her own teaching experience, but this chorus has been echoed so many times that it seems repetitive, and many countries have sought to counter the trend. But I suspect the lack of emphasis on contemporary Arabic authors is as much a political as a pedagogical concern. And the colloquial forms are alive and well on social media, but the literary disdain for the spoken lahajat (lahja, ‘ammiyya, darija, etc.)  is also often present in these discussions.

Marcia Lynx Qualey at Arabic Literature (in English) offers some further context at "The Fragility of a Deteriorating Arabic?":

Humaydan, an award-winning novelist whose beautiful novel Other Lives was recently published in translation by Michelle Hartman, recently taught a seminar in Arabic at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program for teens, Between the Lines. . .

The “Between the Lines” workshops, which took place between June 21 and July 5, were for students from across the region. They were divided in to two sessions each day. The morning session was in English, and the afternoon creative-writing seminar was in the student’s “native” language. (Although in the case of Arabic, of course, the seminars likely had a focus on Modern Standard Arabic.)

If you’ll be between the ages of 16 and 19 next summer — or know a talented writer who will be — you can check the Between the Lines website in January 2015 to apply for the next session.

A video from last year’s Between the Lines seminar:

Of course, the video is entirely in English. Still, I think reports of the demise of Arabic are greatly exaggerated. And personally,  I would also re-link to this post at the Arabizi blog which I've cited before: “'We must make space for non-standard Arabic if we really care about FuSHa': Interviews with Spoken Arabic language teachers." 

And to drive the point home, "Arabizi" is a transliteration which, while not invented for it, has spread widely as a means of transliterating for social media in the Roman alphabet.

Lameen Souag Analyzes a Ramadan Greeting

Algerian linguist Lameen Souag has a dialect post for Ramadan: "Grammatically analysing "Sahha Ramdankoum!," a standard Algerian Ramadan greeting.

Sahha is the Arabic word for health, and the meaning of the greeting isn't that obscure, but he's a linguist, remember, and he's speculating on whether it's functioning as a noun, a verb, or something else here. For those of you who always wanted to diagram sentences in Arabic dialects, this is he post you've been waiting for. It was also his way of passing Ramadan greetings to his readers, of course.

Elias Muhanna Strikes Back at His Critics; He Quaketh Not With Lugubriosity, But Responds with Humor

For over a week now debate has raged about Elias Muhanna's New Yorker piece about Disney's decision to dub Frozen in Modern Standard Arabic rather than Egyptian Colloquial (my post yesterday has links to the original article and many of the commentaries on it; a majority of the latter (and most of the comments on my own posts), rose to the staunch defense of MSA. Now BBC Newsnight had the bright idea of asking Elias (or rather some professor named "Elias Mahoona," which may be one of those "BBC pronunciations") to retranslate the MSA into a comparably formal English. He has done so, overdoing it just enough to produce hilarious results.

Bonus points for "Quaketh not I" and "Snow instigateth not lugubriosity within me."

I knew Elias Muhanna could be funny from some of his Qifa Nabki posts, It turns out this Mahoona fellow is pretty funny, too.

Lameen Souag Chimes in on the Disney/MSA/Colloquial Debate

Algerian linguist blogger Lameen Souag joins in the ongoing debate on Modern Standard Arabic versus colloquial Arabic in the dubbing of Frozen at his Jabal al-Lughat blog: "Standard Arabic and cartoons." (For background, see Elias Muhanna's original New Yorker piece here, Arabic Literature (in English)'s symposium of responses here, and my own comments here and here, and the comments threads to all of these. It's a lively debate, and still growing.

Lameen expresses the sentiments he already posted in comments to my first post: MSA is preferable in North African since the Egyptian dialect used by Disney in previous movies is not understood there. And he argues it's an educational tool:

Let's start by looking around us. We see that younger generations understand Standard Arabic rather well, and have a much larger Standard Arabic vocabulary than earlier generations did at the same age. A cursory search suggests that cartoons have played a role in this; for example, Weyers 1999 shows that American students of Spanish improved their listening comprehension and used a larger vocabulary after watching a Spanish-language telenovela, and Blosser 1988 that Hispanic children, once they've mastered the basics of English, improve their English by watching more TV (although this does not seem to work below the age of 2). So parents are probably right to think that Standard Arabic cartoons are helping their kids learn Standard Arabic.

However – let's be honest – those same younger generations remain largely unable to write a grammatically correct paragraph in it, and normally speak in Standard Arabic only to quote prestigious texts or to parody TV presenters or politicians. This suggests that what they're gaining from it is limited to what Weyers 1999 identified for learners of Spanish: better comprehension and a larger vocabulary, but not better production. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, in Algeria at least, Standard Arabic is effectively a read-only language: everyone under a certain age can understand it and read it, practically no one can express themselves in it correctly or confidently. So, as an educational tool, cartoons have their limits.

The debate about Arabic diglossia and whether to stress MSA versus colloquial never goes away, and while I feel both have a role I also think the dialects are under-emphasized, but I am not a native speaker or a trained linguist, so I defer to the experts. If you listen to TV talk shows and discussions, in real life most Arabs (except perhaps in the Maghreb), if addressing Arabs from multiple countries, tend to speak what is sometimes called "Middle Arabic," a sort of simplified MSA with some colloquial admixture.

I must give Elias credit for hitting a nerve here (as well as for an enviable byline in The New Yorker),but this is also a reminder of the enormous global power of Disney. People pay attention, and Frozen is Disney's hottest (well, wrong adjective in this case, but most popular) animated feature in years.

More Debate on Colloquial, MSA, and Disney Dubbing

A week ago, I linked to Elias Muhanna's New Yorker piece questioning why Disney dubbed Frozen in Modern Standard Arabic instead of colloquial. It's provoked a lot of commentary, and now Marcia Lynx Qualey at the Arabic Literature (in English) blog has assembled a number of commentators and translators to debate the issue. Elias has responded and it is well worth reading: "Can’t ‘Let It Go’: The Role of Colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic in Children’s Literature and Entertainment."

On a related theme, also note this from Arabizi: “We must make space for non-standard Arabic if we really care about FuSHa”: Interviews with Spoken Arabic language teachers."

Elias Muhanna Asks: Why is Disney's "Frozen" Dubbed in Modern Standard Arabic Rather than Colloquial?

An old theme revisited: Colloquial versus Modern Standard Arabic and the diglossia issue. Elias Muhanna, Professor at Brown but perhaps better known as Qifa Nabki for his blog, has a contribution at The New Yorker, "Translating Frozen Into Arabic,"

The Arabic lyrics to “Let It Go” are as forbidding as Elsa’s ice palace. The Egyptian singer Nesma Mahgoub, in the song’s chorus, sings, “Discharge thy secret! I shall not bear the torment!” and “I dread not all that shall be said! Discharge the storm clouds! The snow instigateth not lugubriosity within me…” From one song to the next, there isn’t a declensional ending dropped or an antique expression avoided, whether it is sung by a dancing snowman or a choir of forest trolls. The Arabic of “Frozen” is frozen in time, as “localized” to contemporary Middle Eastern youth culture as Latin quatrains in French rap.

Indeed, he notes that earlier Disney products were dubbed in Colloquial Egyptian Arabic, widely understood due to Egyptian films, and much less formal sounding.

Why Disney decided to abandon dialectal Arabic for “Frozen” is perplexing, and the reaction has been mixed. Many YouTube viewers are annoyed, with some fans recording their own versions of the songs in dialect. An online petition has called for Disney to switch its dubbing back to Egyptian Arabic, plaintively wondering, “How can we watch ‘Monsters University’ in the Heavy Modern Arabic while we saw the first one in Egyptian accent that everybody loved…?”

How indeed? Or perhaps the real question is: Why? Why is Disney willing to commission separate translations of its films for speakers of Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish, European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, European French and Canadian French, but is moving in the opposite direction when it comes to Arabic? The answer cannot be that the dialect markets are too small. The population of all of Scandinavia is less than a third of Egypt’s, but is represented by five different translations of “Frozen.” There are nearly ten times as many Moroccans living in Casablanca alone as there are Icelanders in the whole world. The markets are there. What is missing is a constituency for cultural production in dialectal Arabic.

It;s a good question, and apparently many are complaining. The movie will draw lots of kids, being a Disney product, many of whom have only begun to study Modern Standard Arabic in school, so I suspect there is a constituency. (Though of course there's a certain irony in the fact that Elias' nom de blog, Qifa Nabki, alludes to the opening words of the most famous poem in pre-Islamic Classical Arabic.)

The links in the first paragraph above go to various examples on YouTube, but for convenience, here's the megahit "Let it Go," in a formal language no one would actually speak naturally:

Two Notes on Arabic Dialects

We often discuss Arabic dialects here, and here are a couple of additions:

• A while back I linked to an article on how an Israeli researcher had claimed Cairo's jewelry merchants used a secret language that included Hebrew words.  That same scholar has also produced a more thorough study of the dialect of Egypt's (now nearly gone) Jewish community:From the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo: Gabriel Rosenbaum, "The Arabic Dialect of Jews in Modern Egypt."

• I recently linked to the first two parts of Lameen Souag's notes on Algerian Darja after a trip to his hometown, so for completeness' sake I should link to Part 3 as well.

Collecting Algerian Darja

Algerian linguist Lameen Souag was recently visiting his home town, Dellys, and made a busman's holiday of it by collecting undocumented usages in the local Algerian colloquial Arabic, or Darja. For those with an interested in Arabic colloquials, or just in words generally, he has two Darja posts up at his Jabal al-Lughat: "Random Darja Notes" and "More Darja: sea creatures,folk tales, etc."