Our Language

It is the language of the homeland that must be the most sacred, above every other language...

Thirty years ago there rose the cry of Mayy, saying, 'Speak your language.' And she went on — God rest her soul — to tell of an old Italian bookseller whom she asked for one of D'Annunzio's works in Italian. When he learned that she knew the language well, his face lit up and he said, in the tone of one pleading: Why, then, do you not speak it with me..? I know that French is more widespread, but ah, how beautiful Italian is — it is the language of art and music, of the heart and of youth.. its words summon up the shores of Italy... her hills.. her greenness.. the canvases of her museums.. her song-filled nights, her fertile heart, and her immortal soul.

Then Mayy went on to describe how she carried this talk to a gathering of noble Arabs. Some of them were convinced, but one of them stepped forward, opened his mouth with an elegant opening befitting the twentieth century, as Mayy puts it, and said:

— Yes, but the pronunciation of Arabic is hard for us. There are rough letters, like — striving to perfect the pronunciation — the.. 'ayn.. and the ha and the kha.. good heavens, all of that tears the throat..'

And thirty years ago, too, Sheikh al-'Azar wrote: The bride and groom are Arabs, the guests invited to the wedding are Arabs, and it is in an Arab country — but the invitation cards were written in French.. Arabic has died.. she died, so they buried her and wrote upon her tomb: a stranger in her own land.

I wrote in my turn on the subject.. and cited dozens of Orientalists who speak Arabic and pronounce the.. 'ayn.. and the ha.. and the kha that tear our friend's throat.. they pronounce these rough letters without their throats being torn..

And one asks oneself, before this language that is a stranger in her own land: why should she be a stranger..? And one's thoughts wander over the corners of the world to see whether anyone does as we do..? All people, from the smallest nation to the greatest — each one among them prizes his own language and takes pride in it. Why, then, should we be the exception..?

The educational institutions that put their own language in the first rank, for study and for speech.. and thereby serve the aims they pursue.. are not responsible for all this excess.. When we lay the whole responsibility upon them, we forget the influence of the home in the formation of the rising generation.. indeed, it is as if we confessed that it has no influence at all.

When these institutions teach the student their language first, they merely make that language easier for him in writing and in reading.. As for the writing, there is no danger in it, since these languages are, on the whole, international.. And as for the reading, there is no danger in it either, since by means of it the student is enabled to study the masterpieces of Western literature with depth and understanding.

I do not deny that these institutions endear to the young their own language and their own culture; but neither do I deny that they range the field alone, finding no one to fault their work with so much as a word.

The word of the home is, in my view, the first word.. and the family's agreement that the language of the homeland is the one that must be the most sacred, above every other language.. carries its weight in the matter.. And the jabbering that displays itself in our homes and our streets and our gatherings, when we speak the foreign language or utter a single sentence in a mixture of the two tongues, is chargeable first of all to the home.

Do we really wish to believe that the schools have made of these citizens people who cannot speak Arabic well..? And that its letters are rough on the throat — good heavens..? If you insisted on conversing with them in Arabic you would find them speaking it fluently, without any difficulty.. What, then, is the secret of this affectation..

I believe that behind it lies an inferiority complex.. a feeling that we stand lower in rank than the other nations.. so that we are ashamed of our Arabness.. and boast that we cannot speak it well.

This inferiority complex was formed in the wake of our long servitude.. In the days of his glory the Arab would enter the presence of Chosroes Anushirvan and address him in Arabic, though he knew Persian well. He might be barefoot, his garment threadbare, but his soul butted the clouds.. and his Arabness rose high above the Iwan of Chosroes.. a conquering nation, victorious in every place, which stamped even Andalusia with its victorious Arab stamp.. Then, when the state fell and split into petty states.. and when the people, here and there, came under the rule of conquerors, souls were abased and began to curry favor with their rulers.. and the first form of that flattery was to speak the language of their rulers.. and then to disown their own language and their Arabness.

It would have been well — all to the good — had our schools been our own.. teaching our young to take pride in their Arabness, and that the time of domination over us has passed.. teaching our young that we are a nation that once conquered East and West.. and that, besides the conquests and their masters — the likes of Saladin and Ibn Tariq — we gave the world Avicenna, whose medical works were translated into Latin and other tongues and are still taught in the greatest institutes of the West.. and that Hunayn ibn Ishaq was the first to know the surgery of the eye and wrote books upon it.. and that for three hundred years the world read nothing but books written in Arabic.. and that a nation which gives the world such a treasure of learning as we gave will not die — its potentialities remain latent within it.. and that we are a nation with much to be proud of and to hold its head high for. And that other nations have tumbled once, as we did, and were not abased.. and that tomorrow is ours.. as yesterday was ours.

I would have longed for our schools to be ours, that they might do all this. But since they are not ours — where, then, are our homes and our mothers..?