The camel with what it carries, and the language with what it carries, A language dies when it does not carry a civilization at all, or it dies with the death of the civilization that carried it,, We want to ask about the state of the Arabic language, its health and its capacity, Is this language still in its youth, adulthood, old age, or in a state of death?
UNESCO is the one to answer these questions. UNESCO said that future generations will witness the extinction of 3,000 spoken languages, not written ones, Arabic is a written language, so there is no need to be very afraid of it, but rather to be afraid of the level of civilization that uses this language, Linguistic extinction becomes automatic and inevitable when civilization dies, What is the need for a language that has no purpose other than noise and chatter, i.e., has become out of service?
UNESCO has not declared the death of the Arabic language, but according to some news reports, the United Nations is considering removing Arabic from its list of official languages, The reason for this is very simple: the Arab countries that contributed to the adoption of Arabic do not pay the fees imposed by this adoption, and the delegates of these countries speak exclusively French or English. Therefore, there is no need for this language officially at the United Nations!
The problem from the United Nations’ perspective is not catastrophic, but outside the UN, one hears nothing but lamentations and wailing about the future of the Arabic language,The greatest cause of these lamentations was, and still is, the system of relying on God to preserve the Arabic language because it is the language of the Book (Indeed, We have sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its Guardian), This means that Arabic is a sacred language, and whoever bestowed upon it the quality of sanctity must protect it, But can one rely on the Creator to protect His sacred language? He is the one who inflicts the greatest harm on this language by sanctifying it, that is, turning it into a frozen mummy, devoid of life and vitality, So, who will save the language? What language is the civilizational burden of this language, that is, the cultural and intellectual content it carries and interacts with other civilizations through? There is a direct correlation between the vitality of a language and the vitality of what it carries, not with the number of its words or the number of its phrases, An abundance of words hinders circulation and perpetuates stagnation!
Al-Azhar has recognized some of the weaknesses of Arabic, so it freed the language from the sanctity that implies God’s responsibility for it, and issued a fatwa in 2007 stating that no language of texts is sacred, However, it did not address the fundamental and primary aspect, namely the meaning, which is not within Al-Azhar’s jurisdiction, Al-Azhar is a destroyer of civilizations, not a creator of them. In any case, Al-Azhar opened the door to the possibility of developing the language and increasing its harmony with the times and its requirements, In reality, God did not undertake to preserve Arabic, but rather to preserve the “remembrance” only, Arabic was the official language in Iran, The Arabic language became extinct there, but the book and the remembrance remained, and preserving the remembrance does not require preserving a specific language in public discourse.
Languages live, weaken, and die like humans. In an important book about the death of languages by its author David Kristel, the author mentioned nine conditions for the death of a language. Unfortunately, all nine of these conditions apply to the current situation of the Arabic language. One of the most important of these conditions is the spread of the language of the victor in the lands of the vanquished. This principle is known even to Ibn Khaldun, who said that the vanquished are always eager to imitate the victor in their slogans, dress, beliefs, and all their conditions and customs. The victor imposes himself through his control over the economic, political, and even intellectual and cultural spheres. Whoever lived long enough could have noticed the large number of people who spoke French in the fifties, and the large number who spoke Turkish in the twenties of the last century, i.e., the language of the dominant one! Even the spread of Arabic in the Levant and then in Egypt and North Africa was subject to that rule, i.e., the rule of the spread of the dominant language.
The second important factor is diglossia, that is, the existence of a level of formal classical Arabic and a level of colloquial Arabic, i.e., dialects. The greater the difference between classical Arabic and dialect, the more classical Arabic is exposed to erosion and decay, to be replaced by the dialect. The Latin language became extinct in Europe and was replaced by English, French, and German dialects. The difference between Arabic dialects and classical Arabic is vast, and this is what prompted some to promote the colloquial dialect as an official language, Said Akl, for example!!! Said Akl is not that he is conspiring against Arabic and Arabism, but he saw that the future of classical Arabic is nonexistent. What Said Akl said is practiced by the overwhelming majority of Arabs. Whoever looks at the colloquial language and its use in the field of social communication will discover the truth of Said Akl’s statement. Certainly, not everyone who writes in colloquial Arabic has a destructive, imperialist, Zionist, aggressive plan in his head, or is an agent fighting against religion and its texts.
Declaring Arabic as the official language of Arab countries and imposing this language on others does not save the language from extinction and does not compensate for the necessity of filling this language with scientific, cultural, social and political civilization. These peoples did not produce a culture or civilization, nor did they have inventions, innovations, philosophy and social sciences, which were formulated in Arabic. The attempt to Arabize schools, institutes and universities by neglecting foreign languages, French or English or others, led to a loss of communication with the civilizations of others, without affecting the status of the Arabic language positively. It was a step against the interest that usually imposes itself, a step that is absolutely losing, because this step was not the appropriate step in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time, a step that contradicts logical development, so failure was its fate.
There is a problem of bilingualism, Alongside the so-called official national language, another language has taken root in the country,The purpose of this unavoidable and indispensable combination was the necessity of openness to other cultures in service of a knowledge society, essential for achieving human development, This development cannot be achieved with a national language devoid of modern scientific knowledge, There is no science in these countries when the most widely circulated and “scientific” book in the Arab world is “The Scientific Miracles in the Quran” by Zaghloul El-Naggar. El-Naggar reached the moon, split the atom, and built airplanes, missiles, submarines, and hydrogen and atomic bombs, , To this day, we have not seen any tangible results from his achievements and miracles, except for the inflation of his wealth (6 billion), El-Naggar reaped medals, praise, and money because, as they say, he created modern science using the language of the Quran and from the Quran, Is it any wonder that a language scientifically embodying El-Naggar’s miracles has become extinct, alongside hundreds of thousands of books on biography, bestiality, and the conquests and victories of Khalid ibn al-Walid? Al-Walid, who killed 40,000 polytheists in four months and whose massacres turned the waters of the rivers red (the Red River), in addition to Zaghloul, there was Al-Bouti and his nightly conversations with God by telephone, and Khomeini and Ahmadinejad communicating with God by telephone!!! etc. A language that is limited to conveying nonsense is a nonsense language with no future.
Bilingualism has cornered Arabic in neglect, and whatever the impact of this bilingualism on the status of Arabic, it is unavoidable, It is the lesser of two evils and the worst of good solutions, A language that is struggling cannot be saved by placing it in intensive care for an unknown period, A language that has lost its function in transmitting and circulating culture and knowledge has lost its life, for the dead do not move their tongues!
There is a kind of linguistic alienation, Classical Arabic is suffering from alienation due to the increasing difficulty in understanding it, which frustrates the reader, especially since illiteracy is widespread among Arab peoples, It is said that the illiteracy rate among women in the northern Aleppo countryside is 100% and 98% among men, and about 60% of Arabs are illiterate, The Israeli reads 40 books a year in Hebrew, which was dead and was revived not by ceremonies, but by science and knowledge, The average Westerner reads 35 books a year, while in Senegal the average Senegalese person reads 4 books a year, and in Syria, it takes an army of 80 Syrians to read one book, and that is in Arabic, which was not dead like Hebrew. As you can see, the Arabs have succeeded in many destructive, subversive, and backward tasks, and even the language has been affected by what has affected other things.
The camel with what it carries, and the language with what it carries, A language dies when it does not carry a civilization at all, or it dies with the death of the civilization that carried it,, We want to ask about the state of the Arabic language, its health and its capacity, Is this language still in its youth, adulthood, old age, or in a state of death?