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October 01, 2005
On Arabic, for Praktike
I noted the ever productive praktike has had a series of comments on Arabic that somewhat reek of the new learner.
I thought I might engage in a public service of a comment or two.
First, from this note
Incidentally, I'm now at the point in my Arabic studies where I can at least recognize who is and isn't a comfortable MSA speaker, and I'm beginning to understand As'ad AbuKhalil's snobbiness in this area. Gamal Mubarak speaks somewhat haltingly and melds Egyptian colloquial with MSA, whereas the Al Jazeera anchors and my teachers can prattle along like it ain't no thang, the latter with case endings and everything. I can imagine that being schooled abroad stunted Gamal's linguistic development.
Abu Khalil is a snotty prat of an arch literary leftist snob with regards to Arabic; arch purists like him should be disregarded,
they're merely whinging on about a reality - that most people do not use what is known as "Modern Standard" and when it is used, it is never in that arch and purified form that one is taught in school (and ironically disdains dialectal usage of classicisms, the moment something becomes popular, then it's not right).
Irrational literary archness and idiotic classicism is slowly killing off Modern Standard, the 'debased' Arabic that Abu Khalil has whinged on about on the Arab Sats may revive it.As to the Mubareks: I can't recall hearing Gemal speak but his father does speak a rather risible formal Arabic heavily mixed with dialect. I would shrug at this, except that Baba Mubarek sounds like such a clod speaking that it used to amuse me immensely.
A final word of advice to Praktike and other new Arabic learners on this angle: don't be too impressed by your professors' command of cases and the like. It's largely dead knowledge and in reality outside of teaching, no one but Ulema speaking on Quranic things, arch literary types and overly specialised Westerners ever use the like.
Actually in that connexion, I was puzzled by this comment:
There's also a consistent problem with what are called "sun letters" in Arabic--definite words don't take an "al" sound when these letters begin them. For instance, one says "Muqtada as-Sadr" rather than "Muqtada al-Sadr." Making this mistake, I was told early on by my teachers, is a major way to sound like a khawaga to native speakers, and in fact it's rather basic.
I am at a loss as to the point, other than perhaps arguing style guides should show the assimilation by certain letters of the L in "the" in Arabic (al), as in his example with as-Sadr.
I would say the translits made little sense to me, but the audio files are decent enough.
BTW I would like to point out the irony of the Egyptian AUC instructors' archness with the fact the khawaja term is in fact a Turkish import.
Otherwise, I would cut slack here mate as the entire assimilation thing plus the regional variations are quite maddening enough for the student of the language, never mind some poor bastid merely running a brief report.
Posted by The Lounsbury at October 1, 2005 03:31 PM
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Comments
My Arabic professor has a theory that the cases were actually invented by the grammarians to make the language more difficult. He doesn't bother teaching them (at least at my level).
Posted by: teofilo at October 1, 2005 07:35 PM
I would not doubt that a certain complexity in the classical language is something generated by the learned, and frankly a passive knowledge of the cases is, for most learners, quite enough.
At one point I believe I knew them well, but now ten years later I've barely used them - certainly not in speaking even in using Formal Arabic (except perhaps to show off like a trained parrot).
Of course, I am a partisan of the idea that teaching a stripped down Formal Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic would be good for even native Arabic speakers' general literacy.
Posted by: The Lounsbury at October 1, 2005 07:40 PM
Didn't see this until just now.
I believe that the original point of the case endings was to indicate the function of a word in the sentence given that classical Arabic sentence structure was quite fluid. In mentioning them I was trying to say that my teachers speak fusha naturally and properly, as if it's their first language. Of course you wouldn't ever hear case endings outside of certain circles, but at the very least one would expect Gamal to sound like he was comfortable speaking fusha or even amiyya al-muthaqafeen. He spoke haltingly.
My point about the sun letters is that learning to pronounce them properly is one of the first things I was taught, and at the time I was told that it grates on Arab ears to hear foreigners get that wrong. Similiarly, not pronouncing the taa marbuta in an idaafa, etc.
Posted by: praktike at October 10, 2005 01:29 PM
I understand what you're saying, but again in my experience the ability to smoothly speak l-Lugha l-Fasiha is relatively rare outside certain circles, e.g. lawyers that have to.
Businessmen, etc. don't. It may be Gemal is not used to doing formal speaking - he should obviously bone up, although it is likely it's not something that comes easily to the family. Baba Mubarek certainly still speaks like a lump of clay after all these years.
In re sun letters, well, yes. But frankly that's their problem in regards to non-Arabic speakers. Now, if you're learning Arabic it is bloody important to get it right, but for foreigner journos who are not aiming at Arabs but their own communities... it's a bit arch to expect the sun letter item to be gotten right.
But again, I warn you, the AUC professoriate are very... literary and special. Grain of salt and all that.
Posted by: The Lounsbury at October 10, 2005 01:37 PM
