Egyptian Arabic is it a case of diglossia or it is a unique language and the ligua sacra

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 6, 2010 at 12:10

Hi Vijay: Interesting remarks

>The wide divergence between spoken and written language is known as diglossia. This happens when there is a classical language which has more prestige than colloqial language.

Well diglossia means: "the use of two markedly different varieties of a language in different social situations such as a formal variety at work and an informal variety at home"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diglossia

This is not what we have in Egypt. Egyptian Arabic is also the language of the work place but when written it will be translated into modern classical Arabic and what betrays such translations are the mistakes in grammar where the writer is using Egytpian Arabic grammar instead of classical Arabic garmmar

What is most amazing is that even Islamists and Shiekh al-Azhar himself when speaking in public start with a few words in modern classical Arabic and then they switch to Egyptian Arabic and what is most puzzling is that al-Ahram when publishing the same speach, the text of the speach in Egyptian Arabic will be given to "translators" that translate Egyptian Arabic and make it modern classical Arabic mistakes and all and the reason is obvious as one is a lingua sacra and the other is not

So what we have in Egypt is really not diglossia but a unique language and a language is

"a body of words and the systems of their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation the same geographical area or the same cultural tradition

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/language

And case in point is Latin and Italian. This is not diglossia but we have one mother language or Latin and another language or Italian

And this is what we have in Egypt as Egyptian Arabic is a real language and yes most of it is from Arabic but it has lots of words that are clearly not Arabic words and sentences (eg: Coptic) and a very different grammar and syntax

>So, by language and grammar, people(speakers of the language) tend to apply classical standards to the living language and infact ordinary, spoken everyday language has no grammar.

Not correct. Every language has grammar otherwise it would not be a language and for those of you wanting to know more about the grammar of Egyptian Arabic and its comparison to classical Arabic Haeri's book is a great reference

>That has what has happened to Arabic and the consequent frustrations of Dr.Pipes.

Sorry with great respect to you that is far from the turth. I urge you to read Kees Versteegh's book "The Arabic language" and the truth is the Arabic language has a long history behind it and that what we call real classical Arabic is a language that has never been spoken by anyone

>This is the case with some languages in India also.

I cannot comment on India

> Diglossia being most pronounced in Tamil. A milder example would be trying to understand Swiss German with Goethe's language.

This might be diglossia but in the case of Egypt it is not

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