It is generally thought that
Arabic is a single language, spoken, written and understood by people in
countries as widely separated as Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, but this is not so.
It is only written Arabic ( that is,
the Classical Arabic of the Koran and the Modern Arabic of contemporary
literature, journalism and broadcasting ), that is more or less common to the
whole of the Arab world. The colloquial Arabic which is spoken in the different
Arab societies today differs as widely between Arab countries as do Italian,
Spanish and Portuguese. In the Arab world, written Arabic acts as a kind of
Esperanto, providing a means of communication between educated people of
different Arab nationalities. Written Arabic is, paradoxically, spoken too: on
the radio and television, in public speeches, as well as between Arabs from
different countries. We could call it pan-Arabic.
It is used in rather the same way as Latin was used by educated people in
Europe in the Middle Ages.
Even in English, of course,
there are differences of grammar and vocabulary between the written and spoken
language, but this difference is far less than that between the artificial
pan-Arabic and the living colloquial language of any Arab country. Moreover,
both written and spoken English are recognized in English-speaking countries as
belonging to one living language, and both are taught in schools. Colloquial
Arabic, on the other hand, is not regarded by the people who speak it as
‘proper’ Arabic. Unlike colloquial English, it is not taught in schools, and it
is not written; indeed, there is a strong feeling in Arab societies that it
should not be used in a written form.
The educated Egyptian, then,
uses pan-Arabic to talk to equally educated Iraqis, Saudis and Moroccans. No
reasonable man, however, wishes to talk like a book or a newspaper, and the
language that the same educated Egyptian uses with his family and with other
Egyptians is quite different. This language is wholly Egyptian, and it is only spoken.
(adapted from Teach
“Yourself Colloquial Arabic” by T.F. Mitchell, Hodder and Stoughton, 1962)
- The
book ‘Meanings into Words’
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