News in the College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley

Learning Arabic at Berkeley

By Sonia S'hiri, Arabic Lecturer and Program Coordinator

April 20, 2002

Adapted from Dr. S'hiri's article entitled "Teaching Arabic at Berkeley" published in the fall 2001 newsletter of the Berkeley Language Center.

The Arabic program at Berkeley has experienced a steady increase in enrollments over the last few years, that is, well before all the international attention that this language has received in the last few months. The media focus on Arabic in Berkeley ranged from queries about spelling Arab names to filming one of the Arabic classes for the PBS show The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. (The segment, Spencer Michaels reports on America's growing interested to learn Arabic since September 11th, aired January 18, 2002.)

Dr. S'hiri with students

The Arabic program at Berkeley offers a proficiency-oriented language course and a selection of literature, religion, and culture courses (See the Near Eastern Studies Department website for course information). The variety of Arabic that is taught at Berkeley is the standard one. Next fall, the Department will be offering a spoken dialect as well.

The student of Arabic at Berkeley thus gets acquainted with the rich, diverse and long-standing Arab and Islamic cultures and is offered a tool for communicating with the 250 million native speakers of this language.

I am consciously using the word "standard" here in referring to the Arabic that we teach to avoid a commonly applied misnomer, i.e., "Classical" Arabic, that is both misleading and confusing. The standard variety of Arabic is known in Arabic as "fusha," i.e., the eloquent, clear language. It is a form of the language that has continued to evolve and serve the purposes of its users today, that is, long after it ceased to operate as the lingua franca of one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse and one of the largest geographical expanses on Earth.

The fate of Arabic is different from that of Latin and even (classical) Greek. Arabic has remained too important for maintaining the connection with the written Arab-Islamic cultural heritage and serving as the lingua franca of the Arab world today for it to die out.

In fact Standard Arabic is witnessing an unprecedented revival these days, nurtured by, among other things, the development of modern communication technologies. (Students now have access to some of the most important Arabic satellite televisions at the Berkeley Language Center.)

It is important to point out, however, that unlike those languages of which the standard variety tends to be the one spoken by a privileged social group, "standard" for Arabic means something quite different. It actually has no "native speakers" in the commonly held sense of this expression. No one learns Standard Arabic at home during their childhood as their "mother tongue." People either learn it in school or become familiar with it (as in the case of illiterate people) through informal, generally aural exposure.

At the other side of the Arabic linguistic spectrum come the "spoken" Arabic varieties. These are usually divided into four major regional varieties or dialects (North African, Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf/Iraqi). These dialects are themselves divided into an endless number of dialects and sociolects based on geographical, gender, religious and ethnic constraints.

Native speakers of Arabic use these dialects to conduct most of their spoken daily activities. They reserve the use of Modern Standard Arabic, however, for almost everything that is written and for semi-formal and formal speech.

Modern Standard Arabic is in fact a modified version of the language used in classical literature, the Quran (the holy book of Islam), and the massive body of writing that spans over more than 14 centuries in disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, philosophy, the sciences, medicine, history, sociology, astronomy, theology and geography, to name a few. The English word "algorithm" is in fact the name of a Muslim mathematician called Al-Khawarizmy. "Algebra," "alcohol" and many other English words starting with "al" are Arabic in origin. The writings in the above-mentioned disciplines had a major, often unrecognized, impact on the development of European literature, thought and sciences during the Renaissance. European classics such as The Divine Comedy have their roots in Classical Arabic literature.

Native speakers of Arabic (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or of other persuasions) share the standard form of the language with Muslims all around the world since the latter need it to practice their religion. There are over 800 million non-Arab Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Europe, and Asia—200 million live in China alone.

In recent times, with the democratization of education and the spread of Arab satellite televisions over the last decade, Modern Standard Arabic established itself as the main language of the news and media.

To my astonishment, and that of many native speakers of Arabic, recent television interviews with Afghanis, Indians, Iranians and Pakistanis (who are of course non-native speakers of Arabic) are delivered in flawless, often accent-less Standard Arabic. The Arabic speaking world has equally been surprised by the command of their language that U.S. and European officials have demonstrated on live discussions pertaining to the recent political events. It is becoming apparent that the community of fluent Standard Arabic speakers is turning out to be a lot wider and more varied than native speakers of Arabic would have thought.

Students who enroll in Arabic courses at Berkeley find a rigorous yet fun and gratifying program. They also find themselves part of a huge, dynamic and diverse community of speakers of this language spread all around the globe and rooted deep in history.