how hard is arabic

8/2/2019 How hard is arabic

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How Hard Is Arabic?Author(s): Thomas B. IrvingReviewed work(s):Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 41, No. 6 (Oct., 1957), pp. 289-291

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H o w H a r d I s A r a b i c ?

SO MANY friends have written to ask mewhether Arabic were difficult, and so manyother personshave expressed their own receivedopinions on the subject, that I thought I shouldjot down some of my own observations on thismatter.*My initial statement will be that Arabic isindeed hard, and for three good reasons.The first reason is that I personally speakan Indo-European language, and have donemost of my language learning within thatframework. Therefore in Arabic I must learn a

fresh grammatical system and a wholly newvocabulary, except for a few words like ar$for "earth" and thawrfor "bull," which we findin the Minotaur and Spanish toro.Some sounds are differenttoo, although theseare very few actually, and none of them are asforeign as the Chinese tones, nor even for thatmatter as the French nasals. We find the glottalstop, which the West tries to ignore, in PortSa'Id,in the Scots "A bo"le of wa'er";while theemphatic consonants can be discovered even inordinary English speech, such as occurs in theslightly differentplacing of the tongue for the kof "king" and the q of "queen"; or the palatalquality we find in the s of "horse" and "solong."However, these elements of strangeness donot mean that Arabic is impossible, for a He-brew speakerwill immediately recognizeenoughof the verbal structure and common vocabularyto borrow from them for his newly recon-structed tongue. This reaction is similar to howan Englishman feels at home in German gram-mar or with French ideas.The second reason is one which even ourHebrew speaker will recognize as a complica-tion, just as German seems more elaborate toEnglish-speaking persons. The verbal systemof Arabic is a complex and beautiful phenom-enon which deals not so much in tenses as in"aspects" of the verbs, which means the way inwhich actions are performed, and how theseappear in the eyes of the speaker.

English has some of this in "I went," "I did

go," "I have gone" and "I was going," whichare all in some past tense; but few recognizethat "drench,"for instance, is but the causativeform of "drink" in that it means to "makesomeone drink" or give him too much water;although the adjective "drunk" and the noun"drunkard" can still be associated with theoriginal root.This attitude towards verbal action is in itsturn rendered more complex by a system ofverbal nouns-participles and quasi-infinitives-whose relation is shown not by compoundingone word upon another as in Greekor German,but by this same type of internal change whichwe have seen in "drench" and "drunk," plus avery few simple affixes. The original root forwriting, V/-k t d, gives us kitab for "book,"katib for the present participle and thus even-tually the noun "writer" or "scribe," andmaktabafor a place where books are kept orsold like "library"and "bookshop."Similarly the plurals are formed by a break-down in the original word, and then a rebuildingalong other lines, something like shuffling thecards in a poker hand. Thus the word for"market" stiqbecomes aswdqin the plural; theword Turk, which is the same in the singular inboth English and Arabic, becomes plural asAltrdk;and several Hollywood films are calledaflamlThis power of word building takes one to thethird difficulty, the incredible wealth of wordswe face when we learn Arabic. These manyroots plus the innumerable changes that canbe made within them, make Arabic one of thegreat languages of the world, and for this alone,it is worth learning.It is not a barbaroustongueas the French in Algeria write it, but it is oneof the great classical languages and ranks alongwith Greek and Sanskrit.It is a sacred tongue as well, which bringsholy things into everyday speech, as we hear

* This article was written in Baghdad,Iraq, where n1956-57Professorrvingwasengagedn research s a Ful-brightScholar.Ed.289


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290 THOMASB. IRVINGthe Quran ntoned on the radio orin the mosque.Arabic is one classical language which hasnever died. This sacred character, and its un-derstructure of grammar, keeps it living fromCasablanca to Musqat, and further still toSingapore and Jakarta, where schoolboys learnit so they can some day journey to Mecca.This means that no one has really learnedArabic if he has not been taught the Quran.Westerners are inclined to scoff at this, andthose teachers I have had who did scoff, werethe poorer for it, since they never participatedfully in this great unifying factor.This unity is made real by the script, thatinvention which has helped even the architectmake his buildings lovelier. Occasionally afriend will ask whether they will never reformthe Arabicscript so that Westernerscan read it,a reason which would make Czech just asfamiliar to him, if it were true. That is likeasking a Frenchman whether he would pleasewrite his next letter in the InternationalPhonetic Alphabet. It can be done, but theresult is confusing, unesthetic, and full of itsown rules besides.

No, Arabic should not be written other thanin its own handsome script, and that is not adifficult thing to learn, contrary to the verbalstructure, because it is an alphabet, not apicture gallery as happens with Chinese andJapanese. The Turks dropped it because theirlanguage is full of vowels like French or Ger-man, and Arabic does not pay much attentionto vowels; but because of this, the Arabic three-letter roots stand out in every word.Thus you do not look Arabic words up in adictionary by their very first letter, but by theirfirst root, which is emphasized in Arabic scriptas it never could be in Roman dress. Moreover,the alphabet is not hard to memorize nor towrite: I have seldom seen a class after its thirdweek, when the students were conscious of thesimplicity and beauty of this script, which didnot go to the blackboard to vie in writing it.If American undergraduates can accomplishthis so quickly, then the Abraic script is notimpossible.However a greater plague lies over the lan-guage, which comes in the form of the tran-scriptions which the European powers haveused for referring to Arabic words and place-

names. We find the word for "mountain"written in three or four ways across the map:jabal, djebel or giabel, depending upon whichconquerors have been talking with their sub-jects. In a recent book which has not beennoted for its courtesy towards the Arabs nortowards Islam (and this at a time when weneed to understand them both!), those whohave made the pilgrimage to Mecca are re-ferred to as hadji, Alhaj or al-Hajj, dependingupon whether the wandering reporter haspicked up his misinformation in North Africa,Nigeria or Egypt; yet it is all the same title.HIJjj.We note this carelessness in how thedoubled consonants, which are as important inArabic as in Italian, are ignored or mixed upwith other matters; for instance, the presidentof Egypt's name does not really bear the dou-bles.This is as if the English-speaking world weretaken over by a group of invaders with a dif-ferent script, who insisted upon transcribingbroad Scots and Georgiacracker as if they werenot related. Or perhaps deliberately trying tomake them different,by refusing us schools andchurches, so our universities would teach onlyRussian or Serbo-Croatian languages, and thestreet signs would appear in an approximationof what our master race heard through its ownears and alphabet.Arabic is different in its various areas, butrunning underneath them all is the structure ofgrammar and vocabulary which makes it onelanguage. If we say "Goodbye," "So long" or"Cheerio!," this does not mean that each wordis from a different language, but merely adifferent dialect or social level. American Eng-lish has borrowed from Amerindian and immi-grant languages, while Australian has builtupon its own vitality; but these versions arestillvalid for communicating with an Englishman.Likewise an educated Moroccan can still getalong in Egypt or Syria after the initial shockwith the bellhop or the newsboy; while radiostations and Egyptian movies are bringingback unity to the group.Most of the older school of instructors in thelanguage have started from the classical level,and left Arabic as a curiosity suspended in aphilological stratosphere. They do not comedown to the spoken level, while if they read the


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HOWHARD IS ARABIC? 291Quran, it is with a lip service which does notachieve the sonorous sweep of reverent recita-tion. I admit that this has been my first method,but I have not enjoyed using it since I alsoteach Spanish as a spoken tongue, and couldcompare the difference in my own instruction.Other teachers begin at one of the localdialects, and remain within this compartment,not explaining the various ways in which thepalatal k and the velar q change from desertArabic to Iraqi, Syrian or Egyptian, one be-coming voiced, the other slipping off the softpalate to become a mere stop in breathing. Thisgroup of teachers generally dispenses with thescript as well, or even invents individualphonetics which do not provide for liaison andother features, so that the effect makes Arabicseem an illiterate jargon.

Both methods should be combined, in mymind, so that our personnel can be transferredfrom area to area, and our diplomats will notsound like bootblacks or grocers. Of course,everyone who learns Arabic may not be able toindulge in linguistic niceties, but they need tobe available in a grammar,while respect for thistongue needs to be instilled in those who mustwork with these people.A language which has more speakers thanFrench and almost as many as Spanish, repre-sents no mean linguistic group. It also has moredepth in history than either of these tongues,and its area connects Casablanca to the innerreaches of Asia.

THOMAS B. IRVINGUniversity of Minnesota

Those scientistswhosework nvolvesresearch r designproblems f a fundamentalnatureneed to be in constanttouchwithdevelopmentsn othercountries.Mostscien-tificand technical eports,periodicals,ndotherdocuments,ncludingpatents,arenotavailablen translation. t follows hat at leasta readingknowledge f several oreignlanguagess important or the research cientist.-Bulletin, Massachusettsnstitute f Technology

Theintegration f peopleof foreignbirth nto ourcitizenry s animportantpartoftheprocessof Americanization. n understandingn ourpartof the newcomern ourmidstand his contributiono Americanife andculturewill benotablyenhancedf wehavesomeknowledge f hislanguage s well as ofhisold-worldulturalheritage.Onnolevel is thisunderstanding-and hisfriendlyhand-more important han on the locallevel:theneighborhood,hecommunity,he town,and thecity.-FRAM M. STEWART

As the UnitedStatesexpands ts world-widenterests, t becomes ncreasinglym-portant hatcitizensofthiscountrynallcircles flife-business, socialandeconomic-have a knowledge f the languagesof the countries n whichthey areprimarilynter-ested. It is a requisiteof this bank that such of our officerswho handlebusiness nforeign andsbe familiarwith the languagesof thosecountries.-PERCY J. EBBOTT

how hard is arabic

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