Whether “Lebanese” is a language or not has proved to be quite a controversial topic in the comments of a previous post.
Many people are ambivalent about the topic, but one outfit has absolutely no doubts that “Lebanese” is indeed a language in its own right: The “Lebanese Language Institute“.
The LLI take their Lebanese-ness very seriously. Their website has an active blog, a Lebanese Alphabet Pronunciation Guide. and a downloadable Lebanese Keyboard. Do check it out.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
I need to see that
I have no problems with a latin-arabic script – or at least, a new arabic script that uses separate letters rather than cursive ones. But linguistically speaking what they are talking about is completely untrue.
Ali, how is it untrue? Enlighten, please?
I have no problem with Lebanese wanting to promote/ teach their dialect to any interested party, whether Lebanese descendants abroad or others. On the contrary, dialects are one of the most intriguing part of linguistics, mainly because of their lively characteristics. That being said, the LLI is very wrong, not to mention condescending and conceited, and this starting the first sentence on its home page. Lebanese is a dialect. Arabic is the language. Every self-loathing “Phoenician” should get over that fact and move on.
Katia, are you a linguist? If so, could you answer a couple of questions for me? No need to answer if you’re not a trained linguist.
Here are my questions:
1- What are the criteria that make a language a language, and a dialect a dialect?
2- Who decides what is a language and what is not? Is it Katia?
Thank you
Maryam, I’ll save Katia’s breath and attempt an answer. In the end, there is not difference whatsoever between a language and a dialect. They are exactly the same thing. I’m sure people like Katia manning the “language police” will not like this answer, but tough! This is an answer that most (politically untainted) linguists agree upon.
George Bernard Shaw put it most exquisitely and pithily: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy behind it.” In other words, a language is a dialect that has official recognition as a national speech form (and that’s where GBS’s army and navy come in), whereas a dialect is a language that does not have such official recognition (no army and navy behind it.)
Lebanese belongs in that second category: it is a national (natively spoken) language that, due to the linguistic totalitarianism of Arabists and metalinguistic obfuscation, is denied official status. But lack of official status is not the same thing as absence of a sui generis Lebanese language…
and btw, I disagree with Ali and Katia’s absolutist approach. A language is, after all, what people make of it, not what the “language police” decides it is; and if the LLI folks want to make the claim that Lebanese is a descendant of Canaanite/Phoenician (not an offshoot of Arabic), then that is their prerogative entirely (even though they DO stand on very firm linguistic grounds making that claim.) There is a wealth of literature on this, in Lebanon of the 1860s-1950s if anyone cares to consult them. But unfortunately, in the Orwellian cultural universe in which Lebanon has been bathing these past 90 years, such studies are of course banned and denigrated by the dominant Arabist establishment.
btw, dovetailing what I was saying in the previous comments (about language being the prerogative of its community of speakers), linguistically speaking, Hindi and Urdu are the same language (they are both Hindustani). But for political reasons, Muslim Indians who wanted to go it alone (and become Pakistanis), separated from India, concocted a new (Arabic/Persian) script for their Hindi language, and called it Urdu. Even though linguistically speaking Urdu IS Hindi, I don’t hear anyone making a fuss out of the Pakistanis’ linguistic fallacies!!!
I’m not denying a genetic kinship between the Lebanese language and Arabic (and neither are the LLI folks.) What I am (and they are) saying, is that Canaanite is the progenitor of modern Lebanese, not Arabic. And Arabic itself has been transformed over the centuries through its contacts with the languages it came to dominate, Canaanite and Aramaic among them. Some of the Aramaisms and Canaanisms that we mindless assume to be Arabic today include:
Allah, comes (according to Lebanese linguist Subhi al-Saleh) from the Aramaic word Alloho (for God.) The way we say “Allah” in Arabic (with the emphatic second “aleph”) is exquisitely Aramaic. And the Tripolitan Steve can vouch for that (if he still speaks his Tripolitan dialect. We say “Kouro” in Lebanon, not “Koura”, and Tripolitans say “Troblis” not “Trablus”. That “O” sound, that Bshariotes and Zghartiotes also use, does not have an equivalent in Arabic. All the “emphatic” “A” / “O” sounds that we have in Arabic today, are loans from other languages, including the word for “dad” (baba.)
Siraat, as in “ahdina al-siraat al-mustaqiim”, comes from the Latin “Strata” of which we still have a remnant in modern English today in the word for “street”…
Qalam as in “3allama al-insaana bil-qalam”, comes from the Greek word “Qalamos” (for writing reed.)
Both Latin and Greek were spoken in Lebanon prior to the coming of Islam and the Arabic language. Keep in mind also that the vibrant translation enterprise that enlightened 8th-11th century Caliphs undertook, was headed by Aramaic-speaking Christian and Hebrew-speaking Jewish Arabophones, who infused the new (desert) Arabic with Aramaisms and Canaanisms.
As someone mentioned earlier, the fact that most of the names of our towns and villages in Lebanon are still Aramaic (and have not been Arabized) confirms the fact that the language that we speak remains Canaanite-Aramaic. A transformed Canaanite-Aramaic to be sure, but Canaanite-Aramaic nonetheless. That is in addition to the fact that structurally and syntactically speaking, spoken Lebanese is THE TOTAL OPPOSITE of Arabic, and language is, after all, all about syntax, NOT vocabulary. If language were all about vocabulary, then a Frenchman could very easily claim English to be a French language, not a descendant of anglo-saxon speech forms. (btw, some 65% of English vocabulary comes from Norman French.)
nuff said.
Linguistically: Lebanese language developed from the mix of Aramaic and Arabic, just like Italian and Spanish languages developed from Latin.
About 1 000 years ago, there was nothing such as Italian language or Spanish language. They were but dialects of Latin. Between 1000-1300 AD people kept calling Spanish and Italian just “dialects of Latin”. They were then full languages, but it was hard for some to accept that local dialects became languages.
That is what’s happening with Lebanese language now.
The threshold between dialects and languages is when you need to learn each language separately. This is where Lebanese and Egyptian languages are both at now. Even if you are fluent in Lebanese language or Egyptian language, you can’t understand much of Arabic language unless you study it at school.
Just like people who speak Italian and Spanish now pieces of Latin, but if they don’t study Latin they can’t understand it.
This clear distinction is more seen outside the Middle East, where people who learned Lebanese from their parents and speak it fluently, can hardly understand any Egyptian or Arabic.
I guess what one needs to understand is that languages change overtime and we can’t understand all forms of a language or the classical words in a language.
Dialects are formed from a civilizations interaction with other civilizations- each country has its own dialect regardless of what their language is. In Lebanon, we associate mostly with the “Arab” language – doesn’t mean we are a hundred percent Arabic speakers. We are def. taught it in school and have the capability to understand other accents because of it (I think).
When one isn’t taught “classic” Arabic it’s hard just as if we were to look at the now dead “classic” English – I wouldn’t and don’t understand though fluent in English. As for the issue of dialects – we understand 1) because we’re taught and 2) because there are similarities we can’t ignore that make it easier. Doesn’t mean we understand everything… just as in British English or Canadian English we have words we both can’t understand from each other- doesn’t mean we can’t carry a conversation. And maybe for a person taught English and lives in France – the possibility they can’t grasp all English dialects is high.
few more things as pertains to vocab:
When we say “éé” in Lebanese, as opposed to “na3am”, we are not being “impolite.” “éé” is Canaanite for “yes”.
Also, the Lebanese “la22″ (with the final glottal stop), or “la22a”, is EXACTLY the same negating particle in Canaanite. it is not a distortion of the Arabic “laa”.
“Juwwa” and “barra” (for “inside” and “outside”) are typically Aramaic, from “Juwwo” “Barro”… no cognates whatsoever in Arabic.
“Shob” “Kham” (meaning “hot”) are Aramaic, not Arabic words
Arabic has only three vowels (and “O” is not Arabic), we have 6 vowels in Lebanese (including the é, and the o which come from Aramaic, and the u which we have acquired from contacts with European languages…) There are ONLY 3 vowels in Arabic.
Using our “independent pronouns”, when we say “Ana” “Ent”, Enté” “Hu” “Hii” “Nehna” (chez Steve they say “Nehno”) “Ento” “Henne”, WE ARE STILL saying them verbatim they way they occur in Aramaic (and again, this is NOT a distortion of Arabic, as the keepers of Arabist orthodoxy would have you believe!!!)
The names of our months are ALL Aramaic (and in Steve’s neck of the woods they still say Shboot, Odor, Nishon, Ayyor, Hzayron etc…) And incidentaly, this is not only the preserve of Maronites. Sunni Northern Lebanese speak a remnant/descendant of Aramaic AS MUCH AS–if not more exquisitely than–their Christian compatriots.
Our vowelless first consonants (as in Ktééb, Hmaar, Kbiir, etc..) are remnants of Aramaic and Canaanites speech habits (not a deformed Arabic.)
I have compiled a whole etymological-lexicon of Aramaic vocab and idiomatic expressions that we still use daily in Lebanese (from “3érzél” and “Shbiin”, to “Safat 7a22o”). It is still a work in progress, but I can share some of it with those interested.
Mariam my darling, you’re still wallowing in old hackneyed assumptions that fly in the face of the science of linguistics… And all this because of your emotive attachment to the Arabic language, not any firm linguistic reasoning. (and please, don’t misunderstand, I’m not patronizing you, I’m not disrespecting you, and I’m not insulting you… or the Arabs for that matter. I’m just stating fact.)
–I disagree with those who say Arabic is a dead languages. Arabic is not a dead language; the people who speak it are dead, just like the people who speak Latin are dead.
–Regarding the dialect-language dichotomy, although I somewhat agree with what you’re saying about dialects being the result of linguistic cross-fertilization, etc.. I disagree with your overall justification of why we say in Lebanon (and I submit to you INACCURATELY) that we speak an Arabic dialect. We say “Arabic dialect” in Lebanon because of Arabism’s linguistic totalitarianism and intolerance of descent, NOT any valid linguistic basis. (That’s in addition to Arabism’s ideological totalitarianism. Read the works of Sati’ al-Husri and Michel Aflaq.) I always use the Latin-Romance languages analogy because it is the most comprehensible to Western audiences, but also because it is the most accurate description of the MSA-Dialects dichotomy in the Middle East. Maximilian Krepinsky has argued that … Romance languages were born when the natives of the [conquered] provinces [of the Roman Empire] attempted to speak the language of their conquerors This process led to the distortion of Roman Latin, its fusion with the pre-existing indigenous languages of the newly coquered territories, and its ultimate transformation into what later became French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and even English.
This is exactly the linguistic situation in the modern Middle East, Mariam. Replace a few labels in Krepinsky’s description, and you have EXACTLY the description of OUR neck of the woods:
… Lebanese, Egyptian, Moroccan languages were born when the natives of the [conquered Aramaic, Coptic, and Berber] provinces [of the Arab Muslim Empire] attempted to speak the language of their conquerors This process led to the distortion of Arabic, its fusion with the pre-existing indigenous languages of the newly coquered territories, and its ultimate transformation into what later became Lebanese, Egyptian, Moroccan, etc…
My question is the following. Why else would Krepinsky’s accurate description be acceptable in a Latin-Romance context, and not in an MSA-Dialects context, if not for the (irrational) emotional attachment that most Middle Eastern Muslims have vis-à-vis the language of Koran??? (and I say “most Middle Eastern Muslims” because there are a number of courageous Muslims who ARE speaking truth to this kind of obscurantism… Most recently the Egyptian Sherif al-Shubashy. If you read Arabic, try to get your hands on his “Ysqut Sibawayh” (a French translation, “Le Sabre et la Virgule”, just came out.)
cheers..
Tony, your final analogy is spot on.
Mariam, your comparison of Classical English to Classical Arabic is false.
I take it you mean Elizabethan (or Shakespeare/King James Bible) English by Classical, yes? Either way, your comparison to Classical Arabic is still false. Although, admittedly, speakers of modern standard English (in all its varieties, whether American, Australian etc…) would encounter some difficulty understanding a King James Bible text, that difficulty arises from spelling, some word meanings, and minor (easily overcome) grammatical differences. But overall, modern standard english structure does not differ markedly from Elizabethan English structure.
Structurally and syntactically speaking, Modern Standard Arabic (and its Classical Arabic predecessor) are separated by a wide grammatical, structural, and syntactic chasm from the so-called “dialects” (and this before even getting into the issue of vocabulary and lexicons…) To take Tony’s correct analogy a bit further, while American-born children of Egyptians and Syrians who grew up speaking Egyptian and Syrian in Dearborn CANNOT understand Modern Standard (or Classical) Arabic when read to them, the American-born children of Irishmen and Jamaicans who grew up speaking their own variants of English in South Boston STILL CAN READ and UNDERSTAND standard English (AND Elizabethan English.) My linguistics professor would have given me an F for using your analogy. Again, no disrespect intended or meant, but it is a false and misleading analogy, and it dovetails (albeit unintentionally on your part) the intellectual dishonesty of Arabists weighing in on this issue. The dichotomy of modern English and its different variants CANNOT be compared to the dichotomy of Modern Standard Arabic and the 34 vernaculars spoken throughout the Middle East. Let’s STOP this madness already!!!
Again, linguistically, all languages evolve, develop and some die too.
The Arabic language itself was just a dialect – the Northern dialect of Arabic with Aramaic basis. It was the Dialect of Qurayc tribe. While the roots of Arabic were the southern Arabic closer to Hiijaz and the regions north of Yemen. However, that dialect was standardized and became what we know dialects of Arabic.
Languages kept evolving. Latin became multi new languages such as Italian, Spanish, French, Protégés and Romanian. We don’t call Italian and Spanish dialects of Latin, though they were called so a 1000 years ago. Also there is no single person in the world now who speak Arabic as native language, or speaks dialects of Arabic – Maybe few hundred years ago that was the case.
Like all other languages, and pretty much like Italian, Spanish and French, the modern Lebanese language evolved through history from Canaanite and Ancient Aramaic, and got mixed later with Arabic, in addition to the Persian, Greek, Turkish and Italian effects to give us the native language of the Lebanese people now “Lebanese” – Simply, the language that you speak it with needing to study it anywhere!
Tony, you should check out . I think it dovetails much of what you’re saying.
sorry the link got stripped. here’s the link again:
Language memory and identity in the Middle East; the Case for Lebanon
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Memory-Identity-Middle-East/dp/0739137387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283049860&sr=8-1
LNH: I respect your change of tone with me and at that I do now see your point of view more clearly and it makes sense. I do still feel like it can be considered “Arabic” though for the simple reason that it connects a whole bunch of nations together (maybe one day for a good cause) but still historically the formation of these languages and/or accents are different and of course have different histories.
Mariam,
Latin was once the spoken language in most of Western Europe: Italy, Spain, France, Romania etc.. Now there are Latin languages called Spanish, Italian, Romanian etc.. If you want to call Spanish a dialect of Latin, then that was true a 1000 years ago- not now.
If you call Spanish now a dialect of Latin, then people will go and study Latin thinking that they will learn Spanish which is wrong. However, a thousand years ago that was true.
Same thing happens with Lebanese, if you call it a dialect of Arabic, then people will think that they will learn Lebanese if they study Arabic which is wrong.
The last time people in Lebanon spoke a dialects of Arabic was around the 13 century, were some people in coastal cities were speaking dialects of Arabic while others in the mountains and north parts of Lebanon were speaking dialects of Syr-Aramaic.
If two languages have similar roots or are close to each other it does not mean that one is a dialect of the other.