Language and Culture

Language and Culture:

A few days ago, I was at a post office, speaking to the employee sitting behind the window in Arabic. Each time, he responded in French. I won’t recount here all my impressions of this conversation outside a window in an official office. They can be summed up in one word: “I hope the Algerian administration pays more attention to its public relations . “

This wish is not limited to the simple employee sitting behind his window, but extends to the respectable employee sitting behind his dignified desk.

What I want to say here is that this dialogue from behind a window led me to write this article.

This wasn’t just a matter of a flawed approach. It seemed even more bizarre to me because this man, who was deafening me from behind his window with his poor French, had just spoken a few words of fluent Arabic to one of his colleagues.

What made this behavior even more reprehensible, in my view, was that it embodied a kind of deliberate dissonance in the environment created by the decree introducing the Arabic language into official positions.

It must be added that President Boumediene, in his speeches, sets a living example of the government’s commitment to Arabization.

Let us also add, for those who believe that the truth always comes from beyond our borders, that the example is taken from Vietnam.

Ah! That’s a damning argument! The Vietnamese minister, who is honoring our country with his visit, said in a private conversation that even foreign envoys in his country are required to speak the local language.

We in Algeria are not yet as strict as this. But at least let our employees themselves set an example.

It’s true that those who distort Arabization are not new. Their presence can be traced back a long time, even to countries with an Arab culture, such as Egypt. At the beginning of this century, a prominent Coptic thinker praised the use of the Egyptian language in literature. The same applies to our country. These distorters are not new either. In fact, the struggle for Arabization proceeded alongside a frenzied hostility to Arabic and an urgent desire to eradicate it.

And of course, it reached its peak under the rule!!

To give an idea of ​​this, we publish here the article we devoted to this topic, which we published in the magazine? .. in the sixth issue of June 1948. “The General Assembly, in its seventh session, opened a discussion on the usefulness of the Arabic language, within it . ”

This debate has taken on a legal and a cultural dimension (both of which were discussed by Mr. Joe-Brissonnier with simple and precise eloquence. We will not attempt here to address these legal arguments with which the speaker supported his case. We leave these matters to the parliamentarians and delegates to assess their importance.

Conversely, the cultural aspect of this issue concerns every thinker who considers language to be a fundamental means of developing “popular thought.” However, Arab thought and its means of expression, the Arabic language, are not irrevocably linked to a particular form of life. Rather, they adapt, or must adapt, to all aspects of life, especially within associations.

Indeed, there is a parliamentary technique. But this assertion, which is undeniably well-intentioned, places a somewhat arbitrary limit on the message of the Arabic language. To be fair in our judgment, we would like to cite, first of all, the objection of a trusted professor in this field, Massignon. This eminent Orientalist recently told us that the Semitic languages ​​possess a dual structure: the first is what allowed them to receive revealed writings, and the second relates, in a way, to what allowed these languages, later, to catch up with and lead all human thought, especially scientific thought, for hundreds of years.

Indeed, Mr. (Jou-Brissonnière) is not at all wrong in asserting that “the French language best expresses the positive sciences and Western thought .” But he distorts history when he adds, in the same manner, and with regard to the same idea, that it is “the heir to the Latin-Greek civilization .” However, had he claimed for this thought a legacy of medieval culture (the culture of the Middle Ages) , beginning with Saint Thomas Aquinas, that would have been more just and more correct.

In fact, it was Arab thought and the Arabic language that captured the Greek heritage and transmitted it, after developing it significantly, to Europe in the Middle Ages. Mr. Joe-Brissonnier undoubtedly acknowledges that capturing, developing, and transmitting this heritage requires the Arabic language to be something other than the mere “language of religions .” Indeed, if this language can today aspire, with its religious aspect, to a truly universal character, since it expresses the thought of 500 million Muslims, it can also express the technical thought of any civilization, as it did long ago in Cordoba and Baghdad, during the Golden Ages.

Isn’t it significant that European languages, especially French, took from the technical Arabic language, which was the linguistic basis for the launch of modern sciences?

Isn’t it significant that the word “chiffres” (originally zero and meaning number) is the same (of Arabic origin) in all European languages?

There is no doubt that the Arabs must make the same leap that occurred thirteen centuries ago in order to re-translate global thought, and even political thought.

This is a call that I believe cannot be ignored. It gives the issue of Arabization a historical dimension.