Comments | filjazair: schizophrenia

filjazair

schizophrenia

Jan 09, 2007 10:53

I'm enrolled in a French class for adults. It's two hours in the evenings, four evenings a week, and it's very small: in the beginning, it was me and a girl about my age who works as a computer specialist at Sonatrach, the big national energy company; recently we were joined by a young man, either in his last year of high school or his first year ( Read more... )

Comments 8

US exceptionalism anonymous January 9 2007, 14:43:19 UTC

Nora, your posts are awesome. I just wanted to point out that in many ways you are probably biased by your US upbringing about languages. It is actually much more common in the world to have a multi-lingual situation as opposed to the rare situation in the states where we have a near-universal language for everyone. Even then, spanish speaking immigrants, living in spanish speaking communities in the states face a lot of the same issues that you discuss. Of course, Arabic adds a whole level of complexity with the whole diglossia thing, but I think it's important to remember that in many ways, this situation is the norm, not the exception.

Rashad

Re: US exceptionalism filjazair January 10 2007, 09:25:21 UTC

I think you're right, Rashad - except I would qualify this, because I think in the "first world" things are different. that is, even if you have a situation in Europe where people learn and speak multiple languages, there's still a basic respect (if not reverence) for the mother tongue - the French are proud of their French; the Germans, of German; etc. And in Europe and the US - even in Latin America, to an extent - people read and write the language they speak. There's no discontinuity between them.

Algerians, by contrast, are almost totally dismissive of the language they grow up speaking, never read it or write it, and are taught to revere a language most of them will never master. It's partly an Arab/ic thing, and partly an ex-colonial phenomenon. It'd be different if they accepted French as an official co-language, or if they codified and used darija in written form. It's more the attitude that's exceptional - the attitude that the language you think in and speak is "base" and not valuable.

thanks for reading!

Re: US exceptionalism anonymous January 10 2007, 22:09:19 UTC

Good point. I guess I was mostly thinking about China and most of Africa, but you're right the multi-lingual situations in Europe are quite different. Switzerland is a bit mixed up, but other than that most countries have a language that is "theirs".

And even China isn't anywhere near as messed up as the Arabic dialects because even though people speak a ton of different dialects, the writing is the same for everyone. Sort of like Arabic except that since it is not phonetic, it's not confusing to people.

Rashad

anonymous January 23 2007, 17:33:02 UTC

The linguistic issue in Algeria (and North Africa) is 'ubuesque'. This situation is the result of a few factors linked to religion, history(colonialism) and culture self-worth and low-esteem of indigenous patrimony. All genetic studies confirm the predominance of ( ... )

Amdan's comment about the "Berber" anonymous March 12 2007, 15:16:25 UTC

I have never visited North Africa, but your history fascinates me. What amazes me is how over two thousand years of history and constant efforts to suppress the original cultures, the Amazight languages still survive. Would not a pride in these indigenous languages also give a greater sense of uniqueness and identity that is so lacking in the confusions demonstrated in your original comments?

It seems to me that from the invasions of Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs and to modern history every effort has been made to rob the people of their history, culture and language. Do I detect a desire to go back to retrieve the best of the past? I wonder how many realize what a debt Christians owe great Christian leaders of Amazight origin in the early centuries before the Arab invasion - they gave stability and direction to the Church of their time?

My challenge is - go and retrieve your heritage!

Patrick

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