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while it should be living and adapted to the modern age, its linguists have
produced dictionaries only to serve the “reciters of religion and to sanctify
the dead”.
Arabic culture, according to Iraqi-born journalist and writer Walid al-
Kobeissi, is founded upon three pillars: Arab nationalism, Islam and the
Arabic language. If one of these pillars gives way, the culture collapses.
The idea that to change or “touch” the language is a kind of profanation –
since the very message of God, the Koran, was written in Arabic – has
prevented any modernization of the written language. But since the 1990s,
the Kurds have begun to lose their interest in Arabic. Arab Christians use a
dictionary which incorporates modern medical terms. Egyptian Copts use
Egyptian Arabic dialect on the internet.
Literary Arabic, of course, is written, not spoken. Yet most Arab
writers, according to al-Kobeissi, do not progress linguistically after the
age of 40 because written Arabic language takes more time to master than
European languages. He believes his fellow Arabs were losing time in
learning syntax. “Grammatical analysis is in reality the main problem of
our language,” he writes.
In the early days of Islam, Arabs made mistakes because there did not
exist a real break between the language they wrote and the language they
spoke. In those days, language reformers were not accused of being
Orientalists. The Omayad Caliph Al-Walid told his citizens to stop
worrying about grammar when he wished to spread Arabic in the Latin-
and Persian-speaking regions of Iraq and Syria.
Dialects would bridge the gap between spoken and written Arabic –
as they do today. Al-Kobeissi, an Arabic teacher in Norway, notes that
there were two versions of Norwegian 50 years ago – but that dialects
developed into a single language. Yet in an Arabic dictionary of 80,000
words, most of the words are unused -- there are, for example, perhaps 600
terms for a camel. Palestinian writer Hanan Bakir disagrees. She points
out that Arabs no longer speak the language of the pre-Islamic or Abbassid
eras, that Arabs do not even speak the same language as their
grandmothers. Language evolves naturally, not because of linguistics.