February 8th, 2011 12:23 pm PT
Some school children in Texas’ Mansfield Independent School District will soon be required to learn Arabic, thanks to a federal government grant.
According to a Dallas CBS News affiliate, Mansfield ISD received the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant last summer. It is one of only five districts in the country to be awarded the grant.
Parents were caught by surprise and learned of the grant Monday night in a meeting with district Superintendent Bob Morrison.
CBS News reported:
As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would be mandatory at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and Kenneth Davis Elementary School. The program would also be optional for students at T. A. Howard Middle School and Summit High School.
According to the file provided by the school district, Cross Timbers was selected because it has “the highest percentage of native Arabic speakers in the district.” The district sees these students as a resource to help develop the program.
Students will not only learn the language – the curriculum will include Arabic culture, government, art, traditions and history.
Some parents were concerned their children would be taught Islam as part of the program.
“The school doesn’t teach Christianity, so I don’t want them teaching Islam,” said parent Baron Kane.
Although Superintendent Morrison reassured parents their children would not be taught Islam, the concern is valid since many Arabic nations – like Saudi Arabia – are governed by Sharia law, which is based on Islam and teachings from the Koran.
Arabic has been identified by the federal Department of Education as a “language of the future”, and the district believes the grant provides an excellent opportunity to prepare students for the economy of the future.
According to the district, the program provides several benefits:
• This project is federally funded for $ 1.3 million dollars over a 5 year period.
• This project adds a critical foreign language option for students in MISD.
• Successful Arabic foreign language studies (Arabic I, II, III) increases college and scholarship opportunities.
• This allows students to be prepared to compete globally for jobs that are not in existence yet.
• This project supports the diversity within MISD.
• This project allows students and teachers to learn about the Arab impact on our country.
• This grant allows for us to develop a partnership with the University of Texas at Austin.
Some, like Kheirieh Hannun, believes the program will help tear down some of the stereotypes people have of the Arabic culture, but the move may cause concern for those who see a creeping Islamization of America
]]>Arabic, Korean and Chinese deemed fastest-growing language courses at U.S. colleges
Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times
The surge in enrollment reflects a shift in response to current issues across the globe, officials say. Spanish and French, however, remain the most popular language courses.
Student enrollment in Arabic, Korean and Chinese classes is showing the fastest growth among foreign language courses at U.S. colleges, even though Spanish remains the most popular by a huge margin, a new study shows.
The survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities by the Modern Language Assn., or MLA, found that enrollment in Arabic surged by 46% between 2006 and 2009. More U.S. college students are studying Arabic than Russian, a change that officials say reflects a shift of interest from Cold War concerns to current issues involving the Middle East and terrorism.
The study of Arabic by young Americans started to show significant growth immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and its enrollment has tripled since then, said Rosemary G. Feal, the MLA’s executive director.
“It’s a response to what’s going on in the world,” she said, noting that the same holds true for a recent increase in Chinese and Korean courses and such lesser studied languages as Hindi and Punjabi.
Last year, 865,000 U.S. college students were enrolled in Spanish, about four times as many as in French, its nearest rival, and nine times the number in German, the next highest-ranked, the report said. American Sign Language, an increasingly popular way for students to fulfill their language requirements, was next, followed by Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Russian, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Portuguese, Korean and Modern Hebrew.
Korean and Chinese grew by the highest percentage after Arabic, with about 61,000 U.S. students studying Chinese, up 18% since 2006, and 8,511 enrolled in Korean classes, up 19%, the report shows.
Enrollment in all foreign language classes on college and university campuses increased 6.6% over those three years, generally matching overall enrollment growth at all levels of higher education. But there are some troubling signs involving budget-related cutbacks in language classes and a tight job market for faculty.
Particularly worrisome was a 6.7% drop in the number of graduate students studying foreign languages since 2006, a decline that could affect the pool of future language teachers, MLA officials said. Feal attributed that decrease to a trend of colleges relying more on part-time language instructors rather than hiring for full-time and permanent faculty jobs.
“I think potential graduate students are not entering fields in which the probabilities of getting a tenure-track position are bleak,” said Feal, a Spanish professor who is on leave from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Nationwide, German and Italian programs are among those most affected by cutbacks, MLA officials said. For example, USC announced two years ago that it would phase out the study of German as a major, although it still offers some classes in the language.
In recent years, many colleges also have reduced foreign language graduation requirements in response to budget pressures. When adjusted for overall college populations, enrollment in foreign languages is about half what it was in the mid-1960s, before an earlier loosening of curriculum rules, the study showed.
]]>Bandar Seri Begawan – “Students who are studying in Arabic Schools and are able to communicate in Arabic Language have an advantage because they have the opportunity to gain a wider range of religious knowledge which uses Arabic as a medium. With the ability to understand the Arabic Language, students will also be able to understand the meaning of the verses in al-Quran. Therefore, it is undoubtedly that those who understand Arabic Language have many privileges due to the fact that Arabic is closely related to Islamic teachings.”
This was stated by Pengiran Haji Bahrom bin Pengiran Haji Bahar, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Indonesia yesterday at the Arabic Oratory and Story Telling Competition at the Conference Hall of the Islamic Dakwah Centre, Kampong Pulaie, organised by the Islamic Studies Department.
This is the third year the event was held.
The Deputy Minister further stated that many Arabic schools now are organising various activities to empower the use of Arabic Language by scheduling certain days for students to communicate in Arabic and hosting Arabic Month. He called for such efforts to be continued and enhanced in order to uphold `Bai’ah Arabiyah’.
He also added that although the Arabic Language is not widely used in our country as compared to other languages, this should not be an excuse to neglect the Arabic Language, which is now one of academic subjects in non-Arabic schools.
]]>Rana Abdul-Aziz, a lecturer of Arabic at Tufts, has watched the Arabic Department evolve over the last couple of years and explained that its expansion was less a growth spurt than a slow building of student interest in Arabic language and culture over the past decade — specifically since 2001.
“The growth of Arabic is very closely related to the events of 9/11, and the interest in the region is linked to the politics and the desire for American students to be more familiar with the Arabic world — the desire to want to understand the region,” she said.
The Department has most recently extended its program with a new Arabic major, which was added just this year.
“The major was only approved last semester, and we announced it as the senior class was graduating. … This semester, students are in the process of declaring last-minute, especially seniors. At least six seniors have declared last-minute, and sophomores and juniors would be another handful,” Abdul-Aziz said.
But Arabic’s many tutees cannot all be explained by the department’s expansion alone. Unlike biology and chemistry, whose popularity sophomore biology tutor Maria Kryatova attributes to the classes’ large enrollment, Arabic classes are much smaller. According to Abdul-Aziz, Arabic 1 currently has 78 students, and the upper-level classes are even smaller, with 28 students in the two 121 classes.
“Purely statistically, there are more students that need tutoring [in math and science], either because of inadequate high school preparation or because of poor study skills or an initial lack of effort that has caused them to fall behind,” Kryatova said.
But Arabic 1 is nowhere near the fourth-highest enrolled class at Tufts. Rather, there are a host of reasons why Arabic has become a hot topic at the ARC, including its difficulty to absorb for students with Western backgrounds with closer-to-home Romance languages, senior Ryan Hunter, an ARC Arabic tutor, said.
“It’s very different from learning any Romance language because you have to learn an entirely new alphabet and set of sounds which do not exist in English,” he said.
Furthermore, Hunter explained, the popularity of Arabic tutoring may, in part, be due to the vast resources that the Arabic tutoring program offers. In addition to traditional one-on-one tutoring, Arabic tutors host both an upper-level and lower-level group-tutoring “Table” in Olin each week and organize review sessions for major exams.
“We have a very strong community of dedicated, creative and talented tutors in Arabic,” Robin Olinsky, assistant director of the ARC’s Undergraduate Peer Tutoring Program, said.
Hunter confirmed Olinsky’s praises and explained that most ambitious Arabic students are unusually committed to the study of the language.
“The existence of these review sessions is really just a product of the Arabic tutors’ devotion to the subject and to the new students coming in,” Hunter said. “In order to stick with Arabic for four years, study abroad in the Middle East and devote time to being an Arabic tutor, you really have to love the language, as well as the politics, history and culture associated with it.”
While students of more commonly studied languages like French and Spanish need out-of-class help as well, sophomore tutor Marta Kupfer explained that people who have questions about more common languages often have the opportunity to seek informal tutoring from friends.
“I used to tutor Spanish to my friends outside the ARC last semester,” Kupfer said. “I would not be surprised if a lot of people are just too lazy to schedule an ARC appointment when they can easily ask a friend, given the popularity of the language, or go online and get a translator.”
And then there’s the Arabic Department’s most attractive, sure-fire offer of extra credit for students who attend the Arabic Table, Abdul-Aziz said.
“What we have done is work closely with the tutors to make sure we are enriching our program through the ARC program tutors and their services. We offer extra credit to our students who attend the Arabic Table, which [provides] cultural activities [the chance] and to use Arabic. I encourage students who struggle with speaking to use the tutors, who help them,” she said. “It’s another person to check in with and a resource to help instructors. … We have created this wonderful partnership with ARC so our students can succeed.”
]]>ArabiCollege signed a mutual cooperation agreement with Kalemah Organization in Dubai, an Islamic centre and da’wah organization founded in September 2007 through the generous contributions of members of the U.A.E. community.
Kalemah Organization recognized the unique opportunity to integrate an Arabic Language online component to support its mission in enriching and bridging cultural and religious gaps among the UAE communities and believed that ArabiCollege is uniquely positioned to successfully offer the most technological ways of learning Arabic online through 24/7 live and open conversation classes.
In this agreement, ArabiCollege will be providing Kalemah Organization with prepaid cards to be given to Kalemah beneficiaries and to be distributed throughot the region with a discounted rate especially given to the users through Kalemah Organization, such cards will allow users to log to Arabicollege website and join the online classes that make them feel as if they were attending an Arabic class in person.
The goal of this agreement is to keep learners and new Muslims in touch with Arabic language 24/7 through ArabiCollege live classes, forums and other advanced interactive language teaching methods.
Kalemah Organization aims to provide a platform from which a correct understanding of Islam can be seen and heard by people in general. Their on-going activities in the centre strongly support the goals for which they are established on: Presenting Islam to All, New Muslim Orientation, Educating Muslims, Teaching Arabic, and Developing Du’aat (Callers to Islam).
ArabiCollege services are available all day and night long upon user’s convenience. This is an added value to the busy professionals who want to refine their Arabic skills needed for their daily lives in the Arab World. ArabiCollege aim is to make learning Arabic easier and more convenient than ever before. The ArabiCollege website provides a first class education in the Arabic language, culture and countries of the Middle East!
The vision of ArabiCollege is “to be the single Online Arabic language course-provider”, hoping that when someone thinks of online Arabic courses, they’ll go no further than ArabiCollege and the Mission of Kalemah Organization is to enrich the UAE community and bridge cultural and religious gaps by providing authentic Islamic knowledge to both Muslims and non-Muslim regardless of age, gender, or color, and to provide a forum for people to connect and interact for the sake of Allah.
source : http://www.ameinfo.com/244192.html
]]>From tennis tournaments to the wine industry…
By Ellie Levenson
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Though the British are notoriously bad at learning foreign languages, and English is often spoken throughout the international business world, knowledge of a foreign language, whether studied formally or picked up informally, can lead to exciting career opportunities that those without an extra language have little chance of accessing.
Organising international tennis tournaments is one of them. This is what Victoria Thorpe, 31, NEC Tour wheelchair tennis coordinator for the International Tennis Federation, does for a living. Thorpe took French and Spanish at A-level, followed by a gap year teaching in Mexico. She then studied for a degree in Hispanic studies, which included learning Spanish and Portuguese and spending a year in Spain as part of the Erasmus programme.
This was followed by a year in Italy studying the language, and a Masters degree in translation in London specialising in Italian and Spanish with Portuguese as a subsidiary language. Her job involves coordinating the wheelchair tennis international circuit which consists of 160 tournaments in 42 countries. “Most tournament directors have at least a basic understanding of English, but if they are able to communicate with me in their mother tongue it is obviously an advantage. I am also the contact for players regarding tour issues, so it makes it a lot easier for those who have limited English,” she says.
For journalist Michael Cross, a knowledge of languages other than his own has been vital in finding stories and making contacts, and has allowed him to spend much of his career working abroad: “The traditional view in journalism is there’s no point in learning a language because you can never predict where you’ll be sent. This is tosh – I’ve used my (poor) Arabic in Africa, where it gives you a stab at Swahili and Amharic, and in Malaysia, where at least it helps you translate place names. When I was posted to Japan, I found that school German gave me a head start in putting verbs at the end of sentences. I’d also strongly recommend learning any language with a non-Roman alphabet; once you’ve cracked one alien alphabet, a few more won’t hold any fears and you’ll get used to trying to read new scripts rather than being fazed by them. And even if the only foreign journalism you do is hosted press trips, picking up a little of the conversation among your minders (who will assume you’re a monoglot Brit) may give you an insight you won’t get from the ‘ministry of information’.”
A knowledge of languages can also help you get ahead and have exciting opportunities in careers where you wouldn’t necessarily expect a language to be key. Natalie Whalley learnt Spanish on her gap year in Ecuador when she was 18, and carried it on as part of a degree in politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. Now 21, she works in the campaigns team at Practical Action, an international development charity that helps poor communities around the world lift themselves out of poverty through the innovative use of technology. “My passion for development came through learning the language,” she says, and she thinks her job would not be possible without her language skills. “We have a country office in Peru that only employs local staff, so without my Spanish I wouldn’t be able to speak to them,” she says.
Similarly Lucie Phipps, 24, who studied French and Spanish at the University of Leeds, has found her knowledge of Spain has meant she can talk with colleagues abroad as part of her job as an account executive at Phipps PR. “PR has become a global industry, and we have to deal with other countries all the time, so it’s really helpful to have other languages. I work on the Rioja account, so have used my Spanish taking wine merchants to tour the Rioja region and hosting wine producers from Spain at a big event we hold each year in London called Tapas Fantasticas [wine festival].”
Even for people who train in very different areas, knowledge of other languages can bring variety into their working lives. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical and humanitarian aid organisation, which sends doctors, nurses and midwives on overseas placements, including to war zones and scenes of natural disasters. Though their recruits will have gone through medical training, they also need language skills.
“We definitely want people who have another language, and the one most in demand at the moment is French, because we are doing a lot of work in French-speaking areas including the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Haiti,” says field human resources coordinator Liz Crawford.
These language skills do not have to be acquired through formal qualifications, says Crawford. They could be acquired through living in a country for six months, as long as you pass the test they give you in that language.
For medical professionals with language skills, a placement with MSF can not only be a fulfilling way to spend some time, but can have lots of career advantages once back home. “We did lots of research on doctors taking an Out Of Programme Experience, such as a placement, with us and found that they developed in lots of key areas including the ability to recognise and manage diseases rare in the UK, health service management, teaching, human resource management, recruitment, cross-cultural communication, prioritising of resources and clinical judgement,” says Crawford. “I can’t emphasise enough why learning another language is a good thing. It opens up so many more opportunities and makes you so much more flexible.”
‘I spend about six months of the year in Thailand’
Joe White, 28, is the founder and managing director of The Thai Curry Company – producers of the Chantra brand of authentic Thai food.
“My first drive to learn a language was at the University of Sheffield, where I was studying chemistry, because if I learnt Japanese I could spend a year there on a study exchange. Halfway during my stay in Japan, I realised it probably wasn’t the place I wanted to be long term, so I turned my attention to learning Thai, partly as I had been to Thailand before and partly because I had met a Thai woman who was on the same exchange and who is now my fiancée.
The Thai language is tonal, so if you say something with the wrong tone it means something completely different, so I decided to take some classes in Bangkok. Though I then became a chemistry teacher at a school in Nottingham, I had a business idea for Thai food kits.
Thai food lends itself to that kind of cooking because it’s made from a paste. Even Thai people buy the paste ready-made from a person in the market, so it’s an easy way for people in the UK to give Thai cooking a go. We launched at the beginning of 2009 and we’re now in nearly 500 shops around the country. I spend about six months of the year in Thailand, finding and managing suppliers.
There aren’t many English people who can speak and read and write in Thai, so I’m in a lucky position where I have a good understanding of what the UK customer likes, but I can also get inside real Thai culture and real Thai food.”
]]>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.
The plan to establish two more Arabic institutes for men and women is a good news for expatriates in Saudi Arabia, especially diplomats and executives who want to learn the language. At present there are four such institutes at King Saud University, Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh, Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah and Madinah Islamic University.
Al-Anqari said the use of satellite transmission would boost higher, electronic and distance education in the Kingdom and contribute to spreading a culture of knowledge in all groups of society.
The HEC also restructured a number of departments at Umm Al-Qura and Taiba universities and agreed to establish a department for mineral engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and a department of biochemistry at the Faculty of Science in Tabuk University.
“King Abdullah also approved the setting up of support deanships in Al-Kharj University, Shaqra University and Tabuk University,” the minister said.
A number of new agencies will also be set up in some universities to supervise development and academic affairs.
The council extended the term of Dr. Abdullah Al-Khalaf as vice president for higher education and scientific research at Imam university. It appointed Dr. Ahmed Al-Draiwesh, vice president for scientific institutes, Dr. Fowzan Abdul Rahman Al-Fowzan, vice president for scientific institutes and Dr. Ahmed Salim, vice president for girl students affairs at the same university.
Dr. Ahmed Kateb has been appointed vice president of Madinah University, Dr. Saleh Al-Mezaal, vice president for academic affairs at Tabuk University, Dr. Mohsen bin Abdul Rahman Al-Mohsen, vice president for higher studies and scientific research at Majmaa University and Dr. Talal bin Abdullah Al-Malki, vice president for quality and development at Taif University.
The HEC also extended the term of 58 teaching staff members at various universities.
]]>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 is a critical language. We absolutely need an Arabic minor now to make UM grads competitive in the job market,“ Senator Jen Gursky said Wednesday night at the ASUM meeting.
There is concern that without a tenure-track position, adjunct faculty wouldn’t be committed to the department if they could find tenure at another university. Tenure ensures that a professor cannot be fired unjustly and that they receive salary increases throughout the years.
Ashleen Williams, ASUM president, hopes the provost will begin the search for a tenure-track professor this semester. If the University of Montana hires an applicant, Williams believes it will speed up the process of approving the Arabic minor.
But even with a professor on payroll, the state Board of Regents still needs to sign off on the new minor. The soonest students could add an Arabic Language Studies minor to their diploma would be in the fall of 2011.
The Arabic Language studies program has been steadily enrolling more students since its inception 12 years ago. Student involvement in the department has also been growing. In the spring of 2009 almost 150 students sent letters to the University of Montana’s Academic Standards and Curriculum Review Committee (ASCRC) encouraging them to add the minor to UM’s Central and Southwest Asian Studies Department.
In response, the ASCRC approved a proposal recognizing Arabic as a critical language.
Arabic also tops the United State’s critical language list.
“The Arabic language is such a necessity politically. We have Russian and Chinese minors. Why not Arabic?” ASUM Senator Joe Sanders said.
A minor in Arabic would satisfy the core requirement for a foreign language and help fulfill the UM’s mission statement which encourages diversity. Students who want to take Arabic classes can enroll in beginning, intermediate or advanced language classes, independent studies and special topics classes that are determined by professors.
http://www.montanakaimin.com/news/arabic-minor-gains-traction-1.1574952
Discussion and support for the Arabic minor come near the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. Williams encourages students learn more about the culture by visiting the Muslim prayer house, which is located on the corner of Fifth Street and Arthur Avenue at 7:30 a.m. Friday.
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.
Jason Kopp is practicing Farsi in Washington with his private tutor at the Middle East Institute, an independent research center that offers courses in such languages as Farsi, Arabic, Dari and Hebrew. Jason has been studying Farsi for less than three months but he says the grammar is easier than he expected.
The Middle East Institute says the number of students clamoring to learn Farsi or Arabic at its center has tripled over the last few years. Farinaz Firouzi coordinates classes here. She says her typical student is a young American who wants to be more attractive to the federal government.
“Maybe they first studied Arabic and now with the change in the news and the international situation, they want to change jobs and are interested in either Afghanistan or Iran,” said Firouzi.
The Modern Language Association tracks trends in foreign languages on American campuses. It says the number of students enrolled in Arabic or Farsi classes was relatively low. But the rate of enrollments is now staggering. Arabic language enrollment shot up more than 125 percent between 2002 and 2006 while Farsi enrollment increased by nearly 75 percent during those years. In comparison, enrollment in all foreign languages increased by less than 13 percent during the same period.
“After 2001 we noticed demand for classes went up. We were forced to go after more instructors and add classes,” Firouzi added.
Why so much interest in these two languages? A job search on the Internet provides some answers. Hundreds of new jobs in the U.S. require applicants to have some knowledge of Arabic or Farsi. Think tanks, consulting firms, the federal government and the military are looking for translators, intelligence analysts and IT specialists who have a working knowledge of either language. Jason oversees translation and language projects for the White House and the U.S. State Department.
“From a work standpoint it was a good language for me to become familiar with because I’d be becoming familiar with the Arabic alphabet and another language that we have work in more often than we used to,” said Kopp.
The government labels Arabic and Farsi the new “critical languages” along with Chinese, Hindi, and a few others. In 2008, it doubled the funding of a foreign language initiative which encourages colleges and high schools — even middle schools — to include these languages in their curricula. The aim is to create a future American workforce that can interact with these critical languages by starting as early as kindergarten and following up through the college years.
But despite the heightened interest in both languages the need for trained instructors of Arabic and Farsi in the U.S. outweighs the supply. In 2008, the last time data were available, the total number of people in the U.S. who received a graduate degree in either Arabic or Farsi was just 13.
]]>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”.
“Our objective is to link the Arabic language to modern art and culture… to end the perception among young people that the formal language is outdated and dull,” says Suzanne Talhouk, the president of Feil Amer.
Ms Talhouk says the Lebanese will always embrace several languages, but she hopes to encourage the production of novels, theatre and other artistic works in formal Arabic.
“We’re not fighting other languages as much as promoting the use of Arabic to go with all the changes in the world.”
Polyglot country
Arabic is the official language of Lebanon, but English and French are widely used.
Most Lebanese speak French – a legacy of France’s colonial rule – and the younger generation gravitates towards English.
A growing number of parents send their children to French lycees or British and American curriculum schools, hoping this will one day help them find work and secure a better future.
Some even speak to their children in French or English in the home.
“It’s sad no-one in our generation is speaking Arabic properly anymore,” says Lara Traad, a 16-year-old student at Notre Dame de Jamhour, one of Lebanon’s many French curriculum schools.
“I really regret that my parents did not concentrate more on developing my Arabic. It’s too late now, but maybe for the younger students in the country something can be done.”
Even with Arabic, there is a big difference between the classical, written form of the language and the colloquial spoken Lebanese dialect.
The classical language is almost never used in conversation – it’s only heard on the news, in official speeches, and some television programmes.
As a result, many young Lebanese struggle with basic Arabic reading and writing skills, and it is not uncommon for students as old as 16 or 17 to speak only broken Arabic.
Wider problem
The problem is seen in several parts of the Arab world where foreign schools are common – the UAE, Jordan, Egypt and most North African states.
Citing the wide gap between the formal language and its various colloquial forms within the Arab world, Egyptian philosopher Mustapha Safwaan once wrote that classical Arabic was theoretically a dead language, much like Latin or ancient Greek.
But language expert Professor Mohamed Said says classical Arabic is a unifying force in the Arab world.
“Classical Arabic is the language of communication, literature, science, philosophy, the arts – it is something that unites the Arab world,” says Prof Said, a senior Arabic language lecturer at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
According to Prof Said, colloquial dialects in the Arab world should not be seen as separate linguistic entities, but a continuance of the classical Arabic form.
Lebanon’s language campaign was launched by Feil Amer as part of its ongoing efforts to promote Arabic language and culture among Lebanon’s youth.
The group organises workshops in schools and universities to raise awareness among pupils about the importance of protecting their mother tongue.
It is also holding an Arabic language festival to showcase the work of 150 artists in the fields of dance and drama.
The hope is that by protecting the Arabic language in Lebanon, it will in turn protect the country’s identity and heritage.
Whether the initiative is enough to change how Lebanon’s youth communicate and express themselves is another matter.
Corrected on 24 June: Our original story incorrectly stated that the campaign was organised by Lebanon’s ministry of culture.
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