Both the Muslim religious establishment and pan-Arabists insist on preserving Standard Arabic as the official language for religious and political reasons. Why?
Dr. Sami Alrabaa
We Arabs not only suffer from lack of political and religious freedom, and economic backwardness, but we also suffer from a huge language and thinking problem, which hampers civilized change.
The Arab countries have two levels of language: local Arabic, i.e. national and regional, called language varieties (dialects) versus Standard Arabic. There is Egyptian spoken Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Saudi Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, etc. These dialects are our mother tongues. They are, however confined to daily spoken conversations. We are not allowed to use them in writing, especially in books, print media, school textbooks, and other official documents.
Standard Arabic is the official language across all Arab states. It is not, though, our mother tongue; actually no one speaks this language as a mother tongue, we begin learning it at school at the age of 6 or 7. It is our second language as opposed to our national and regional spoken Arabic which is indeed our mother tongue. Read more ...
Dr. Sami Alrabaa
We Arabs not only suffer from lack of political and religious freedom, and economic backwardness, but we also suffer from a huge language and thinking problem, which hampers civilized change.
The Arab countries have two levels of language: local Arabic, i.e. national and regional, called language varieties (dialects) versus Standard Arabic. There is Egyptian spoken Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Saudi Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, etc. These dialects are our mother tongues. They are, however confined to daily spoken conversations. We are not allowed to use them in writing, especially in books, print media, school textbooks, and other official documents.
Standard Arabic is the official language across all Arab states. It is not, though, our mother tongue; actually no one speaks this language as a mother tongue, we begin learning it at school at the age of 6 or 7. It is our second language as opposed to our national and regional spoken Arabic which is indeed our mother tongue. Read more ...
Source: FSM
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