Archive for September, 2010
Arabic institutes for non-Arabs approved
JEDDAH: Two Arabic-language institutes will be established at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and Princess Nourah bint Abdul Rahman University in Riyadh for non-Arabic speakers, Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari announced Wednesday.
He said Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, who is chairman of the Higher Education Council (HEC), approved the project. He said the king has also endorsed the rules and regulations for satellite transmission of academic programs.
Arabic minor gains traction
The University of Montana offers Russian and Chinese language minors, and by next fall, could add another: Arabic.
ASUM voted unanimously last night in favor of forming an Arabic Language Studies minor. Three of the past four ASUM senates have also voted to support the minor, as well as more than 400 students who expressed an interest in the minor last year, yet the search for a tenure-track professor to spearhead the new program hasn’t begun.
Arabic, Farsi Fluency Considered ‘Critical’ to US National Security
Summer vacation is ending and students at American schools and colleges are getting ready to head back to class. In previous years, many of them would have been taking French or Spanish as a second language. Knowledge of Arabic or Farsi is now considered “critical” to U.S. national security and more Americans are learning these languages today than ever before.
Campaign to save the Arabic language in Lebanon
When Randa Makhoul, an art teacher at a school in Beirut, asks her students a question in Arabic, she often gets a reply in English or French.
“It’s frustrating to see young people who want to speak their mother tongue articulately, but cannot string a sentence together properly,” she said at the Notre Dame de Jamhour school in the Lebanese capital.
Mrs Makhoul is just one of several Lebanese teachers and parents who are concerned that increasing numbers of young people can no longer speak Arabic well, despite being born and raised in the Middle Eastern country.
She welcomes a campaign launched by the Feil Amer (Act Now) organisation to preserve Arabic in Lebanon, called “You speak from the East, and he replies from the West”.