From : suha0002003@yahoo.co.uk
Sent : Thursday, July 1, 2004 4:28 AM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com

Dear Dr. Fawzi,

Would you please publish this article under the title ' long live Arabic language, long live Sibaweeh, and down with Frooq Housni.'

yours

Suha Al-Dakheel

This time what holds me to write is anger and nothing else but anger. Let me start by saying ‘long live the Arabic language, long live Sibaweeh and down with Farooq Housni.’

Few days ago, I was talking about the inferiority complex and Frooq Housni comes to prove what the people of the West wanted to prove. I wish that man were ashamed of his sandals. In this case, I would say such a man is not very well educated: fihmu 3ala adu. Unfortunately, this man is an author who writes books-books that aim to distroy the last remain of the Arab world which is the Arabic language.

Doesn’t that man know that language and culture are very much attached to each other to the extent some thinker comes to say that ‘language shapes the way we think’? It was Boas who said this and then Sapir and Whorf after him came to support this view. Doesn’t he know that America and Britain are fighting us with something called the English language?

Let me tell you one of the things that a child might notice nowadays. In any conference or a meeting between two presidents one from the UK, the USA, or France and the other from a country from Asia or Africa, you will never hear Bush, Blair or Shirak speaking any other language apart from their mother tongue. On the other hand, a president from Asia or Africa will speak like a bulbbul in English or in French. Is it because English or French are easier than Arabic or Chinese, for example? No, the answer is definitely not. None of the international languages ‘Chinese, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Russian’ was proved to be easier or more difficult than the other. Moreover, as I mentioned, Arabic is an international language like French and English. So, why to reject its rules that make us nearer to our holly Quran?

No language was proved to be primitive or even inferior to any other language. Each language has the ability to cope with the changes and the developments that take place in the world. What I am saying is a fact proved by many thinkers. If Arabic has a greater number of words if compared with the French or the British language, it means that Arabic has an advantage over the other dominant languages: French or English. This is mainly because when the European languages were compared with the primitive languages like the Indo-American languages, linguists claimed that because English has more vocabulary or let us say terms to describe a ward like a snow while a language like the Hopi language lacks the variety in the terms for such a ward, Hopi is primitive while English is Superior. Europeans and Americans used the variety in the vocabulary system of their languages to prove that their languages are superior. Now another clever Arabic man comes to prove that because of the variety of the vocabulary system, Arabic is not up to date with the very fast development of the technology- the technology that he is nothing but a passive witness of it and far from being a real participant. I have talked only about the vocabulary system and I will not discuss other matters like the syntax or semantics for by comparison Arabic semantic or syntactic rules are not more difficult than those of the French and English and the tense rules are the best example. Moreover, anyone who will try to go further in learning both English and French will find so many rules and difficulties that can not be explained. But, because such languages are superior as the people of the West claim, we put ourselves in prisons for ages and ages just to master one of these two languages hoping that this might hide what we really lack in our personalities.

Please try to notice that both the British and the French people whether leaders or ordinary people carry their native languages wherever they go and they force us to communicate with them according to their rules of communication. They force us to acquire their corrupted cultures while acquiring their languages.

An important thing to mention is that there is a conflict between the two languages for each one is trying to become the first global language and marginalise the role of the other. The best example to what I say is using the English language in France or vice versa. If you try to use English in France, simply nobody is going to listen to you. They will force you to use French in France. They will say ‘you are in France not in the UK and you have to speak French’.

I am sorry to say that we proved to be ashamed of everything related to the Arab world and we try to replace it with something made in the West. I want to say that even if English or France are dominant languages nowadays and even if I am using English to express myself now, we can force them to master our Arabic language when we stop making their task easier by using English and communicate with them in Arabic at least when they come to our Arab countries.

Look at the people of Lebanon who master both English and French. Are they real Arab. Believe me those who graduated from the American or the French schools and universities deny that they are real Arabs. They claim that their real origin is from France and not from Lebanon. Please, ask about what I am saying and you will see that there is no exaggeration at all..

Again and again, the Arabic language is the only thing that remained in the Arab world. Lets us keep it. Let us keep the last thing that is our own before we become nothing but distorted copies of the western people.

Finally, I want to say that I did may best to write this article in Arabic but I could not because of what I mentioned in my previous article.