Classical Arabic, Language of the Koran, on Endangered List

Few people attach more importance to language than does the Arab. To the Arab, his language is more than a way of communicating. It is an object of worship, an almost metaphysical force that draws man closer to God.

The Koran is written in Arabic, and the Koran is regarded as the word of God. Muslims believe that every thought, every word man needs is written in the Koran, expressed 13 centuries ago in Allah’s revelations to the illiterate merchant Mohammed.

Master Arabic and the wisdom of the Koran is unlocked. Protect the purity of Arabic and God’s word remains unsullied forever.

Yet there is concern, from Saudi Arabia to Morocco, that the pressures of the modern world are challenging Arabic to keep up with the times. If it cannot, some scholars suggest, classical Arabic may join Latin in the category of admired, studied--but dead--languages.

“Hardly a day passes without some prominent person complaining that Arabic is being corrupted by the influence of foreign words,” Said Bedaui, a noted Egyptian scholar on the Arabic language, observed. “People will tell you the Arabs are losing mastery over their language.

‘Everyone Is Concerned’

“They believe that if they allow the language to develop, to become more contemporary, they will fail to understand the Koran. The language academy is concerned, the Ministry of Education is concerned, everyone is concerned.”

How, for instance, should the language accommodate the word “sandwich,” which is used to described a thing that was not eaten in Mohammed’s time? How about “television,” “automobile” and the thousands of scientific, medical and mathematical terms that have crept into other languages?

In colloquial Arabic, which classical purists dismiss as a low-grade spoken language without fixed rules, in the news media and in casual conversation, foreign words have simply been adopted. “Sandwich” is sandawitshat , “television” is tilivizyoon , “bus” is autubiis , “radio” is radio .

The 54 scholars at the Egyptian Language Academy, established in 1934, have tried to counter this practice, without success, by finding appropriate words from the Koran. For sandwich, they came up with a term that translated as “a divider and a divided thing together with something fresh inside.” For automobile, their alternative was “that which goes by itself.”

Predictably, no one says he is getting into his “that which goes by itself” to find a cheese “divider and a divided thing together with something fresh inside.” He gets into his sayra and goes off to buy a cheese sandawitshat. The offerings of the academy were at first were ridiculed, now simply ignored.

The Egyptian academy--along with similar institutes in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Morocco, all of which are making conflicting decisions--is also trying to cope with demands of the 20th Century.

Its members have made slow progress, but only now are they looking for words to describe what the West produced or discovered about 1970. Their pace seems to indicate that classical Arabic will increasingly be rooted in the past, useful primarily as a medium for religious and intellectual discussion.

Virtually no one outside religious circles speaks classical Arabic in informal conversation. Colloquial dialects have taken its place, but they vary so much from region to region that a Tunisian, say, cannot understand a Bahraini without major semantic changes. For example, to say “I want,” a Moroccan would use the word brit ; a Saudi might use uriid or uhib .

Even in Egyptian dialect--widely understood because Egyptian movies and TV soap operas are seen throughout the Arab world--Bedaui has found five distinct linguistic levels, each with its own syntax and speech sounds. A sheik will speak on one level in the mosque and on another in addressing the vegetable vendor, much as educated Egyptians casually shift from Arabic to French to English in the same conversation.

“So, if you’re a Westerner and you want to learn Arabic, you’ve got a problem,” said Amin Hosni, a professor of Arabic at the American University of Cairo. “Do you want to learn classical and spend five years in a library? Or do you want to read newspapers and talk to people? And in what country do you want to talk to them? What you’ve actually got to learn is two languages in one.”

More than 600 English words, among them “algebra,” “alcohol,” “assassin,” “cotton,” “magazine,” “traffic” and “tariff,” have Arabic roots, and some Muslim scholars argue that Western thought has been greatly influenced by Arabic. The phrase amir al bahr, for example, means “prince of the sea,” and the argument goes that the French and English, having trouble pronouncing it, gradually altered it to “admiral.”

Westerners do have trouble with Arabic, a Semitic language spoken by 167 million people. In Arabic, there is an almost complete absence of cognates, or words derived from recognizable roots. It sounds different and it looks different, it has a different alphabet (there are 28 letters), the vowel system is different, and the tenses are imprecise.

No Unanimity on Conversion

Also, there is no unanimity on how to transliterate Arabic words into the Roman letters used in the West.

Consider the last name of the Libyan leader, Moammar Kadafi, as it is spelled in The Times. Newsweek magazine doubles the d , making Kaddafi; Time magazine likes that but substitutes G for K to make it Gaddafi; the New York Times and the Washington Post prefer Q over either other first letter, producing Qaddafi; the U.S. government slips in an h to get Qadhafi; the Associated Press and United Press International use Khadafy.

“In classical Arabic,” an Egyptian linguist said flatly, “it should be Qathafi.”

Will classical Arabic eventually die? No, say Arab scholars. As the language of the Koran, it is deeply ingrained in Islam. It is part of the spirit of Arab nationalism. Indeed, in the ancient debate over what is an Arab, the one thing everyone agrees on is that an Arab is someone who speaks Arabic.

In an effort to adapt classical Arabic to modern demands, the Arab League set up a language academy in Morocco, and in the mid-1970s, its representatives met in Algiers to consider a list of words that included “gram.” They debated, often heatedly, for days.

The Egyptians insisted it should be gram, as in English. The Lebanese were just as insistent on jram. Finally, the league compromised on gjram-- which may be unpronounceable in any language.

How Do YOU Spell Kadafi? Kadafi --L.A. Times Kaddafi --Newsweek Gaddafi --Time magazine Qaddafi --N.Y. Time/Washington Post Qadhafi --U.S. Government Qathafi --Egyptian linguist Khadafy --AP/UPI