Dialect War

Dialect War - Dominic Brunaccioni




Hello everyone!




I hope you all are doing well, especially in times such as these. Personally, I’ve accepted that quarantine is going to last a while, and have been working on things to distract me in the meantime.

In terms of language, Arabic is now the language that I will be focusing on. While it is nowhere near a minority language, the Egyptian dialect that my tutor here in Connecticut teaches me is. Like I’ve said before, the formal Arabic I am learning at American is called لفُصحى, and is rarely spoken in modern Arab civilizations. While there are many Arabic dialects, مصري (Egyptian) is quite rare in speaking populations as compared to other dialects.

It is often looked down upon by other Arab nations, as told to me by some of my Middle Eastern/North African friends. The reason for this is because of the unique way it treats its alphabet. In Arabic dialects, not only does the pronunciation of certain words change (Like how we envision American English vs. British English), the alphabet and letters have distinct variations. For example, if you were to ask someone from Lebanon and another from Egypt to read out the letter “ج”, you would get two different answers. The Lebanese speaker would respond with “J”, and the Egyptian with “G”. Although it looks like the same letter, it has lead to drastically different words and phrases for each dialect.

When I’m with Salwa, she taught me Arabic with an Egyptian foundation. What surprised me is that whenever it came down to learning new vocabulary words, she would give me a French word. Her reasoning for this, she told me, was that due to the frequent colonization and transfer of language from France, and later Great Britain, most Egyptians substitute French for Egyptian quite commonly. This is another reason as to why the other Arab nations dislike the Egyptian dialect, as they see it to be unorganized and unoriginal; still a bright beacon of colonialism.



In terms of how this affects me, I’m very grateful to have Salwa as a resource and to know the Egyptian dialect. She has taught me out-of-the-box thinking in terms of language and is a resource I will continue to use even after I switch to Turkish next fall. I do wish that the other nations would relieve their hatred of the Egyptian dialect and focus on being more united as an Arab unit. Sure, while Egyptian is extremely different, it doesn’t mean its wrong. If anything, it’s unique, and I like it the way it is.