Do Arab Ppl Speak the Same Language?

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The important thing to know about Modern Standard Arabic (fusha), however, is not that is as distinct from Classical Arabic as Modern Hebrew is from Biblical Hebrew, but that it is fast becoming a powerful force for Arab cultural unity. While it has been the language of instruction in schools across the Arab world for upwards of a century, this has become a far more significant fact as more children have come to attend school. An even more recent development is that whereas educated middle-aged people could write a letter in Modern Standard Arabic upon graduation from high school, they did not speak it and had little chance of hearing it spoken. This has changed, and the change was brought to you, in part, by Big Bird.

Sesame Street (Iftah Ya SimSim) began broadcasting in Modern Standard Arabic in 1979.[4] State-sponsored television and radio broadcast in Modern Standard Arabic, since even within a single state like Egypt and Syria the local vernaculars varied greatly. The existence of Modern Standard Arabic has enabled Al Jazeera, launched in 1996, to broadcast to the entire Arabic-speaking world. Satellite dishes and electrification have increasingly brought these media to even remote hamlets. Men watching the news in a café will discuss it in the local Arabic vernacular, but from Aleppo to Fez they now largely understand what the newscaster is saying in Modern Standard Arabic.

The impact of the wildly popular Egyptian movies and soap operas has also been linguistically significant. A good deal of Modern Standard Arabic grammar and vocabulary has crept into the on-screen Egyptian vernacular (lahga masriya) of Egyptian movies, but their popularity of these media has also made vocabulary once peculiar to Egypt familiar throughout the Arab world. Despite the best efforts of the language academies, words made familiar by the on-screen use of the Egyptian vernacular have entered the Modern Standard Arabic lexicon. A similar process applies to the somewhat less popular Syrian television programs. The result is that an Arabic speaker in the Maghreb will understand vernacular Syrian or Egyptian far more readily than her grandparents could ever have done.

Even the highly educated continue to speak a local vernacular at home, not Modern Standard Arabic. In conversation, they mix Modern Standard and the local vernacular in proportions that vary according to the nature of the occasion. The existence of Modern Standard Arabic does, however, give every educated Arab the ability to speak with and to understand every other educated Arab.

To see how this plays out even for an American who is not a native speaker of any kind of Arabic, listen to the blog post of “Aboo Imraan al-Mekseekee,” who lists his occupation as, “inviting to Islam,” and who works among the “English/Spanish speaking Salafee community.”[5] “[F]or those of us who are practising sunee/salafee muslims then al-Fushaa (Literary Arabic) is sufficient enough. Many of the brothers who studied in the Islamic Universities in Saudi or even in Dar-ul-Hadeeth in Dimaaj (a village in Sa'dah, Yemen), got along just fine without having to learn any "Ammiyyah" (vernacular.)” This native English speaker was able to live and study in Saudi madrassas with no need of any Arab vernacular.

The introduction of Modern Standard Arabic has enabled the existence of media that reach the entire Arabic-speaking world, but these new media have simultaneously influenced the development of and spread the use of this new language. The result of this synergy between Modern Standard Arabic and the television industry is that an Arab national language has emerged. Ideas expressed in Modern Standard Arabic can instantly reach the entire Arab-speaking world, giving the Arabs a new capacity to converse and respond as a single cultural nation, with results that it will be interesting to watch as they play out.

[Rasputin]

[1] Versteegh, Kees, The Arabic Language, Columbia University Press, 1997.

[2] Versteegh, Kees, The Arabic Language, Columbia University Press, 1997.

[3] Wikipedia article on Arabic, accessed 9/28/06 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language. Eliding the differences between Modern Standard and Classical Arabic is not restricted to Wikipedia. It is the accepted discourse in some academic circles. See, for example, Haeri, Niloofar, “The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital: Language, State and Class in Egypt,” Current Anthropology, vol 38, no. 5, Dec. 1997 p. 795 – 816 in which Haeri merges the two forms into a single language, “Classical Arabic,” with “varieties” that “move along the axis of ‘older’ or ‘newer’ syntax and lexicon and ‘heavier’ or ‘lighter’ style.” Like the question of when we perceive a sub-species, and when a new species, the question of when a form of any language is sufficiently distinct to be given a separate name is difficult. In general, however, names are given because they are functional. To refer to modern and ancient forms of a language as Modern English and Middle English, or Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew, or Modern Greek and Classical Greek is to make a useful distinction. Making a distinction between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic is similarly functional.

[4] Abu-Amir, Samir, “A Characterization of the Language of Iftah ya Simsim: Sociolinguistic and Educational Implications for Arabic,” Language Problems and Language Planning, v14 n1 p33-46 Spr 1990

[abadani69]

yes,each arab country has their own accent and different way of talking. Golf countries have their own accents and Egypt and lebanon and other countries have their own.