The Factors Making Arabic Language Endangered And Solutions To Keep It Alive

Lots of spoken languages has cease to exist in recent years and this happened due to various reasons. However, in my region and where I came from people consider their language as a very important element of their identity and it is viewed as a symbol of the nation’s strength, a nation’s language is an integral part of that nation’s culture. Often, language is referred to as a „national treasure‟. I can say it is the method which culture and knowledge are transferred to younger generations. In fact, language is one of the significant tools that communicates culture, traditions and standards to future generations, it also reflects the background and education of individuals. Furthermore, language can be more than just an expression of national and cultural identity; it may have a religious identity such as the case with Arabic language as Arabic is regarded as the language of the Holy Quran and Islamic faith. Morrow & Castleton assert that “in the Arab-Islamic world, both Arabic language and the Muslim faith are often viewed as inseparable parts of the same Muslim Identity”. Although, nowadays the situation is different as the dominance of English made the younger generation abandon their language in favour of English since the use of it become crucial in so many different aspects of everyday life. The purpose of my essay is to give insight on the situation in my region and the solutions that might help to revive the Arabic language.

According to UNESCO (2003), a language is in danger when its speakers cease to use it. Use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains and cease to pass it from one generation to the next. That is, there are no new speakers, adults or children. In fact, one of the world’s spoken languagevanish every two weeks. Extinction is generally something that we associate with animals, but some of human communication are also dying out – 2,680 of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today are endangered. It is true that increased migration and fast urbanization push many ethnic groups to modify their traditional lifestyles. To guarantee civic involvement and economic integration, people are gradually adopting more dominant languages. Moreover, speaking that dominant language is key to accessing jobs, education and much more opportunities. Parents sometimes decide not to teach their children their heritage language, particularly in immigrant societies, perceiving it as a potential barrier to their achievement in life. It is clear that Arabs do strongly and deeply appreciate and glorify their sacred Arabic language, as it represents the Arabic identity and it is one of the most important elements of the Arabic character. Besides its rich heritage of literature, poetry, arts and science. And most importantly our language is the main social function for exchanging ideas and communicating with each other, that’s what tights the bonds between people. but in today’s life we are facing a rapid wave of change, so we need to arise more attention and make more effort to nourish the language as it is a huge entity of our nation.

Today, linguists, writers and researchers are concerned about the future of Arabic language as it is encountering a lot of challenges. Firstly, the rapid and enormous technological developments when the most used language over the internet is mainly English and Arabic almost has no content among these programs and applications compared to English. Although, there are growing amount of Arabic speaking internet users looking for Arabic content and applications. Recent Internet world statistics indicate that there are 60 million Arab world Internet users. Secondly, due to the hybrid languages used by users over the web and social media, including the use of Latin alphabets, numbers or symbols to write Arabic [ also known as Arabas’], Especially among younger internet users, this hybrid language has attained its popularity. So social media platforms are also seen as a source of threat to the Arabic language. Thirdly, Many Arabic-speaking channels and newspapers were meant to be promoting the language; however, they have been using colloquial dialects and even make mistakes when using classical Arabic, thus becoming a source of danger rather than a source of assistance. Furthermore, the influx of foreign labor, especially in the oil-producing nations, is also undermining Arabic. These employees implemented many non-Arabic words and dialects that primarily combine Arabic and Hindi. In addition, relying on international babysitters and housewives, to take care of the. children were considerably detrimental to the youth’s use of Arabic. Fourthly, the common use of colloquial Arabic instead of the classical Arabic in schools and universities has weaken the language. Moreover, many scholars argue that the use of colloquial Arabic should not go beyond conversation. And according to Dr Sayed Al Bahrawi, Arabic language professor at Cairo University “Using colloquial language in writing is a wrong approach in the first place,” Finally, globalisation has made a huge impact on the culture and the use of the language. And even in places like Saudi Arabia, where English has become the lingua franca of commerce, media and education.

According to Heron (2012), globalization has contributed to shifting traditional societies and cultures across the globe. For some societies, globalization means opportunity while in others it means exploitations. GCC countries have similar cultural, values, social and political dimensions. Thus, globalization studies are not focused on one single Gulf country only and the majority of studies are represented as “Gulf studies”. Nowadays English has a strong presence in Saudi Arabia in various sectors at all levels.

Furthermore, in the education system, it is mainly the only foreign language taught in schools. it is also taught in private colleges, universities, and in lots of industrial organizations. It is clear that the status of English in Saudi Arabia is raising and Widley spread all over the country, whether it is a private sector, hospitals, tv and media they all mostly expect a high proficiency of English when hiring jobs applicants. revive and maintain Arabic language in order to successfully balance between the use of English in our modern world while maintain and strengthen the use of Arabic there some recommended tips.

The Arab youth may not grasp the true meaning of their culture. Globalization and the other factors have tremendously influenced Arab culture throughout the years in so many different ways. I believe our youth should take the responsibility of conveying the language and culture to the next generation. Our language is very precious so we should keep this vibrant and dynamic language alive. It is definitely our duty to starts the movement and contribute to carry out our language, culture and traditions and introduce it to foreigners. Of course, learning a foreign language does not essentially mean that people should stop using their native language. According to Islamic and Arabic culture, learning foreign languages is encouraged since this learning will provide the learner with the needed knowledge about how other people think and behave. It is also worth noting that raising children not using proper Arabic or English will produce a generation that lack the skills in both languages. While using the new technologies has been very efficient in our modern world today to enhance language abilities, it seems to be counter-effective to mix Arabic and English. It is not necessary to take the unique use of Arabic mixed with English to negate the importance of the Internet in creating other abilities in ordinary situations. It may be incorrect to say that the issue resides in the use of the Internet; instead, the issue may be ascribed to the confusion of combining English and Arabic. To sum up I think if people continue to abandon their native language in everyday life, in a few years time the language would die or weaken in a very noticeable way. However, they have the choice whether to try saving the language through the suggested ways mentioned earlier, otherwise the language might weaken.