Harry's Place

The great thing about that Gigg’s goal against Arsenal was the context in which it happened. It was at the end of a semi final replay, at the end of a terribly tight season.

Thanks for that DaveM. Your assessment as someone who has lived in an Arab country and studied the language is most valuable.

I suppose the equivalent might be if we ask how well equipped Victorians were to discuss sex using only the publicly accepted language. Answer: Not much.

DaveM, you wrote nothing here that isn’t obvious.

Also I would add that I think shallow thinking is a coping mechanism. When the principles and power structures that society is built on are all harmful, it’s safest not to think at all.

If you seem to have no thoughts, then you can rebel in shallow ways in order to preserve your humanity – and when pressed, it’s always safest to have no reasons for your actions, no reasoning, no principles.

If you have no opinion then you can not be guilty of heresy or treason.

Anyway I didn’t start writing this comment to say all that, but just to get a word in before the shitstorm of idiots calling you a racist, like they do to me whenever a dare criticize Muslim culture.

“If you have no opinion then you can not be guilty of heresy or treason.”

When the price of free thought is death, then the only ones left are those with no thoughts.

I think that the Arabic language is an amazing thing. It is beautiful to look at in script and as you said it is very descriptive and poetic. But it is a blessing and a curse as it is so easily misquoted and difficult to translate.

So much so that even people who’s first language is Arabic can dispute a translation or a quote. Add the nebulous classical Arabic (which is the language of the Koran) into the mix and confusion reigns supreme.

This becomes a big problem because in Islam god is monolingual, Arabic is gods language and the Koran is the perfect word of god and as such is not open to interpretation.

As a religion, culture and political ideology Islam is a mess partly due to the primacy of the Arabic language.

Also the use of Arabic is used to shield any criticism of Islam because any Muslim who realises your criticism is valid can just say that you have not read the Koran in it’s original Arabic therefore you have not really understood the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

You must know gods language to truly know gods word. Rather convenient don’t you think?

PS: DaveM anyone who calls you racist for this article is an ignoramus who is abusing the term racist and doesn’t deserve the respect of a reply. Although I feel quite within my rights to call you Man U Scum :-)

PPS: are you from Manchester or are you more of an armchair silverware hunter??? :-) ;-)

So what you are saying is Arabic=Newspeak.

Orwell was looking in the wrong direction.

Where’s Part 1?

“but nothing in the way of scientific or technological development”.

http://www.arabscientist.org/

This rather obsessive post verges on racism. Just because the author has spent time in Syria and can speak some of the language does not make it any less so. I don’t doubt much of what he says is true but its only a single, albeit unattractive, aspect of Arab culture. There is plenty unattractive about the West too.

Quite specifically racist too – the “inference” of Western superiority over the Arab race is clear. This is not appropriate for HP, better on LGF though I think even they might balk. You’d do well to take this down – plenty of fuel here for your detractors.

Bravo davem – best article of the month or the season.

BTW Unlike pseudo-atheist leftists who have embraced Islam and Islamism, davem and myself know a little about Arabic and the general culture in the middle east.

Then idealistic idiots like Bloo come along and display their ignorance.

Bloo: “Plenty unattractive about the West too”

Hey idiot – dont change the subject.

There is a name for Bloo’s logical fallacy (namely, X is now excused because Y also has committed said crimes at some point in the past.)

And the typical brandishing of the “racist” slur by the typical ignoramus-left.

For a Muslim (and a proud apostate, kiram to maqzet hammal Bloo) who has lived countless years in the middle east, let me say that Western liberal culture IS PREFERRED and MORE DECENT than any common Arab or Persian culture, and this by OBJECTIVE standards of civility and enlightenment.

So STFU Bloo.

Hamid – who lived in Jordan for 4 years among other places in the ME.

Here’s my favourite Al Jazeera clip. It’s as good as that Ryan Giggs goal.

Good post, Dave. Have you considered providing translations of Al Arabiya articles? And right on cue, you have an effort to terrorize you into silence.

Pretty damn odd definition of racism, Bloo, where one can praise the erudition and cultured beauty of a language, make no mention of race (or, even, religion which we’re told is the new race) and insist liberal Arab voices exists. But, you said “verges on racism”, so that’s you covered. Are you an Arabic speaker?

Quite specifically racist too – the “inference” of Western superiority

Even if this were true, it ain’t specific. Been speaking English long?

over the Arab race is clear.

There is no “Arab race”. Dave certainly didn’t say so.

http://www.arabscientist.org/>/blockquote>

What of it? There are Arab scientists a plenty, but they have to work in those dastardly Western institutions. One home-knitted webpage which you found after a brief google does not make a case.

You, not Dave, have heard criticisms of political and social models as racist rants. Admit it, you are scared of the “Arab race”.

You’d do well to take this down – plenty of fuel here for your detractors.

He doesn’t really have to listen to a single word you have to say.

“Nor even because it’s an incoherent mess which can’t quite make up its mind whether Mohammed Atta was a victim of CIA/Mossad manipulation or an Islamic hero.”

This is the crux of the issue.
This particular Arab discourse (which I have found it also in the slow-thinking Latin American anti-USA left) wants to consider a terrorist as an unaware victim of a cunning manipulation that led him despairingly and astray to committ the act that he was wishing for and that everybody applauds.

Saving the distances, it is as if there was said that a big conspiracy against Aleph exists, to force him to marry Angelina Jolie. She says yes, so she is certainly part of the conspiracy. Aleph lives happily all his life with her, and people still think that he was being led astray by evil people towards his happiness. Poor hero/victim! Long live the Religion of Peace or I will blow you to bits!

Bloo – Does it concern you that Al Jazeera broadcasts venomous antisemitism, see 33 minutes into the “Top Secret” programme above?

Plenty unattractive about the West too

Talk about avoiding the issue!

“bad writing is indicative of somebody with something to hide.” is a summary of the theme of a George Orwell essay called “Politics and the English Language”. Not original to Nick Cohen.

I’m trying to imagine what Orwell might have thought of post-modernism. Might he have seized on some of its origins in efforts to re-think a dying Leninism?

Thank you for writing this.

I thank God every day that I wasn’t born a poor little muslim girl, with depraved menfolk and no hope of liberty for myself or my children.

Carol, this is a discussion about the lack of subtle edges of the Arabic language, just one spoken by Muslims. The Muslim angle, which there is of course, is secondary. Have you any thoughts on the primary point?

Davem – many thanks, that explains a lot, in fact it is one of the most illuminating posts I can remember here. Unfortunately it underlines the enormity of the chasm between our respective cultures. It is Arabic’s tragedy to have evolved in a culture of extreme political correctness, where blasphemy is a capital crime, where you have to revere a murderous bandit at the same time as trying to live a decent life. Small wonder that their minds are crippled with doublethink.

Field – that’s a good analogy. I remember hearing a man asking his parents why they never told him about sex. Their response was quite simply: “We didn’t have the words”. (even the rude ones)

Joshua – many obvious things still need to be pointed out, and some took serious courage: Gravity, the Copernican universe, Evolution, Communism doesn’t work.

Bloo – I see your critical thought is also impaired by a screwed up world view, hence your hiding behing the brainless charge of racism. Arabs never translated anything until the 19th century – they got their “subordinates” (Jews, Greeks, Persians, Christians) to do their translations. Their hubris, even today, is quite breathtaking. The only original contribution of Arabs to science was in optics, by Al Hazen – 1000 years ago.

1984 was as much about language and its systematic abuse to control the people as it was about totalitarian systems. The syndrome the Arabs have got themselves into is what Richard Landes describes as cognitive egocentrism – essentially attributing your own world view to others who do not posess it. Liberals suffer from this in their paltry efforts to understand the Arab and Muslim world – they should all read this thread. In fact I recommend many of Landes essays on the thought fallacies that surround politics, and particularly the politics of Islam and Arab culture.

I see all the You Tube clips referenced in this thread now come up with:
We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.

How convenient!

A great, thought provoking post by Davem.

ta!

Sadly I do not have time at the moment to write a guest post about this newspaper columnist and blogger, but Sultan Al Qassemi regularly writes for The National, a relatively new UAE based paper.

His latest article is entitled, “Al Jazeera and the released terrorist’s birthday party” and I am sure it will be of interest to anyone interested in this particular thread.

By the way – I do advise checking out Sultan’s blog. It contains a number of articles that he has had published and it is pleasing to see them published in an Arab newspaper

Totally off-topic, I know but I don’t recall it being discussed elsewhere – could this be the single most inane CiF post ever:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/31/religion.race

Daven seems to be arguing something on the lines of the Sapir-Worf thesis: that a language (Arabic) so defines the world that it only allows people to think in certain ways. Paradoxically this is nto too far from the devout Islamicist view that the word of god is only expressable in pure Arabic. Each makes langauge the bound of sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Worf

Not only is this relativism (not something I thought HP admired). It is empiricaly wrong. It would deny that true translation is possible. No doubt poetry, and to some extent fiction are left without a lot of their colour and situated culture when translated. But philosphically all truth must be translatable. Whatever the social norms of Arab speakers (debatable – I find it hard to believe that an entire swathe of humanity from the Maghreb to Syria spends its life avoiding direct speech) there is always room for Truth, which is Great and Prevails.

“Not only is this relativism (not something I thought HP admired). It is empiricaly wrong. It would deny that true translation is possible. No doubt poetry, and to some extent fiction are left without a lot of their colour and situated culture when translated. But philosphically all truth must be translatable.”

No doubt, in other circumstances, and with a lot of effort, Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies” could be translatable to Arabic, and not only that, but understood by the large mass of the Arab world.
What DaveM says -IMHO – is that these circumstances don’t exist now, which is sensible, and not racist or relativist at all.
Think, for example, how you have misconstrued the meaning of DaveM post, even though you speak DaveM’s same language. Because you look for things that DaveM has not put in there.

I have a good test, Andrew.

Please, answer, what is Zionism?

Fabian, my point is to make a difference (analytically that is – hey ain’t I a philosopher!) between language and the culture it is in. DaveM seems to be assertign that there are inherently obstacles in ARabic I assume both colloquial and classical) to speaking directly abotu what is or what si not the case (why? how? as he says).

I put the same logic to work on a language other than English which i do speak, French, and find that written French is full of lots of ways of avoiding direct statements of fact, such as the use of the conditional for a reported crime, and the subjunctive mood for expressign doubt and emotion. Thus I conclude that French is the ‘language of diplomacy’ since it can swiftly avoid direct truth!

Quoi qu’il en soit: Ideology (what is Zionism?) is right at the borders betwen the two and by definiton is not the same as truth.

Carol, this is a discussion about the lack of subtle edges of the Arabic language, just one spoken by Muslims. The Muslim angle, which there is of course, is secondary.

I disagree. Language is a reflection of the needs of the people who speak it. If Islam disappeared tomorrow, then the need for rational thought and discussion would create new ways to use Arabic. Something would change, an new pattern would be imported into the language, and rational discussion would flourish.

Andrew, of course that there are things that are unthinkable (without a lot of effort) in any language, because you lack the concepts, and you are used to think differently.
This is really non debatable.
Democracy was invented by the Greeks, not by the Persians, I doubt many Persians understood what it was at the beginning.
Similarly with many peoples and many concepts.
Arabic is the language of a people who went from being warriors to being servants of dictators, to being spectators of history, to being resentful of it and believing in conspiracies.
They never went through a French revolution and they never accepted that Jews are people just like them.
What DaveM says is that they did not develop their language along with us, so many things are unthinkable or have to be expressed in metaphors to come through, which adds effort to communication.
So you could expect that their thinking processes are different, just like their habits and ideologies.

Re: Zionism, I would expect that an Egyptian or Iraqi Arab would define that differently than: “the Jewish nationalist movement” which is how I define it, and it is pretty neutral.

I can’t wait for part 3 in this series – perhaps you could title it The Arab Mind, and explain how these inhuman beasts brains function at the level of a dogs, and they hate their children, and rape their mothers and so on. Very useful material you provide Dave M.

In fact, posts like this serve the role of the fluffler, whose sole purpose is to give the reader a good solid erection, before they toddle off to fuck someone. In this case, its them backwards Arabs that’s getting fucked.

Andrew: Daven seems to be arguing something on the lines of the Sapir-Worf thesis: that a language (Arabic) so defines the world that it only allows people to think in certain ways. Paradoxically this is nto too far from the devout Islamicist view that the word of god is only expressable in pure Arabic. Each makes langauge the bound of sense.

Davem’s point is not about language centricity, another favorite idea of the idiotic cultural left. Nowhere has Davem made language the center of cognition. That centricity thesis is long debunked — see Pinker.

The point is that the political conditions imposed on the populace has now come to be reflected in the language.

So I think you understood it backwards.

As a speaker of a ME language, let me say that once the speaker for example emigrates away from that region, the same language tends to be used more precisely and more meaningfully with the flowery nonsense given a rest. And it is reformed in subtle ways, in order to make it rigorous and a better medium of direct expression in the new surrounding.

those nasty towel head, camal jockeys havent translated Marx into Arabic eh?

Jeezus.

Can we take up a collection and send TheIrie to a deprogramming centre?

“I can’t wait for part 3 in this series – perhaps you could title it The Arab Mind, and explain how these inhuman beasts brains function at the level of a dogs, and they hate their children, and rape their mothers and so on. Very useful material you provide Dave M.”

TheIrie, which Arab countries you have visited?

ps

DaveM surely has heard of the Marxist Internet Archive?

“those nasty towel head, camal jockeys havent translated Marx into Arabic eh?”

Something must have happened during translation, since those Arab Marxists that existed -a long time ago and in a galaxy far far away- thought that Jews were the burgeoisie and the Palestinians were the Peasantry.

DaveM says the following (re.Arabic):

It’s not like European languages, which are basically verbal ways to convey information on who did what, where, when, how and why. It appears to me that having developed in an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought, especially in the fields of religion and politics, Arabic has become a means to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

It’s a Blog post and I won’t labour the point that this is pretty bald as descriptions of languages go. I would nevertheless point out that it is “arabic” which is said to be a “means” to avoid difficult issues, and which “prohibits” critical thought. Not the cultural and political atmosphere of the countries in which it is spoken.

This kind of argument-by-assertion that language stops/allows certain kinds of thought has a long linguistic history: such as the claim that Hebrew lacks a future tense (morphologically, not analytically, so does English but there you go) shaped the religious content of the Torah. Or even that (Professor Steiner) that the Indo-European tense-system, and the form this gives to counter-factual subjunctive conditional (like that one!) promoted the early use of scientific hypotheses (Conjecture and Refutation as Popper’s book called it).

I have read Pinker, which is precisely why I made the point that truth is translatable. There is are obviously ways in which grammatical structrues do influence how things are sayable. But I suspect that modern Arabic does not actually stop people thinking in terms of what is true and what is not, and if there is a great influence of religious poison in arabic speakers’ cultural and political life, this doesn’t prevent people from, conveying truthful information. Or thinking. I thought the Mosque and the State were there to do that job.

Fortunately such is the boundless creativity inherent in the nature of all languages and all peoples, that any Islamist Newspeak is as doomed as the the one Orwell dreamt up: an impossibility in fact.

It would seem to me undeniable that language & world view are intimately related. cf (to cherry-pick a couple of examples) the precision of German or the casual attitude towards sexual politics among speakers of languages lacking a neuter gender such as French. Sometimes stereotypes work.

Fabian

the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Maxrian thinking

I want an end to the Israeli state as the state is the non neutral muscle of Capital and nations are an arbitrary creation of capitalism.

One world and one people is the motto

ps

all states, not just Israel

“the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Maxrian thinking”

Tell exactly that to their faces.

Fabian

I am not interested in talking to murderous scum. I would rather talk with folks in order that they do not fall for that terrorist shite

But you could discover that the behavior of the PFLP towards you in the hypothetical case you shout “the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Marxian thinking” to their faces, won’t be much different from the behavior of every other gun-toting Marxist group since Lenin.

You won’t be alive to enjoy the realization, though.

They may well call themselves marxists, it doesn’t make it so

If you want to believe what people say then there was a truly democratic country called the DDR.

The DDR was an Orwellian Police state of course, nothing to do with socialism. But hey…you have an anti communist axe to grind. Gawd forbid facts get in the way

What facts??

Standard history says post 1917 Russia was communist.

A basic undertsanding of socialism is sufficient to rubbish that nonsense but heck, look at Lenin’s writing. State Capitalism was a step forward, he said in 1918

Would you like more facts Fabian?

You are revolting, Ireson. I am never surprised when anti-imperialist imps such as you allow yourself the vent for the racist garbage in your worldview, but it doesn’t stop my being appalled.

So, if some Movement doesn’t nationalize the Means of Production, then abolishes the State, then arranges the situation so everybody receives according to his needs and gives according to his abilities, that is not a Socialist Movement?

Have you ever stop to think that the very fact that no Socialist movement was ever able of doing what you think they had to do, even though they claimed as loud as you that they were trying to follow Marx’s way, says something very meaningful and basic about the posibilities of the Socialist doctrine and the real consequences of trying to follow it?

In other words, don’t you see that Marxism is a Millenarian sect?

‘the casual attitude towards sexual politics among speakers of languages lacking a neuter gender such as French’

Welsh also lacks a neuter gender. Do the Welsh also have a casual attitude towards sexual politics?

Arabic also lacks a neuter gender.

Fabian, what is a “Millinarian sect” please? I did not realise Marxists were fond of millinery. I had always thought Milan to be the historical home of hat-making, hence the linguistic origin of the city’s name.

Dunno about casual, Bob; definitely ambivalent (the complaints are going to start).

Coatsey (G-d I hate that rhyme, but better than confusing you with Ireson), Dave’s left sufficient ambiguity that he’s referring to 20th Century Arabic and political milleu, not its development from early Semitic. Others have tried to do so, as if the language Thomas Aitkenhead tried to conceal his atheism with is different from mine.

It would be interesting to consider how Maltese presents itself.

Roley:

Why do you invent words? I have written “Millenarian”, not “Millinarian” like you. The joke about Milan really isn’t worth the effort.

Fabian

“nationalise” means turning means of production (land, mines, factories et al) into state property. Atlee’s Government nationalised in 45, as did the Bolsheviks after 1917 – that wasn’t socialism. Socialism is something else: common ownership, Free access, no money, production based solely on meeting needs.

You fail to notice central parts of socialist thought. There can be no socialism without a majority who understand and desire it. That’s a billion miles away from elitist Leninists. Socialists are democrats. That old bearded German was for the franchise, dont you know. The difference is we support workers, not the capitalist class

As for Millenarian….Nope. People are starving whilst firms make profits. Whats wrong saying that is wrong and we should change society in order that this never should happen?
.

Swahili has sixteen genders.

Thanks for this. I don’t know Arabic myself but I have long suspected that the difficulties we face in mutual comprehension lie deep in the structures of the Arabic language itself. It seems to be a right hemisphere language that follows intuition and feeling rather than left hemisphere logic. It is highly allusive, and there is a constant blurring of subject and object. Ie, confusion as to where the verb is going, making it logically imprecise, but emotionally powerful; ‘affect’ rather than ‘effect’. For instance, I have heard it said that in Arabic, instead of saying: ‘I missed the train’ you will say, ‘The train missed me’. Now there’s a cop out!

Agency is very important in languages that emphasise rationality. Who (precisely) did What to Whom; When; and How. Latin is very rational in that way.

Time is another concept that varies in languages.

The Hopi language has no tenses but has been found to be a good language in which to express the relations of quantum mechanics.

In Gaelic ‘give’ and ‘take’ are often used interchangeably. You differentiate direction by other aspects of grammar and context to indicate whether the movement is from A to B, or from B to A. But usually its use is limited to certain subjects where giving and taking are a bit allegorical; ‘I give a song’ is the same as ‘I take a song’.

Verbs are however expressed remotely as verbal nouns, ‘washing’ rather than ‘wash’. If you want to say, ‘I must wash the car’ you say ‘it is at me to be at the car’s washing’. Ie the realm of things (me; car) is at one stage removed from the world of actions; which have a kind of abstract transcendent eternal quality. The washing of the car exists at some level of time whether I am at it or not.

All interesting stuff.

Yet I find it hard to imagine that Arabic can’t handle the precision of science and natural philosophy as it once did. Arabs study to become doctors and clearly find ways to express agency with some precision.

So I wonder if deeper cultural forces are at work. All languages have their respective capacities for precision, agency, abstraction, however they are structured.

spgb gray, did you learn nothing new from the economic collapse of command economies?

I saw Polish farmers on my TV, not bothering to complain that tools weren’t very good or too expensive, but that there were none available to buy.

No goods can be used for need unless and until responsibility for them has been exchanged. This point even applies to donated bllod.

Arabic has a lot in common with Hebrew – they’re both Semitic languages – and both are similar in important ways to the Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish). If there were something about the Arabic language (as opposed to Arabic culture) which has a negative impact on thinking, one might expect speakers of these other languages to have similar problems.

I’ll be more specific in my disagreement with the one point about how limiting language is.

If you listen to teenagers speak, you’ll hear a lot of innovation – much which they’ll give up later for standard speech. But in any case you get they impression that they’re inventing English to suit them as much as learning it..

I think every generation moulds language to its needs. Language is arbitrary, and serves to express whatever people need expressed. If there is a need that isn’t being fulfilled then people will innovate or import.
No doubt language can can limit thought but not all thought is verbal and I feel that language can change awfully quickly when there is need and will to change it.

I worry though, also, that an Islamic environment limits nonverbal thought as well. Representative visual art is frowned upon, but I think that representative provides nonverbal symbols for thought, and to be impoverished in visual material is also be impoverished in thought.

Perhaps an argument could be made that there is a manner of thought in physicality, in sensuality, that is also being limited as well.

“Arabic has a lot in common with Hebrew – they’re both Semitic languages – and both are similar in important ways to the Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish). If there were something about the Arabic language (as opposed to Arabic culture) which has a negative impact on thinking, one might expect speakers of these other languages to have similar problems.”

But Hebrew was rethought by a Russian, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who, in fact, completely remade the grammar.
I almost can’t understand the Hebrew from the Tora.

“You fail to notice central parts of socialist thought. There can be no socialism without a majority who understand and desire it.”

So what do you do with the minority who understand but does not desire it?

Also the use of Arabic is used to shield any criticism of Islam because any Muslim who realises your criticism is valid can just say that you have not read the Koran in it’s original Arabic therefore you have not really understood the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

That line of reasoning (defense) can be quickly overcome by pointing out that differences in human language are a mere detail to the ‘creater’, and that if the Koran cannot accurately be translated into other languages, it therefore cannnot possibly be the word of god.

I once blurted out that response to a gloating, sing-song islamist, asking her how such severe limitations of language could be reconciled with god’s reputation for omnipotence.

She scowled, stalked off and never dAWA’ED me again.

Languages do have an impact on what can be thought, concieved of and revealed.

And they can also have a very real bearing on a culture’s ability to grasp the truth or to disguise the truth.

I speak both French and English, but when in tight situations, and for reasons of sheer strategy, will switch to french, using it as a lifebuoy because french is a MUCH better vehicle for floating a line of bullshit.

It’s even allowed me to get off the hook for a speeding ticket one time.

Is it any wonder that french was once the premier langugage of diplomacy?

Nothing bullshits better than a diplomat, a French diplomat.

Not because of Mohammed Atta’s father ranting on about his son’s innocence

Atta Sr. seems to blow hot and cold on this issue. Here he is talking to CNN in 2005:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/19/atta.father.terror/index.html

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) — The father of one of the hijackers who commandeered the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, praised the recent terror attacks in London and said many more would follow.

Speaking to CNN producer Ayman Mohyeldin Tuesday in his apartment in the upper-middle-class Cairo suburb of Giza, Mohamed el-Amir said he would like to see more attacks like the July 7 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus that killed 52 people, plus the four bombers….

El-Amir said the attacks in the United States and the July 7 attacks in London were the beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war, in which there would be many more fighters like his son.

But Hebrew was rethought by a Russian, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who, in fact, completely remade the grammar.
I almost can’t understand the Hebrew from the Tora.

Yes, Arabic could probably benefit from its own Eliezer Ben Yehuda. It’s worth remembering that Ben Yehuda faced strong opposition from some religious Jews, who thought Hebrew should be a strictly “sacred” language, and not used for everyday affairs. There are still some ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that.

if the Koran cannot accurately be translated into other languages, it therefore cannnot possibly be the word of god.

That assumes that God would rather convince nonarabs to be Muslims rather than see them subjugated, and their cultures destroyed and replaced by that of the conquerer. Christians say “God loves you” I don’t think Muslims ever preach to nonbelievers that Allah loves them.

Anybody care to explain how Eliezer Ben Yehuda ‘completely remade the grammar’ of Hebrew? It sounds like a very far-fetched contention to me.

Fabian says

“So what do you do with the minority who understand but does not desire it?”

We’ll put them against a wall and shoot them. We’ll round em up, put em in a field and BOMB THE BASTARDS!

Fabian – you like democracy only if it serves your ends. Should opinion go against you, you suddenly dislike it.

Opponents of socialism will be given all means to argue against it, to answer your question seriously.

“Anybody care to explain how Eliezer Ben Yehuda ‘completely remade the grammar’ of Hebrew? It sounds like a very far-fetched contention to me.”

Well, for example, this I know:

“God said to Abraham” in the Tora is said” “Vaiomer I”H leAbraham”
In modern Hebrew it would be “I”H amar leAbraham”

Where Omer, “say”, is just the present tense and Vaiomer as past tense doesn’t exist anymore, now it is declined like this:
Amarti (I)
Amarta (male you)
Amart (female you)
Amar (he)
Amra (she)
Amarnu (we)
Amartem (plural male you)
Amarten (plural female you)
Amru (they).

In fact, what Eliezer Ben Yehuda created is not even that declination, it was more complicated, but everyday speaking changed it.
There was a differentiation between plural female they and plural male they that doesn’t exist anymore.

One of the reasons for the vitality and change of Hebrew is that we are a society of immigrants, and speaking easy is a necessity.

SPBG
“We’ll put them against a wall and shoot them. We’ll round em up, put em in a field and BOMB THE BASTARDS!”
“Fabian – you like democracy only if it serves your ends. Should opinion go against you, you suddenly dislike it.”

No. I am willing to tolerate and behave according to the law if I know that in four years there will be another election, and the present government can be thrown out.
In socialism that is called to be “contrarrevolutionary”.
Socialism leads always to totalitarianism.

“Fabian – you like democracy only if it serves your ends. Should opinion go against you, you suddenly dislike it.”

And you said that to someone who tolerated 10 years of Carlos Menem…!

One tends to get the feeling, when observing Arab negotiations with Israel (from an Israeli viewpoint), that the Arab negotiators don’t always seem to mean what they say, and perhaps often don’t say what they mean. Of course, this is the language of negotiations. But one wonders if the negotiators are speaking the same language of negotiation at all. Or if the two sides assume they understand each other, but in fact do not understand at all, because they’re missing nuance and cultural differences.

Then we hear Israeli negotiators telling us that the Arab negotiators say things to them in private that would be dangerous for them to say in the open. These Israeli negotiators always seem to believe that what the Arab negotiators tell them in private is what they really mean. But one asks oneself if they are not saying in private what they think their Israeli counterparts want to hear, or what they think will get them what they want. Especially if they straight away go and say the exact opposite in Arabic in public.

One wonders if this use of Arabic as an evasive survival tactic, that Dave M describes, is something that is inherent to the actual language of Arabic or that religion and politics create this trait and the language is the tool? Do Arab Christians make the same use of the language? What about Jews? Does this become a character trait that one carries with when one changes language?

In my life I am surrounded by people whose parents or grandparents left Arab countries for Israel, or they left themselves, some time between the nineteen fifties (Iraqis, Egyptians, Morroccans, etc) and the nineteen eighties (in the case of many Syrian Jews I know). So either they or their parents were native Arabic speakers, and had been for many generations. Do I see these characteristics Dave M speaks of being carried over to the Hebrew they now speak? No, I don’t think so. Not at all.

Is this because these characteristics are specific to the Arabic language or is it more to do with the Muslim culture? Jews living in Arabic countries were studying the Bible and the Talmud over the centuries, while their Muslim counterparts were studying the Koran. Did this make a difference to their use of Arabic? (The Talmud is, after all, pretty argumentative, from what I’ve seen). Or was their use of Arabic a reaction and adaption to the dominant Muslim culture?

My own high school Arabic is pretty basic, I’m afraid. I remember being fascinated with all the rules connected with what you were to say in certain situations, the right answers to certain polite utterances. We are so informal, here in israel. Quite the opposite, in fact. How does losing all that, when one switches languages affect one, as in the case of Jews from Arab countries and their descendants, who became Hebrew speakers?

“You try to speak Arabic like that and it feels like you’re stretching it to breaking point…The Arab world is full of the most wonderful poetry ever written in any language, but nothing in the way of scientific or technological development.”

Neo-Whorfian, neocon scum. See you in hell you linguistic determinist, war-mongering pigs.

I think one important difference between the Middle East and the West is that Westerners are often hypercritical of their own cultural and socio-economic failures, as many of those that post on HP display very clearly. This is a generalisation of course but you rarely seem to see self-criticism in the Middle East; obviously political expression is repressed but there is also very little cultural/social/religious/economic/phillosphical self criticism. The film featured is indicitive of a general failure to take collective responsibility in Middle Eastern societies.

Free thought is crucial for a society to progress and the failure to tolerate criticism or accept new ideas was what eventually did for numerous totalitarian regimes.

So Hebrew has changed over time. In this it is like English and every other language. It remains true that Hebrew has much in common with Arabic and also with the Celtic languages.

Faian – The loss of the vav conversive hardly constitutes a remake of the language & the declension you cite is pure classical Hebrew. A better example of the evolution of colloquial (but not necessary literary) Hebrew would be “Ha-yad Sheli (my hand) rather than the grammatical form “Yadi”. Even so the differences are relatively trivial. More importantly, the usage & vocabulary derive from a largely western cultural standpoint.

Bob-b my reference to gender politics was, perhaps, poorly phrased – I should have referred to an obsession with gender politics. I did not, BTW, attempt a causal link – only an observation.

Fabian, are you sure all that was Ben Yehuda’s doing? The language of much of the prayer book, for instance, mainly compiled in the late Second Temple period and some in medieval times, besides the liberal use of the Book of Psalms, is far more like modern Hebrew than the Bible: “Baruch ata …Eloheinu Melech Haolam, asher kidshanu bemitzvotav ve’tzivanu al…”

The Hebrew of the Mishna is also nothing like the Hebrew of the Bible.

So Hebrew has changed over time. In recent decades the development of modern Hebrew has actually been so rapid that my children, who are avid readers, find it difficult to read books written fifty and sixty years ago, even children’s books. Many of the European classics are being translated again so they will be more palatable to readers today (as opposed to readers say forty years ago).

One minor problem with DaveM’s interesting but entirely unsubstantiated thesis is Atta’s multilingualism, technical training and cross-cultural experience.

I have no doubt about DaveM’s experiences speaking with people in the Arab world. However, like the Al Jazeera video he links to, he provides exactly zero evidence that particular linguistic features of Arabic make particular forms of expression or argument difficult. If this is truly the case, a very bold claim, then concrete examples are in order. Anything less is irresponsible.

“Fabian, are you sure all that was Ben Yehuda’s doing? The language of much of the prayer book, for instance, mainly compiled in the late Second Temple period and some in medieval times, besides the liberal use of the Book of Psalms, is far more like modern Hebrew than the Bible: “Baruch ata …Eloheinu Melech Haolam, asher kidshanu bemitzvotav ve’tzivanu al…””

Imshin, I am not an expert. Hebrew is actually my third language, and I am not a very high lvl.

But for example, in the example you mention about how much that Bracha looks like modern Hebrew, I have always found strange that they use the word “kidshanu” (you blessed us) , since, if I am not mistaken, in modern Hebrew the right word would be “kidashnu”.
Am I right here?
Thats a different declination of the verb.

If the Arabic language is truly at the heart of the Muslim world’s disfunctionalism, then one would expect that Farsi-speaking Iran might not employ the same kinds of suppressive, euphemistic linguistic double-talk and conspiritorial reasoning common in Arabic-speaking cultures. One could then look at Malay-speaking Malaysians, Urdu-speaking Pakistanis and the French-speaking Muslims of Niger to further test the hypothesis.

Fabian says

“No. I am willing to tolerate and behave according to the law if I know that in four years there will be another election, and the present government can be thrown out. In socialism that is called to be “contrarrevolutionary”. Socialism leads always to totalitarianism.”

Being anti socialist is ok in mine and other socialists’ books, if you are peaceful. Against socialism, use arms against the majority…that’s something else

You are still missing a point : the state and goverment will not exist in socialism, as they are a product of class society

You wont need to wait 4 years to get a say. You’d get your say straight away

Very interesting post, thank you. I am currently researching a dissertation on linguistic relativity/determinism, using both World and historical Englishes as comparison, and am finding all your comments very useful. Please keep it up, I have little knowledge of Semitic languages so am fascinated by the debate. I just wish I could incorporate some of it into what I’m doing (might get me a better mark), but unfortunately its not really relevant ;0(
I would like to point out that linguistic determinism has been widely discounted by most scholars of linguistics, but the ‘weak’ form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (relativity) still has its fans.
Keep debating folks!

“You are still missing a point : the state and goverment will not exist in socialism, as they are a product of class society
You wont need to wait 4 years to get a say. You’d get your say straight away”

So you will give the majority one time to vote for socialism and then you will close the shop?
What if they regret their choice after a while? How can they set up a government again?

Fabian, “I have always found strange that they use the word “kidshanu” (you blessed us) , since, if I am not mistaken, in modern Hebrew the right word would be “kidashnu”.
Am I right here?”

Not really. Kidashnu, would be translated as “we blessed” not “you blessed us”. Kidshanu would be correct as a shorter version of “kidesh otanu” “he blessed us”. There is a certain grammatic problem here, seeing as the blessing says “Baruch Atta” blessed are you, and then switches to third body “kidshanu” – he blessed us, instead of kidashtanu “you blessed us”. This could be a matter of reverance and of not being in a place that is being too familiar with the Lord.

Another good and well known example of how ‘modern’ Hebrew was in Second Temple period, compared to, for instance, the five books of the Torah, would be the wonderful Pirkei Avot, Chapters of the Fathers. The first chapter begins “Moshe kibel Torah miSinai u’mesara leYehoshua, veYehoshua li’zkenim, u’zkenim li’nevi’im, u’nevi’im musaruha le’anshei Knesset Hag’dola. Hem amru shlosha dvarim: Hevu metoonim b’din…” etc. Not exactly the Hebrew you’d hear today in the marketplace, but when someone before said something about saying “Yadi”, my hand, as opposed to the more everyday “hayad sheli”, I immediately thought of the words of the song that Yehudit Ravitz sings “Lakachta et Yadi beyadcha ve’amarta lee…” Written Hebrew will always be more poetic than spoken.

“Hevu metoonim b’din”?
I don’t understand this phrase.

Can you spell it with Hebrew letters?

“Not really. Kidashnu, would be translated as “we blessed” not “you blessed us”. ”

You are right.

הוו מתונים בדין

be moderate in judgement.

Hevoo is in the command inflection. Today you would say “heyoo”

היו

Fabian

you still see socialism in terms of “I” and/or a little group dictating matters. Socialism cannot arise through diktat. I’ve said that enough already! (Leninists arent socialist as they all stand for the vanguard party)

Socialism requires cooperation, mutual aid. If that isnt there (like right now) then socialism cannot be established

spgb gray

You’ve been asked these questions plenty of times but always dodge it:

1. Who decides on the allocation of resources within a socialist society?

2. What happens to those who disagree with the allocation and how will they be dealt with if they refuse to respect the allocation?

3. How do you compute the value of resource A against resource B if you don’t have money to value them with?

Hi spbg, you haven’t answered my question:
“What if they regret their choice after a while? How can they set up a government again?”

I am surprised that Harry’s Place would agree publish this post.

Don’t get me wrong, no topic is off-limits, and of course I know what “liberty is”. And I don’t doubt that there’s an interesting discussion to be had about the relationship between Arabic language and politics.

But still…. this post only spends 2 paragraphs actually “discussing” the language itself, before rambling on to other matters.

And these two paragraphs of “discussion” amount to nothing more than the glib assertion that Arabic is “one big exercise in denial” because the Arabic world “prohibits any sort of critical thought”.

Yup, that’s prohibits (not “discourages” or “impedes” – far too nuanced) any sort of critical thought (not particular forms of thought, but all).

I’m sure your PhD in historical linguistics is in the post.

Fabian

if people turn against socialism then they turn against it. Simple as.

What you are fishing for is gulag, mass murder and such. The Left is guilty of that crud, not socialists.

Considering that Dave has also discussed the fact that the differences between Maghrebi and Egyptian Arabic are as profound as between French and Italian, I must be genuinely missing something if he is now including with one broad brush over a thousand years of political and cultural development all speakers of Arabic languages/dialects. The only pointers to this has been his describing its ‘evolution’ which, as until now he has only discussed contemporary politics and media portrayal, does not seem sufficient to draw another conclusion.

Until he gives an unequivocal statement either way, I’m going with this.

“What you are fishing for is gulag, mass murder and such. The Left is guilty of that crud, not socialists.”

Because… by definition, Socialists can only do GOOD THINGS. If they willingly do bad things, or bad things eventually happen, that makes them not-socialists.

Seriously, spgb, this is retarded.

Field

“You’ve been asked these questions plenty of times but always dodge it:”

wooohooooo, prawn crackers!

“1. Who decides on the allocation of resources within a socialist society?”

a pink spotted carp called Brian

“2. What happens to those who disagree with the allocation and how will they be dealt with if they refuse to respect the allocation?”

They get thrown in Brian’s pond as fish food

“3. How do you compute the value of resource A against resource B if you don’t have money to value them with?”

No idea, I only have windows 93

Truthfully, I could give you a 10,000 word essay on these very good questions. I choose not to as the SPGB is only 6 degrees of seperation from you.

I will say one thing though. Ever been fined for taking the tube? Did you, if that was the case, think: “I had to get there but hadnt the cash”

spgb gray,

I had to take an American tourist friend out today, so I took her to Speakers’ Corner. There was some chap from the Socialist Party spouting complete rubbish. Is that what your party is reduced to?

Your party is a complete joke.

oh bless

it’s Mikey

[blockquote]There was some chap from the Socialist Party spouting complete rubbish. Is that what your party is reduced to?[/blockquote]

Like, duh.

the SPGB are not apologists of Capitalism like Gene, David T et al at HP or the likes of GG, the SWP, etc

The place to be is opposing US Imperialism and Political Islam

I’m assuming from your posting, Davem, that you know absolutely nothing about linguistics, Arab or otherwise. Your piece reminds me of the sort of crazy crap some people talk about Welsh – also considered by some a sinister device to some horrendous ends, rather than simply a means of conveying information. What frightens me is that some people find you enlightening.

The fact that you refer to the pro-Israeli, Saudi-Wahhabi controlled Al-Arabia channel as “reforming” sums you all up.

Also aljazeera isn’t the channel it once was. Actually, you only have to read its coverage of Brown’s speech at the Israeli parliament. Aljazeera’s coverage was focused on criticism of Israeli settlements. Aljazeera said nothing about Brown not mentioning the occupation and humiliations of the Palestinian people by Israel. And whereas most Media outlets focused on the prominenece of the so-called Iranian threat in the speach, aljazeera like i’ve said portrayed his speach as somehow pro-palestinian.

Chris P, there is self-reflection in Arab culture. Many Arabs do not think that European has-beens like the British should have priority on Arab wealth. We don’t want to purchase BAE hardware, we do not want to do business with BP or any other British business. It’s only our despots backed by the British who want these subsidies (er sorry investments) to go to the British.

And since this post, indirectly endorses a Saudi-Wahhabi initiative, Al-Arabiyya – the same Saudi-Wahhabis who are the most misogynistic, despotic, anti-semitic and anti-secular grouping in the Middle East, I shall no longer take you seriously and will no longer visit this site!

Jabar

Meh no different than the neocon media with their tales of plastic shredders and smoking guns

Many Arabs do not think that European has-beens like the British should have priority on Arab wealth.

Arab wealth is the intellectual currency and skills balance of Arabs. Oil beneath Arab countries, on the other hand, has been used primarily to enrich rulers of said countries. “European has-beens” have received an extremely minor proportion, yet it’s still their fault when it’s not their fault. That said, the oil did not flow unbidden from the sands – well, in some cases, it needed only gravity. Dastardly European technology was needed.

Actually, you only have to read its coverage of Brown’s speech at the Israeli parliament. Aljazeera’s coverage was focused on criticism of Israeli settlements. Aljazeera said nothing about Brown not mentioning the occupation and humiliations of the Palestinian people by Israel.

This doesn’t make sense. Criticism of the Settlements is good, right? They’re on territories acquired post 1967, yes? Criticizing this goes some way at least to addressing that part of the plight of Palestinians which isn’t due to unflinching Israel-hatred, yes?

aljazeera like i’ve said portrayed his speach as somehow pro-palestinian.

What your post *in*directly says is that the only accepted demonstration of sympathy for the Palestinians is to tar ‘n feather Israel. You can do this if you like, but you cannot claim to be pro-Palestinian when you’d reject offers of hope because it also favours Israel. This only serves to make you a hypocrite.

We don’t want to purchase BAE hardware, we do not want to do business with BP or any other British business. It’s only our despots backed by the British who want these subsidies (er sorry investments) to go to the British.

A bit less of the whining, self-pitying tone here and more or “self-reflection” will work wonders.

And since this post, indirectly endorses a Saudi-Wahhabi initiative, Al-Arabiyya

It did so fairly directly, I thought. Another non-native speaker of English?

- the same Saudi-Wahhabis who are the most misogynistic, despotic, anti-semitic and anti-secular grouping in the Middle East,

Considering you’ve just referred to this as pro-Israel, this is another baffling comment. (Although, without English translations I cannot offer much of a judgement.)

I shall no longer take you seriously and will no longer visit this site!

Oh, please don’t.

Many Arabs do not think that European has-beens like the British should have priority on Arab wealth.

Arab wealth is the intellectual currency and skills balance of Arabs. Oil beneath Arab countries, on the other hand, has been used primarily to enrich rulers of said countries. “European has-beens” have received an extremely minor proportion, yet it’s still their fault when it’s not their fault. That said, the oil did not flow unbidden from the sands – well, in some cases, it needed only gravity. Dastardly European technology was needed.

Actually, you only have to read its coverage of Brown’s speech at the Israeli parliament. Aljazeera’s coverage was focused on criticism of Israeli settlements. Aljazeera said nothing about Brown not mentioning the occupation and humiliations of the Palestinian people by Israel.

This doesn’t make sense. Criticism of the Settlements is good, right? They’re on territories acquired post 1967, yes? Criticizing this goes some way at least to addressing that part of the plight of Palestinians which isn’t due to unflinching Israel-hatred, yes?

aljazeera like i’ve said portrayed his speach as somehow pro-palestinian.

What your post *in*directly says is that the only accepted demonstration of sympathy for the Palestinians is to tar ‘n feather Israel. You can do this if you like, but you cannot claim to be pro-Palestinian when you’d reject offers of hope because it also favours Israel. This only serves to make you a hypocrite.

We don’t want to purchase BAE hardware, we do not want to do business with BP or any other British business. It’s only our despots backed by the British who want these subsidies (er sorry investments) to go to the British.

A bit less of the whining, self-pitying tone here and more or “self-reflection” will work wonders.

And since this post, indirectly endorses a Saudi-Wahhabi initiative, Al-Arabiyya

It did so fairly directly, I thought. Another non-native speaker of English?

- the same Saudi-Wahhabis who are the most misogynistic, despotic, anti-semitic and anti-secular grouping in the Middle East,

Considering you’ve just referred to this as pro-Israel, this is another baffling comment. (Although, without English translations I cannot offer much of a judgement.)

I shall no longer take you seriously and will no longer visit this site!

Oh, please don’t.

Jabar is another deluded Arab moonbat who thinks that he can hate hate hate Israel but abhorr antisemitism.

If I had some Arab oil money, could I buy Jewish tartan?

100% wool! None of those mixed fibres!

DaveM,
Paydirt again. Keep up the good work! I loved your multi-part Syrian adventures BTW.

Anyhoo. “I’d like you to notice the language. It’s very descriptive, passive, emotional, and all about feelings and sensations.”

Reminds me of stuff I’ve read about the Iliad and pre-literate language. At no point in that classic is anything thought through really. It’s all, “His heart told Achilleos” or some such.

there was nothing baffling about the last comments.

Lord Balfour was an anti-semite. Churchill made anti-semitic comments – see the recently published ‘Human Smoke’. Yet both these politicians were also pro-Zionist.

So once again, it is only baffling if you have superficial reading of the Middle East.

From another angle Israel and the anti-semitic King Faisal of Saudi-Wahhabi kingdom cooperated with each other in the early 1960’s in the Yemen – see Mark Curtis, I think the book is ‘Unpeople’ or ‘Web of Deceit’

There’s nothing baffling about being both anti-semitic and pro-zionist.

Jabar

There’s nothing baffling about being both anti-semitic and pro-zionist.

Of course there is. Prat.

I shall no longer take you seriously

Yet you spent time on a site you consider risible. Prat with low personal morality.

and will no longer visit this site!

But you just did. Lying prat with low personal morality.

Churchill made anti-semitic comments – see the recently published ‘Human Smoke’.

Are you a spoof?

you have superficial reading of the Middle East.

This is grammatically incorrect, so has no meaning in English. It must be a mistranslation and should be disregarded.

As for why the Arab world produces little in the way of original research nowadays (as opposed to functionaries, which it produces in large numbers), one reason is that in some Arab countries, people are basically assigned things to study rather than being allowed to choose. The people whose A-level equivalent results were near the top have to study medicine, there are another group given engineering, and religion actually tends to go to those near the bottom (I heard this from an imam — Zaid Shakir, if I remember rightly — who studied in Syria). This way, the country gets its share of doctors and engineers, the west and the Gulf can take the rest, and they all send lots of money home. Of course, a country where many of the doctors and other scientists did not really want to be in their profession can’t be expected to be in the top ranks in these fields in terms of research, and if the universities function as the top end of the school system, rather than actually sponsoring research (which they cannot do unless the governments let them), they won’t produce research.

Still, the observation about China gives the lie to the myth that the Arabic script has anything to do with the backwardness of the Arab world, which is commonly held by certain types of modernists, particularly in places where Arabic script is used for languages besides Arabic.

Dave M

Interesting post.

I was going to reply earlier but I was off to see a lebanese film (Caramel) with some Arab and Turkish friends (more of this below) I am glad I did as it addrresses some of your concerns.

My first thought reading your post was to laugh and say you should try Welsh but I was beaten to it admirably by Llygoden Fach.

I had a mental image of a Muslim Arab language student of Welsh (why not) staying as a paying guest of a language school billeted in a local farm in Dolgellau, engaging in local activities with the sheep farmers following them about and trying to have political conversations with them.

They would appear paranoid and evasive and he would be lucky no to end up in a sheep dip.

I do not mean to be sarcastic, just a bit teasing, and have no intention of yelling at you or hurling accusations, because actually you do raise a number of issues relating to language, society, culture and politics.

I have been that young rather earnest language learner in foreign climes battling with culture shock and trying to learn a language.

I spend months trying to speak to the maid (Donna Maid) in the house I was living in in Brazil.

I am a socialist from a working class background in Wales, so I must have thought that speaking to the maid (a thing I was very embarassed about) as an equal would both express my solidarity and help me learn colloquial Brazilian Portugese.

Every time I tried to speak to her she would suck her teeth or spit and role her eyes and shoo me away.

She bullied me horribly if I stayed home pulling open the blinds, pulling the sheets of the bed while I was in it.

She even took to lighting strange offerings in a calabash gourd outside my door (a Candomble) which I thought a bit odd but was sure was well intentioned if a bit smelly.

Things got worse, I carefully raised the subject with my hosts who were a bit non-plussed but feircly protectiveof the old woman.

Eventually one day she was there late to prepare for a party we were having and as the guests arrived all speaking to me in English she became more agitated and pushed me out of the way muttering something or other.

Much later after she had left and I finally peeled people of the ceiling where they were stuck with their hysteria, I got them to explain.

She had asked them if they understood my ravings.

She had considered me a malocco a mentally retarded possessed evil thing and had been lighting wards to banish my malign influence in the house, she had not been cleaning my things because why would anyone do such a thing for an evil spirit posessed thing.

She had no conception of cultural or linguistic difference, of countries, indeed in her cosmological world view she thought the world was flat.

She was a very intelligent woman who had had an astonishing life, her mother was born a slave.

When I learned Portugese well enough to talk to her we got on like a house on fire and she used to laugh about how she thought I needed a good excorcism.

As Andrew Coates has commented what you are suggesting in your post is that there is a degree of determinism in the Arabic language that pre-disposes lsuch a language community to hold certain views and think certain thoughts and to be unable easily to think others.

Many of the problems you encounter DaveM would also be reported by students of Japanese or any language that belongs to a very different culture.

I really do think that some study in Anthropology and sociolinguisttics are essential for those who wish to learn a language spoken by a non European culture.

But back to my Lebanese film that I saw today

Caramel by Nadine Labaki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramel_(film)

Is a beautiful tender and deep film, that has an air of french cinematographic style and the punch of Almodovar.

It does not address the political social and cultural issues of Beirut but could be considered a politically shocking femminist film.

Told through the viewpoints of five Christian an Muslim women it deals with issues of love;

lesbian desire, illicit affairs with married men,

honour and marrying when you are not a virgin (getting the ‘stambouli stitches’ in a ‘French’ clinic sutures to produce a small nuptual bleed).

Oh and it has a woman who has a menstrual bleed publically, who then turns out to be a menopausal woman faking menstruation so as not to seem ‘passed it’.

It is fucking brilliant astonishing and powerful and all this takes place of course in Arabic.

Metaphor is not a laboured and indirect form of language it is the mechanism by which any language can convey the unutterable.

In fact metonyms, terms that seem to stand directly for something like the ‘Crown’ are simply long used metaphors that have taken on a life of their own.

So I put your question about Arabic to my group, the ones who knew me said there was something in it but not the language but the political culture.

Those who didn’t know me began to get that ‘rabbit in the head lights glare’ that people do when nerdy political types like me ask them direct questions (it really is a bit autistic and that is not how communication takes place in language mostly).

3 important things came out of the conversation however.

1.

Asking certain kinds of questions in Syria invokes evasion it is a police run dictatorship (my experience was the same in East Germany, speaking German, or in more dictatorial Latin American countries speaking Spanish, Or French or Portugese in African dictatorships)
Arabic

2.

Class. Arabic societies are highly formal and highly class stratified the use of certain registers of speech (technical, administrative, scientific and abstract lexicons etc) have socio-linguistic barriers and avoidances around them that impair communication that are not strictly speaking linguistic, but an ‘elaborated code’ is common for some most people speak a ‘restricted code’ (this is bernstein’s work at the institute of education when he collaborated with the anthropologist Mary Douglas)

3.

All Arab speaking countries were subject for centuries to the Ottoman Empire.

Arabic was retained purely for religious and liturgical purposes, though many loan words (and some grammar) entered ottoman Turkish it was a language of the elite that required trilingual fluency in Turkic, Persian and Arabic.

The principal language of administration and governance was Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek).

With the dissmemberment of the Ottoman empire under the Sykes /Picoh agrrement after World War I, arab provinces of the ottoman empire administered in persian were severed though the languages of the administrative elites in Syria and Lebanon became French and English in the rest.

The rise of pan Arab nationalism while it gave a new lexicon of anti-imperialism to Arabic did not give it a vocabulary or political tradition of political speech.

If we can speak of lunar-modules and cell phones in Welsh and Icelandic there is nothing intrinisc preventing Arabic (like modern Hebrew) from devloping a more direct and elaborated political and civic language of governance (note Perssian does have this as well as nasty Islamists)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

Sociolinguistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics

Linguistic Detterminism Linguistic relativism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism

Constructed languages
http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/sapirWhorf.html

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4110/whorf.html

Jabar, I don’t think it is ’self-reflective’ of Arab people not to want British investment or deal with British companies; that’s the opposite of ’self-reflection’; that’s knee-jerk anti-imperialism and automatically blaming everything on others. Exactly what this post is about.

Fair enough, if you think the British gave you a raw deal, push for a better one; find other partners that will. No hard feelings mate; it’s called ’survival’. It’s allowed. We all got to do it.

But until you understand the role you have played in your own suffering you will get nowhere.

Self-reflection involves taking yourself to task, not others.

Like asking yourself why the entire Egyptian air force was wiped out in only six days in 1967. What went wrong there? Anything to be learned?

I know it is hard to take if you are a proud person, and especially if you feel you are or have been a victim, but there is always a role that you play in your own suffering (even if it is a small one) and until you understand that role and stop doing whatever you’re doing that’s daft, then you are never going to turn the corner. Because that role is the only role you control 100%.

Self-reflection requires humility and contrition. I know that’s hard; but when you are stuck in a pit there’s no point in wailing. You’ve got to figure out how you got in there and how you’re going to get out.

What I’ve always wanted to know was, how come the Arabs were conquered by the Turks in the first place? You blame everything on the British, but the Turks had already sat on you for several hundred years before we came along. You still be sitting under them now if it wasn’t for us.

spgb gray said

“Field

“You’ve been asked these questions plenty of times but always dodge it:”

wooohooooo, prawn crackers!

“1. Who decides on the allocation of resources within a socialist society?”

a pink spotted carp called Brian

“2. What happens to those who disagree with the allocation and how will they be dealt with if they refuse to respect the allocation?”

They get thrown in Brian’s pond as fish food

“3. How do you compute the value of resource A against resource B if you don’t have money to value them with?”

No idea, I only have windows 93

Truthfully, I could give you a 10,000 word essay on these very good questions. I choose not to as the SPGB is only 6 degrees of seperation from you.

I will say one thing though. Ever been fined for taking the tube? Did you, if that was the case, think: “I had to get there but hadnt the cash” ”

*****************

WELL THERE YOU GO!

Total question dodging again. So please stop acting as if you have some “solution” to the problems of advanced industrial societies.

I didn’t ask for a 10,000 word essay. I asked for some simple answers to some simple questions.

If you ask me how representative democracy works I can give you simple answers (e.g. “Each citizen is allowed one vote to cast in the ballot”). If you ask me how capitalism works, I can give you simple answer (e.g. “there are jointly owned companies which have limited liability under law and which are owned by shareholders ” etc).

But you can’t give me simple answers to simple questions about your socialism.

As far as I can make out the SPGB actually favours workers councils to make the decision on allocation. However, that immediately raises the issue of why non workers e.g. handicapped people, pensioners and home carers shouldn’t have a vote. If however the SPGB favours some form of general representative democracy as we have now, that raises the issue of why people who do no work should benefit from the labour value of workers and decide how it is allocated.

The SPGB pretends its socialism would involve no coercion, but it is difficult to see why. Otherwise, some people will simply steal resources for their own personal use.

Jabar

I agree with you that there is nothing baffling about being anti-semitic (or at least a certain type of anti-semitic) and being pro-Zionist.

In the same way many anti-Black racists in the USA and the UK supported and funded the development of independent republics in West Africa for freed slaves from the Western Hemisphere.

So some anti-semites (the non-murderous, often aristocratic, type) wanted to see the creation of a Zionist republic in order that Jews could be removed from Western Europe and America.

Alternatively, Field, they could have gone for the tried and tested method of killing them.

The DDR was an Orwellian Police state of course, nothing to do with socialism

Marxism has been tried, and found wanting, on more people in the world – at it’s height – than existed in Great Prophet Marx’s day ( pbuh) across all continents, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa. Everywhere it has failed. It has been falsified by all real economic thinkers, philosophers ( besides members of it’s self referencing cult) and scientists.

There is a clear marxist agenda based on pseudo-scientific principles. It involves seizing the entire means of production by the State. Terms like Stalinism mean nothing . The Soviet Union was Marxist until it collapsed, not Stalinist, not “State Capitalist”. So was China. So was Yugoslavia. So was Poland. So was the DDR. So was Cambodia. All these countries were totalitarian because there is no way to have a Marxist state without totalitarianism. The milder versions of these Marxist states were more “capitalist” – Poland and Yugoslavia had some private enterprise, China under the cultural revolution had none and its people starved. Cambodia was the closest to a Marxist state of your fevered imagination – the idea of killing technical workers was not some arbitrary killer ideology dreamt up by crazy Asian fanatics – it was the canonical Marxism of the day as thought to Pol Pot at the Sorbonne ( by that crazy lunatic Althusser). Even then it did not go far enough, for it kept the “money system” Further no existing communism has really tried to deracinated the “proletariat” as described by minor prophet Adorno – this form of Marxism ( also canonical) would ban all forms of now mass activity , sports, and “bourgeois” reading. The soviet union participated in soccer competitions. It had money. It needed far greater mind control, and State control, and millions more to die ( as they would without a means of exchange) to be truly Marxist.

People are not free if they cannot form their own enterprises – something humans have being doing since we specialized in the neolithic.

So the actual world imagined by Marxists is more totalitarian, not less, than the reality. In that case you are right, it has not been really tried yet.

Talk of CIF my post in reply to DaveM has sat in a moderation queue for hours.

Anyone know why?

Dave M

Interesting post.

I was going to reply earlier but I was off to see a lebanese film (Caramel) with some Arab and Turkish friends (more of this below) I am glad I did as it addrresses some of your concerns.

My first thought reading your post was to laugh and say you should try Welsh but I was beaten to it admirably by Llygoden Fach.

I had a mental image of a Muslim Arab language student of Welsh (why not) staying as a paying guest of a language school billeted in a local farm in Dolgellau, engaging in local activities with the sheep farmers following them about and trying to have political conversations with them.

They would appear paranoid and evasive and he would be lucky no to end up in a sheep dip.

I do not mean to be sarcastic, just a bit teasing, and have no intention of yelling at you or hurling accusations, because actually you do raise a number of issues relating to language, society, culture and politics.

I have been that young rather earnest language learner in foreign climes battling with culture shock and trying to learn a language.

I spend months trying to speak to the maid (Donna Maid) in the house I was living in in Brazil.

I am a socialist from a working class background in Wales, so I must have thought that speaking to the maid (a thing I was very embarassed about) as an equal would both express my solidarity and help me learn colloquial Brazilian Portugese.

Every time I tried to speak to her she would suck her teeth or spit and role her eyes and shoo me away.

She bullied me horribly if I stayed home pulling open the blinds, pulling the sheets of the bed while I was in it.

She even took to lighting strange offerings in a calabash gourd outside my door (a Candomble) which I thought a bit odd but was sure was well intentioned if a bit smelly.

Things got worse, I carefully raised the subject with my hosts who were a bit non-plussed but feircly protectiveof the old woman.

Eventually one day she was there late to prepare for a party we were having and as the guests arrived all speaking to me in English she became more agitated and pushed me out of the way muttering something or other.

Much later after she had left and I finally peeled people of the ceiling where they were stuck with their hysteria, I got them to explain.

She had asked them if they understood my ravings.

She had considered me a malocco a mentally retarded possessed evil thing and had been lighting wards to banish my malign influence in the house, she had not been cleaning my things because why would anyone do such a thing for an evil spirit posessed thing.

She had no conception of cultural or linguistic difference, of countries, indeed in her cosmological world view she thought the world was flat.

She was a very intelligent woman who had had an astonishing life, her mother was born a slave.

When I learned Portugese well enough to talk to her we got on like a house on fire and she used to laugh about how she thought I needed a good excorcism.

As Andrew Coates has commented what you are suggesting in your post is that there is a degree of determinism in the Arabic language that pre-disposes lsuch a language community to hold certain views and think certain thoughts and to be unable easily to think others.

Many of the problems you encounter DaveM would also be reported by students of Japanese or any language that belongs to a very different culture.

I really do think that some study in Anthropology and sociolinguisttics are essential for those who wish to learn a language spoken by a non European culture.

But back to my Lebanese film that I saw today

Caramel by Nadine Labaki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramel_(film)

Is a beautiful tender and deep film, that has an air of french cinematographic style and the punch of Almodovar.

It does not address the political social and cultural issues of Beirut but could be considered a politically shocking femminist film.

Told through the viewpoints of five Christian an Muslim women it deals with issues of love;

lesbian desire, illicit affairs with married men,

honour and marrying when you are not a virgin (getting the ‘stambouli stitches’ in a ‘French’ clinic sutures to produce a small nuptual bleed).

Oh and it has a woman who has a menstrual bleed publically, who then turns out to be a menopausal woman faking menstruation so as not to seem ‘passed it’.

It is fucking brilliant astonishing and powerful and all this takes place of course in Arabic.

Metaphor is not a laboured and indirect form of language it is the mechanism by which any language can convey the unutterable.

In fact metonyms, terms that seem to stand directly for something like the ‘Crown’ are simply long used metaphors that have taken on a life of their own.

So I put your question about Arabic to my group, the ones who knew me said there was something in it but not the language but the political culture.

Those who didn’t know me began to get that ‘rabbit in the head lights glare’ that people do when nerdy political types like me ask them direct questions (it really is a bit autistic and that is not how communication takes place in language mostly).

3 important things came out of the conversation however.

1.

Asking certain kinds of questions in Syria invokes evasion it is a police run dictatorship (my experience was the same in East Germany, speaking German, or in more dictatorial Latin American countries speaking Spanish, Or French or Portugese in African dictatorships)
Arabic

2.

Class. Arabic societies are highly formal and highly class stratified the use of certain registers of speech (technical, administrative, scientific and abstract lexicons etc) have socio-linguistic barriers and avoidances around them that impair communication that are not strictly speaking linguistic, but an ‘elaborated code’ is common for some most people speak a ‘restricted code’ (this is bernstein’s work at the institute of education when he collaborated with the anthropologist Mary Douglas)

3.

All Arab speaking countries were subject for centuries to the Ottoman Empire.

Arabic was retained purely for religious and liturgical purposes, though many loan words (and some grammar) entered ottoman Turkish it was a language of the elite that required trilingual fluency in Turkic, Persian and Arabic.

The principal language of administration and governance was Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek).

With the dissmemberment of the Ottoman empire under the Sykes /Picoh agrrement after World War I, arab provinces of the ottoman empire administered in persian were severed though the languages of the administrative elites in Syria and Lebanon became French and English in the rest.

The rise of pan Arab nationalism while it gave a new lexicon of anti-imperialism to Arabic did not give it a vocabulary or political tradition of political speech.

If we can speak of lunar-modules and cell phones in Welsh and Icelandic there is nothing intrinisc preventing Arabic (like modern Hebrew) from devloping a more direct and elaborated political and civic language of governance (note Perssian does have this as well as nasty Islamists)

I know

I removed all the (I thought helpfull) links and it has been delivered immediately.

Thats a bugger.

Fwiw I saw the Arthur Balfour was an antisemite hypothesis demolished at a lecture at the mcr jewish museum a year or so back. By a proper historian and all.

And yeah I also think dave’s overrun his evidence here. I’m reminded of my dad’s rememberances of his work trips to bulgaria when it was still officialy closed to the west. His counterparts were all great blokes but wouldn’t y’kno talk about stuff.

As I said before, I know quite a few Israelis who actually grew up in Syria and left (fled) during the nineteen eighties. They tell all sorts of hair-raising adventure stories about how they got out, which I won’t repeat here, and what happened to some of the relatives they left behind (interrogations; prison, sometimes).

One of them, a guy who lived in Syria till he was twenty, refused to tell me anything about his life in Syria, not a word. His face went blank and he said that that was a closed chapter in his life.

Another told me tales of his schooldays, from which you understood quite clearly that a Jewish boy knew he had to be extremely careful what he said in non-Jewish company.

Maybe Dave M should come to Israel to learn Arabic. Our one million Arab citizens don’t go to prison for speaking against the ‘regime’, they get elected to parliament!

Mind you, I’m told that the Arabic they speak is so mixed up with Hebrew words that he would have to learn Hebrew as well, to be able to pick them out.

I am not an Arabic speaker but I am hard pressed to accept that Arabic is so complex, so metaphorical, so interpretive that it really can’t be reliably translated into any other language by two different people. The common cry of all Arab apologists is “that’s not really what was said”. And then some innocuous nothing sounding alternative translation is proffered up. He didn’t say “I hope we kill all the Jews” no no what he said was “the water pump will need an SAE wrench not a 14mm socket.” Then of course someone else will come by and their ‘translation’ will be “Allah wants you to put raisins in the bread.”

WTF is anyone buying this babble? I’m not.

Field

ok, enough tom foolery about Brian the fish from my end.

Socialist democracy is based on the usual freedoms (info, speech, votes, etc) and also freedom of access to the means of life.

Obviously society cannot function if people dont work to create the necessarys but those who cannot work should still have access to what they need. I like to say socialism is the Muskateer cry of all for one and one for all

In decision making, there is the principle of delegation. Some are instructed to carry out the wishes of the majority, are answerable at all times and can be removed immediately if they act against the terms of reference

Obviously this is quick and brief but as said these ideas require a lengthier treatment, which an HP comment box cannot provide so look at what the spgb has published if you are interested

ps. Surely DaveM should look at the arab, non religious and socialist literature if he thinks arabic lacks words or turns of phrase, which was my original point above

“In decision making, there is the principle of delegation. Some are instructed to carry out the wishes of the majority, are answerable at all times and can be removed immediately if they act against the terms of reference”

But this doesn’t work at all.
You have three main problems:
1. How do you elect your delegates if you have just abolished elections.
2. How do you remove delegates who, when agreeing with the majority of the other delegates, get in a posicion of force, and came back to you with fait accompli’s or with threats.
3. (and this goes to the nucleus of the problem): in any society, differences of opinion and interests are bound to happen. Lets say that your delegate finds that the mandate of your local assembly is impossible to carry out because most of the other delegates plan to do the contrary to what he was mandated to do. What does he do? A. He can return and your assembly will be considered isolationist and probably contrarrevolutionary.
B. He can accept the will of the majority in the general assembly and betray his mandate. In that case, either he has coercive power to make your local assembly respect the decision (see point 2), or he is removed like you said, and replaced with another fool who will go to the general assembly only to come back defeated.
There is logic in the statement in liberal democracies that: “The people only deliberates through the will of its representatives”. Because the only way a socialist system could work is if everybody agreed in what is need to do. As soon as there is disagreement, the machinery stops or has to use coercion.
In liberal democracies, that problem is solved through the negotiation of the representatives, that in some cases it involves small betrayals to the local interests for the common good. While representatives cannot be immediately removed, therefore allowing for some negotiation room, they can be removed in the next elections.

And in practice you can see that liberal democracy works, but socialism doesn’t: in every communist assembly there are those who are never satisfied and want to remove immediately the representative. Since they can, it is easier for them to convince the others to try with someone else, which leads to endless ENDLESS discussions and very few results, and the very real threat of coercive power from above. Which was ALWAYS used in communist regimes.

When I read the egyptian bestseller book Alaa el-Aswany ‘The
Yacoubian building, it struck me that the language ( translatd to danish ok ! ) was a little bit ‘altmodisch’.
The narrative tone reminded me more of novels from the thirties, or earlier. It’s not that the novel does not adress modern problems, corruption, class hiearachy, sexual themes.
But it is enclosed in a narrative rhytm and language that is slower and more formal than we are used to.

Jabar: I said “Jabar is another deluded Arab moonbat who thinks that he can hate hate hate Israel but abhorr antisemitism.”

You answered that you can be antisemitic and pro-Israel, which is not the same.

I would do you a favor and think for you: Zionism is a nationalist movement born out, among positive things, also of frustration and disenchantment with liberal European political culture. You know that. The story of Herzl and Dreyfuss is well known.
In that vein, Zionists wanted any kind of help to get out of Europe and go back to their land. It couldn’t be strange that some of those who offered help were themselves antisemites: Zionists knew that many antisemites were in power in Europe, that is why they wanted out.
That didn’t preclude, however, and this probably you ignore, that many Zionist parties (for example in Russia) worked double: to facilitate aliya to Israel and to improve the material and political conditions of the Jews wherever they lived.
I am sure that you will consider this matematically impossible. But Jews were caught in a dilemma, and when that happens, you cannot have straight and unpoluted solutions.
The truth and necessity of the Zionist movement ideas was proved in the Holocaust, when Europe killed its Jewish part.

But Jabar, you still cannot be a ranting moonbat against the evil evil evil Israel and claim that you are not antisemitic. Israel is the state of the Jewish people, it is a liberal democracy, that answers to the people. If you believe that Israel is essentially evil, and constantly come with what you consider are examples of the evil Israel, then you must certainly think that 6 million Jews willingly do that kind of evil because they like that.
You are an antisemite, Jabar. And you know that.

mettaculture said:

The principal language of administration and governance was Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek).

I find that very difficult to believe. The Ottoman Turks spoke Turkish (which acquired plenty of Persian and Arabic words, many of them later eliminated by Ataturk); the locals spoke Arabic. Persian was a major Muslim literary and scholarly language centuries ago – before the Mongols overran Iran and Iraq – but by the time of the Ottoman empire Iran had become a self-contained Shi’ite empire. Persian was (and remains) more relevant east of Iran, in northern India and central Asia, than in the Levant or anywhere else in the Arab world. What is your source for that?

It’s not about goals that can be analysed and measured; you try to speak Arabic like that and it feels like you’re stretching it to breaking point. You are swimming against a very strong tide.

Anyway no one seems to be impressed with my thesis, but I will suggest one more thing. Either a language has the power of universal experession or it doesn’t … and all human languages have that power.

What you’re feeling is not that you can not express yourself in Arabic, but that you can’t do it and still sound like everyone else and still sound standard enough to be understood by casual listeners.

It’s not that Arabic can’t be used to express your mode of thought, it’s that it’s not currently being used that way. Do you see the difference?

To put it more simply Johsua: bloke tries to learn foreign language. Bloke finds it hard. Bloke decides that reason for difficulty is that language is inherently evil. Progressive left-wing blog publishes bloke’s thesis. Commnters commend bloke on his tremendous insight.

Nothing bullshits better than a diplomat, a French diplomat.

You’ve clearly not encountered contemporary French philosophers. I’ll see you your diplomat and raise you a postmodern academic. Or possibly an Arts Council funded gallery curator fluent in Artbollocks.

Larry;

bloke has blog that no-one reads. bloke finds it hard. comes to blog which is interesting. bloke finds it hard. bloke posts in comments of blog which he envies how misguided blog and its commenters are. bloke has absolutely hilarious alias.

people (except me obviously) ignore bloke. bloke goes back to his own, hilariously funny and insightful blog.

Back on topic; Excellent piece again DaveM even if it doesn’t have the approval of a Barry George wannabee with an unhealthy obsession with the female menstrual cycle.

MattG

Larry, you’re missing the point that neither I nor Dave contests, that the intellectual status of Arab society is abysmal. Nor do we disagree that this is reflected in how people talk and write. Where we disagree is in what’s primary. He says language is a sticking point, a cause and I say language is mutable and merely a symptom.

DaveM,

It’s not like European languages, which are basically verbal ways to convey information on who did what, where, when, how and why. It appears to me that having developed in an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought, especially in the fields of religion and politics, Arabic has become a means to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

It’s very descriptive…

Contradiction, I think.

What’s ironic about this article is that it does exactly what its accusing “Arabic” of doing. It makes vague conspiratorial accusations based on a single person’s feelings while providing absolutely no concrete empirical evidence to back up its provocative assertions.

Yusuf Smith

Sory my post was badly proof read
That phrase should have read
The principal language of administration and governance was, the Ottoman language, the literate elite used Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek) and their local language.

The main point that I did not express well is that the ottoman language was a highly refined composite of Turkish and Persian and Arabic and required literacy in all three to comprehend.

The official language was unitelligible to an ordinary townsperson or peasant.

Literacy rates were shockingly low and only around 2-3% at the beginning of the 19thC.

The arabic component of ottoman was absorbed via Persian 9rather than directly).

While persian remained a seperate literary language (and as many forms of government came from the Sassanid period) though its vocabulary and grammar was a central part of written ottoman.

Arabic was used chiefly religiously by Muslims (so other than its contribution via Persian to Ottoman) and did not develop as a literary or administrative language.

During he 19thC Ottoman increasingly became Turkish (and was stripped of much of its Persian and Arabic additions) and the elite increasingly turned to French as a modern language of redorm

….’’
“Ottoman Turkish language” was a variety of Turkish, highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. Ottomans had three influential languages; Turkish, Persian, Arabic but they did not have a parallel status. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy and, in particular, within the Ottoman court in later times, a version of Turkish was spoken, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary. If the basic grammar was still largely Turkish, the inclusion of virtually any word in Arabic or Persian in Ottoman made it a language that was essentially incomprehensible to any Ottoman subject who had not mastered Arabic, Persian or both. The two varieties of the language became extremely differentiated and this resulted in a low literacy rate among the general public (about 2–3% until the early 19th century and just about 15% at the end of 19th century). Consequently, ordinary people had to hire special “request-writers” (arzıhâlcis) in order to be able to communicate with the government. The ethnic groups continued to speak within their families and neighborhoods (mahalles) with their own languages (e.g., Jews, Greeks, Armenians, etc.) In villages where two or more populations lived together, the inhabitants would often speak each other’s language. In cosmopolitan cities, people often spoke their family languages, some Ottoman or Persian if they were educated, and some Arabic if they were Muslim. In the last two centuries, French and English emerged as popular languages, especially among the Christian Levantine communities. The elite learned French at school, and used European products as a fashion statement. The use of Turkish grew steadily under the Ottomans, but, since they were still interested in their two other official languages, they kept these in use as well. Usage of these came to be limited, though, and specific: Persian served mainly as a literary language, while Arabic was used solely for religious rites. At this time many famous Persian poets emerged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_language

http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2004/11/ottoman-language-reforms.html

I’m a bit puzzled by some of the reactions to this post. By my reading, this is simply a comment on how a repressive atmosphere combined with a culture hostile to critical thought can result in a language that is euphemistic, imprecise and keeps away from precise analysis of “tricky” topics.

Why is this a problem?

Andrew Coates (and, I think Larry Teabag) wades in, declaring Davem an adherent of relativism and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Obviously this is gibberish- Davem never claimed that language constrained thought, merely that, given its current state, Arabic is hard to use in this straightforward sense.

Have you read the article properly?

Joshua, I understand that point. The problem is that DaveM’s thesis – in your terms that language is “primary” – is marred by (a) the absence of any evidence or example, and relies on his non-expert blank assertion; and (b) hyperbole to the point of inaccurate, offensive absurdity (”one big exercise in denial”).

OK – it’s being offered as an explanation for something which you happen to accept (that “the intellectual status of Arab society is abysmal”). But that’s also being blankly assumed without any argument, detail, or explanation, with only the broadest of broad brush-strokes, and again in such an extreme, exaggerated form (”an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought”) as to render it simply incorrect.

an unhealthy obsession with the female menstrual cycle

Aw Matt – talk about hitting a man where it hurts.

Dave M

I would personally go to lebanon or Egypt to learn Arabic for social and cultural reasons, though I am sure your Arabic is considered to be of the most beautiful and refined kind.

I am sorry that you seemed to have such a hard time of it in Syria.

But you really have to start loving some aspects of the culture if you want to master the language.

a hostile relationship will not help you naturalise it.

And there are so many warm and gracious and kindly aspects to the cutlure and people, the way the elderly and the mad are treated for instance (go see Caramel).

The hardest place I have ever lived is Switzerland. people are simply not friendly, they are polite but cold and removed.

They do not make friends with people they do not know, they never, ever drop by your house (that would be an insult) or call on a weekend or after 9 pm and almost never invite you home.

They never ever discuss religion or politics illness, troubles, anxieties or concerns.

My neighbour who was always very polite shot himself with his army issue rifle one saturday morning after having stayed late at work on friday finishing all his projects so that he would not leave additional work for his colleages on Monday.

I only discovered because his Aunt who was half English and had grown up in Battersea and I spoke to in the hall (she lived on another floor).

She even came in for a coffee because she had to talk to someone, she even mildly criticised the Swiss for never opening up for being so cold emotionally.

In Arab countries I have always been charmed by the warmth and immedicacy of people, though sexual seggregation generally means gay men have an easier time.

I have also noticed that aging in the Arab world makes you more respected not increasingly socially invisble as in the west.

As for evasiveness in arabic again watch Caramel. all languages have forms of sociolinguistic evasiveness to avoid directly referring to tabood subjects.

Not however that certain cliched euphamistic phrases, puns etc, make it absolutely clear what is being referred to.

’stambouli stitches’ are referred to and it is immediately obvious from the context, that they are a procedure to fake a hymen so that a woman will appear to be a virgin on their wedding night.

In the same way ‘theCassablanca operation’ or going to ‘Casablanca’ was once understood to mean a sex change operation.

There is a very gentle, funny heart rending scene where a traditional Muslim mother tries to prepare her daughter for the shock of her wedding night, all in the most euphemistic of language that leaves little doubt about what is meant.

You must learn culture, jokes and puns and sleazy language, insults and obscentities and criminal speech i.e to get at language.

Indonesian is a very easy language to learn at the beginning in three months one can be reasonably fluent, then it takes a lifetime to learn sociolinguistic evasion and avoidance.

Not only is the word ‘you’ avoided in almost all contexts (was the arrival agrreeable? is did you have a good trip? but so is almost everything that is impolite.

There is a famous anecdote of an important diplomatic event where the American ambassodor spoke in bahasa indonesia.

He thought that what he was saying was ‘I am pleased and greatly embarassed to give this speech to you tonight, ”

what he actually said was ‘i’ve got a huge dick, yeah I am so pleased to give it to you right here tonight’

You see he had said ‘the thing about which I am embarassed is huge…..etc’

Yusuf Smith

Sorry my attempts to post with links are being blocked but I was talking of the ottoman Language with its huge persian adstrate and the parallel continuance of Persian as a literary language of the elite increasingly replaced by french and English.

Arabic during the Ottoman empire had a status more like Church Latin and while it was spoken in various vernaculars 9which effectively became quite distinct languages).

Classical arabic was effectively put on ice by the ottoman empire 9except in egypt where effective autonomy from the ottomans and a revival movement re-invigorated it, though English became increasingly the language of the elite)

…Yusuf Smith

Sory my post was badly proof read
That phrase should have read
The principal language of administration and governance was, the Ottoman language, the literate elite used Persian (and to a lesser extent Greek) and their local language.

The main point that I did not express well is that the ottoman language was a highly refined composite of Turkish and Persian and Arabic and required literacy in all three to comprehend.

The official language was unitelligible to an ordinary townsperson or peasant.

Literacy rates were shockingly low and only around 2-3% at the beginning of the 19thC.

The arabic component of ottoman was absorbed via Persian 9rather than directly).

While persian remained a seperate literary language (and as many forms of government came from the Sassanid period) though its vocabulary and grammar was a central part of written ottoman.

Arabic was used chiefly religiously by Muslims (so other than its contribution via Persian to Ottoman) and did not develop as a literary or administrative language.

During he 19thC Ottoman increasingly became Turkish (and was stripped of much of its Persian and Arabic additions) and the elite increasingly turned to French as a modern language of redorm

….’’
“Ottoman Turkish language” was a variety of Turkish, highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. Ottomans had three influential languages; Turkish, Persian, Arabic but they did not have a parallel status. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy and, in particular, within the Ottoman court in later times, a version of Turkish was spoken, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary. If the basic grammar was still largely Turkish, the inclusion of virtually any word in Arabic or Persian in Ottoman made it a language that was essentially incomprehensible to any Ottoman subject who had not mastered Arabic, Persian or both. The two varieties of the language became extremely differentiated and this resulted in a low literacy rate among the general public (about 2–3% until the early 19th century and just about 15% at the end of 19th century). Consequently, ordinary people had to hire special “request-writers” (arzıhâlcis) in order to be able to communicate with the government. The ethnic groups continued to speak within their families and neighborhoods (mahalles) with their own languages (e.g., Jews, Greeks, Armenians, etc.) In villages where two or more populations lived together, the inhabitants would often speak each other’s language. In cosmopolitan cities, people often spoke their family languages, some Ottoman or Persian if they were educated, and some Arabic if they were Muslim. In the last two centuries, French and English emerged as popular languages, especially among the Christian Levantine communities. The elite learned French at school, and used European products as a fashion statement. The use of Turkish grew steadily under the Ottomans, but, since they were still interested in their two other official languages, they kept these in use as well. Usage of these came to be limited, though, and specific: Persian served mainly as a literary language, while Arabic was used solely for religious rites. At this time many famous Persian poets emerged.”’

This excerpt is from the wiki entry on ottoman empire. google ottoman empire, ottoman language . ottoman Turkish, Turkish ;language reform etc and my comments will be supported by the majority of sources.

Do you have to show that bloody goal.
I’d just about repressed that memory.
This one is much better to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mo3QdseuPo

This is beyond parody. so I won’t. Why on earth is the author of this rubbish learning Arabic? If he hates these people so much it must be a real trial for him. More of a trial for them I imagine. My favourite was ‘unlike European languages’. Classy.

As for why the Arab world produces little in the way of original research nowadays (as opposed to functionaries, which it produces in large numbers), one reason is that in some Arab countries, people are basically assigned things to study rather than being allowed to choose.

As though they’re all automotons, right?

No, the Arabo/Muslim world produces little reasearch because it’s a culture lacking the capacity for introspection and curiosity, the prerequisites for good research.

The Arabo/Muslim world for centuries hid its lack of dynamism and intellectual fervour behind the expropriated cultures of the more advanced and more literate peoples Islam conquered.

What are commonly reffered to as artifacts of Islamic genius ( like “Arabic numerals”) alway turn out, upon closer inspection, to be little more that someone else’s stolen intellectual property.

What we’re now seeing, the lack of dynamism and even rising rates of illiteracy in the Islamic world, are merely the core characteristics of a moribund culture comming to the fore, for want of a more advanced civilisation to subjegate and to hide behind.

The intellectual ‘life’ of Saudi Arabia are Islam’s real mental knickers.

The Arabs and Turks, being irrelevant to humanity’s academic progress, hid behind a succession of more advanced cultures ( Persia, Byzantium etc), confiscating their intellectual property, claiming it as their own, and then presenting it as *theirs* to ignorant and gullible Europeans.

In the last decades prior to the fall of Constantinople, waves of Byzantine scholars began leaving Greece to settle in northern Italy, safe from the Turks.

That migration, for years denied and suppressed by the Orthodox-hating Catholic hierarchy, is what sparked The Renaissance.

Every item, then, on The West’s academic buffet table is OUR home cooking, served up and enjoyed without benefit or need for islam’s contributions, Islam’s imaginary catering.

And we should all be very proud of that.

Now, boil me a camel, Yosuf.

As I appear to be the only one who thinks Dave was referring to the current political situation, there’s a strong likelihood I am wrong. Even so, this penguin still ain’t ready to jump off the iceberg: if it turns out to be the case, I’ll heartily agree it’s erroneous. But, evidence of hating Arabs? JohnG, why on earth should anyone listen to a word you – the man who believes any prejudice Gandhi demonstrated towards black Africans was due to influence from his colonial masters; or that George MacDonald Frazer and the men of 631 squadron were on a par with the fascist regiemes they fought – have to say about racial prejudice? You absolute tit.

Plus, I’ve said before that if I want to read a sentence without verbs, I’d read a Cormac McCarthy novel.

It is amazing how blind people like johng and the erie are to the need for social criticism. They must imagine a world where all peoples can hate and exterminate Jews together in peace and harmony, and suppress dissent without any need for disrespect.

johng

ah I’ve missed you.

Now whilst we would expect you to dismiss the premise of this post as orientalist nonsense, actually it puts you in a bind because you can’t actually answer the problem of the relationship between language, society, culture and cognition without exposing your own inconsistencies.

In fact the linguistic and cultural relativism inherent in holding to fixed relationship between cognition, language and reality is central to post modernist thought.

The fallacy of the post modernists is that the relationships of political hegemony are purely discursive and can be de-constructed.

However if you were any kind of marxist you would have to believe that the material conditions of society determine consciousness, hence language itself would have to be the expression of such a dialectical materialism, wouldn’t you?

The most mechanistic economic determinist would believe that language as an aspect of the superstructure that inscribed the relations of production was itself determined by the base structure of the forces of production.

is that what you believe johng?

Or do you subscribe to some revisionist late marxist, marxian or freudo marxist view of language and culture as ideological inscribable but relatively autonomous from the mode of production?

Or are you a bourgois liberal really and hold that all people,in all societies have identical cognition and perceive reality identically, and that the only thing that differs is the representaion of orientalist, racists?

You are really an enlightenment ‘noble savage’ universalist aren’t you johng?

Come on you can tell us.

But you won’t because that would take the fun out of allways being right no matter how, intellectually dishonest that is, wouldn’t it?

Actually having to recognise social and cultural difference other than when poor oppressed and colonialised victims of Imperialism asserted such difference, would mean having to ditch your xenocentric, occidentalist reflex antiracism, that is nothing of the sort.

I prefer to acknowledge DaveM’s subjective experience as real but to seek to explain how social and cultural and political factors may operate to create socio-linguistic reasons for this observed pehnomenon.

You see there is a lot of empirical evidence in liguistics to support this.

Hard determinast and relativist views on language and consciousness that while preferred by marxists, post-modrnists and ethno-nationalists and ethno-religious-supra-nationalists (including islamist chauvinists) alike have little support among those linguists who have actually taken seriously the hypothesese that reflect the premise DaveM has taken, and have produced solid evidence based answers.

Larry: OK – it’s being offered as an explanation for something which you happen to accept (that “the intellectual status of Arab society is abysmal”). But that’s also being blankly assumed without any argument, detail, or explanation, with only the broadest of broad brush-strokes, and again in such an extreme, exaggerated form (”an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought”) as to render it simply incorrect.

No it’s a fact that he didn’t bother to support in this article having somewhat detailed it in previous ones. In any case I don’t need him to support it since I have the same judgment from independent experience.

There’s a difference between a situation being “incorrect” and simply being something that you’re completely ignorant of, Larry.

“Muslim Arab language student of Welsh (why not) staying as a paying guest of a language school billeted in a local farm in Dolgellau”

I’m acquainted with a Pakistani woman from Manchester who learned to swear in Welsh as a by-product of 3 years studying History and Archaeology at St. David’s University College in Lampeter. An institution where an Undergraduate wouldn’t need Latin to study History, since its origins are training Methodist and Baptist ministers.

Punjabi (my friend’s only language when she arrived at her first Nursery School, aged 3), English, Welsh and Urdu are all Indo-European languages, which Arabic isn’t.

A better informed perspective on the Arabic language and alleged limits thereof might be on offer from speakers of Farsi, Urdu or Bengali, all of which are Indo-European languages.

So find some and invite them to comment!

I’d just like to point out that DaveM wasn’t arguing that Arabic per se isa mental striat jacket; he said that he found the speeched by the Druze very direct adn too the point and helpful in learning Syrian Arabic. His Kurdish friend wdho taught him conversational Arabic must also have been beyond the ritualised, formalised non-communication of the majority of the native speakers. Obviously, this is a political problem, about winning trust, about strictly prescribed limits as to what one can and cannot say, about ‘honour’ etc, and the language has evolved to reflect that. I suspect that there is a wide difference between the language spoken by the peasantry and the language spoken by the intellectuals, as Mettaculture pointed out above, to the point of them almost being separate dialects. Anyway, as a realist. i always end my arguments with, ‘Just have a look at what actually exists in the here and now.’.

By the way, Dave, have you consdered a career at M16? I see they are advertising for Aravic specialists at the side of the page.

If he has, I’m sure he can’t reveal it, Sue. I love you Metta.

mettaculture:”The hardest place I have ever lived is Switzerland. people are simply not friendly, they are polite but cold and removed.”

on my recent visit to Geneva, my English colleague expressed the same view, saying that at a party he had been to there, it was the only time he had every seen people being even more cold and distant after taking ecstasy than before ingesting!

aging in the Arab world makes you more respected not increasingly socially invisble as in the west: I wouldn’t lump the West into one generalisation. On visiting Salamanca a couple of years ago, I was struck by how after the afternoon siesta, all the old people came out and sat on benches in public spaces and chatted, and later that night in the huge square, among the groups of people dancing to different music, there was in a sort of line dancing area, many elders among all age ranges, dancing away into the small hours.

“Avoiding the issue” indeed. Author, author?

ami

that’s true of course it more of a northern european anglo american and protestant thing.

Latin/mediteranean culture seems to share the social sense of public space with the eastern mediteranean and middle east 9descendends of graeco/Roman culture the agora and the lazza and the evening promenade).

Of course English people would misunderstand this and they get very uncomfortable with people being relaxed and socially intimate in public.

Some of the paranoid and suspicious early to bed child protectors on this site would no doubt think that the inhabitants of Madrid strolling about at 2 am with children were, like haredi jews, probably off to sexually abuse them or sacrifice them in rituals.

Well, I asked my friend, and some of what she said is:

Arabic: the man who wrote it and other stuff seems to be very angry and negative.

Arabic is a hard language to learn ………… context is important in conveying meaning. People in Arab countries have been using is and developing it for centuries to sometimes do quite technological stuff so I know not of what he speaks.

Al Jazeeera ………. says some crap but also it says the opposite too. The fact that it has an English version with some quite high profile thinkers must also mean something. No one quite approves of Al Jazeera because it gives room to the opposition to speak.

I think the person who wrote the piece is so full of “righteous indignation” that he paints a distorted picture.

I think Alan should read his past pieces before commenting..

Wait the previous pieces didn’t transfer from the old domain did they?

Repost them damn it!

Mettaculture: I take it you don’t have children? If you did, you would know why English parents don’t want every waking moment dominated by their offspring. The idea of having to pander to them into the wee small hours of the morning is too, too much to contemplate.

Not exactly correct, I had a screamer for two solid years, so I do know about the wee small hours never having slept for longer than two or three of them.

The only time we got rest was in the Mediteranean, staying up late, drinking and socialising and being nice to children, letting them run around at the dinner table, is a wonderfull cultural attribute.

Children sleep in periods much like pets and old people, not regimented 9 hour slots.

siesta is breaking down under the pressure of capitalism and commuting and air conditioning, but still most Spaniards work longer hours in winter months.

In Summer byy about 2pm in Madrid your shoes melt and stick to the tarmac.

You struggle home have a shower, sleep, get up at 8 or 9 and dinner at 11pm to midnight and enjoy the cool and sociability of it all.

Many German and English tourist families think Spain is rather boring and mostly closed, as sticking to a Northern European day means nothing is open and no-one is about at proper mealtimes and in the afternoon, and they are in bed way before the day starts.

I was a little concerned when I read this piece, but I bore it in mind when reading today’s article by Robert Fisk on the last moments of Margaret Hassan. Mr Fisk does in English exactly the things you describe here. His circumlocution invites one to draw the conclusion, if one wishes, that American agents killed Mrs Hassan. No doubt he would deny this as preposterous, but nevertheless it appears to be what he is saying. I now understand why he is the Islamists’ favourite journalist.

But to lay the blame at Arabic still seems wrong to me. Rather it is a culture of indirectness that leaves one’s listener able to take what he wants – meaning that the pushiest individuals incur no resistance.

I don’t think Robert Fisk is being coy about saying that he believes that the Americans were responsible for the death of Margaret Hassan. I think he spells it out.

You’re all missing the point. Spoken Arabic varies enormously from country to country and has as much to do with standard written Arabic as Italian or French or Spanish have with Latin. Most Arabs in Egypt are illiterate and don’t know any standard Arabic except maybe the bits of the Koran they may have memorised. In any case, the Koran is “classical” Arabic and differs in many ways from modern standard written Arabic. In fact, modern standard Arabic is as connected to classical Arabic as modern Hebrew is to biblical. I’m pretty familiar with spoken, modern and classical forms of Arabic and I have to say the post is basically rubbish. A huge amount of classical Greek philosophical texts were saved and continued through Arabic translation and furthered in Arabic. Mathematic treatises were also written and developed to a very high level in Arabic. None of that could have been possible had Arabic been what the new learner of it claims.
Today’s problems in the Arab world arise from a variety of serious issues having nothing directly to do with the language or languages spoken there. We all know the basic issues – a highly backward religion, tribalism, pathological corruption at every level, oppression of women and minorities (religious and non-Arab), illiteracy, poor education in general, constant brainwashing, cultural inability to take responsibility for own actions and cultural scape-goating for own failures, cultural inability to appreciate democratic and liberal values, cultural inability to look at self or religion critically etc. These are the issues that fuck the Arab world up, not the Arab world’s language(s).

Although the Sapir Wharf hypothesis is the subject of much debate, it sets out how language influences thought and thought language.

Al-takeyya and kitman are essential aspects of Arab culture, perhaps developed in order to adapt to a language which has necessarily to be cryptic, if what you say above is true. From not being able to articulate what you actually mean to deliberately being secretive about what you actually mean is but a short step.

“But philosphically all truth must be translatable.”

Circular argument, I fear. First you need to demonstrate that such a thing as ‘truth’, in an objective, culture-independent sense, even exists.

Therefore, you have done exactly nothing to disprove S-W.

“In fact, modern standard Arabic is as connected to classical Arabic as modern Hebrew is to biblical”

I don’t speak Arabic, but I don’t believe you are very familiar with Hebrew at all. Modern Hebrew is amazingly closely connected to Biblical Hebrew.

But don’t just take that as a given, allow me to demonstrate:

Al Jazeera is one of the most popular channels in the Arab world. Why? Because it knows exactly what its audience wants to hear. If these views weren’t popular then these sorts of programmes would not be made. (It’s comforting that Al Arabiya is also popular, indicating that there is also a demand for moderate, reformist voices.)

Let me take the liberty of switchg just a couple words to show what a total douchebag you are:

Fox is one of the most popular channels in America. Why? Because it knows exactly what its audience wants to hear. If these views weren’t popular then these sorts of programmes would not be made. (It’s comforting that CNN is also popular, indicating that there is also a demand for moderate, reformist voices.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Thanks so much, for your well thought out and rigorous analysis. You are such a powerful intellectual that you can grasp the entire arab culture from it’s pre-islamic origins to the present day after having lived in one arab country and visiting a few others.

Perhaps there is an equivalent Arab genius who speaks a bit of german and lived in Munich for a while to summarize the entire European culture and mentality.

Also thanks for much for your logical lumping together of all european languages, after all they are all exactly the same, with no distinction between germanic, latin, slavic languages. Very astute.

Again, thanks for highlighting the sheer inferiority and lack of objectivity of arab mass media compared to objective and highly intellectual level of programming and articles in Fox New and the SUN.

This is a great line in your post:

“After all there are only so many conversations you can have about sand before it starts to get boring.”

Absolutely no racist or derogatory undertones here what so ever.

Also thanks so much for all the people reading here and posting their enthusiasm for your post. It’s great to see that all you have to do is be an armchair anthropologist on arab/islamic culture, add a good dash of derogatory comments and then build up such a wide fan base.

Great work.

You guys (Harry’s Place and the author of the above piece of nonsense) are full of shit. You masquerade as pro-liberty whereas in fact you are a bunch of Judaeo-centric fascists and racists. Hasbara or sayanim, or both? Your day will come!

You guys (Harry’s Place and the author of the above piece of nonsense) are full of shit. You masquerade as pro-liberty whereas in fact you are a bunch of Judaeo-centric fascists and racists. Hasbara or sayanim, or both? Your day will come!