Image of the Day

since putrefied. Would you have your intercourse with these creatures
from the graveyard?” NO. Leave the dead in their graves... Read More
Robert Fisk: Does Arab progress founder on an ossified language?
The Long View: We need to understand our history better: why
did Arabs disappear from ‘our’ science?
I’ve heard all kinds of reasons for the Arab-Israeli failure to agree on
UN Security Council Resolution 242 – because the Arabic text calls upon
Israel to withdraw from ‘the lands occupied by Israel in 1967’ (including
the West Bank, Gaza and Golan) whereas the English text (as the
Americans intended) leaves out the word ‘the’. So ‘occupied land’ leaves
the Israelis free to decide which bits of land they want to hand back – and
which they don’t.
But the French version also takes the definite article ‘les’ – so it can’t
be the Arabs’ fault. Or does this all come about because the language
Arabs speak and the language they write is not the same. Does it lack
clarity? I hear this all the time – from Westerners, of course.
There can be a kind of imprecision in practical life. I recall arriving
with colleagues in southern Lebanon during one of Israel’s five invasions
and asking how many Israeli tanks were on the road in front of us.
“Many,” came the reply of the refugees. How many? “Ktir” – very many.
Ten? “Na’am”. (Yes.) Twenty? “Na’am” (Yes again.) A dangerous lack of
clarity there, surely.
Hasan Karmi, the Palestinian lexicographer who died six years ago,
nursed the theory that having learned colloquial Arabic as children before
progression to the much more precise written form -- and because
language is so crucial to the development of thought – “Arabs were often
handicapped by a lack of precision in their thinking.” Here I am quoting
from Karmi’s obituary by my mate Donald Macintyre. Hence, perhaps, the
failure of Arabs to maintain their historical superiority in science and
intellectual thought.
For while I rabbit on about the poisonous influence on our Romance
languages of SMS text messages, internet-speak and blogopop culture,
Arabs are debating the most controversial issue of their language: that