The Impact of Native Arabic Dialects on English essay

INTRODUCTION

In actuality, Arabic language becomes more and more popular in the US that raises the problem of the interaction between Arabic and English languages for people learning or speaking both languages inevitably develop their own particular dialect for their English is vulnerable to the impact of Arabic dialects they speak or learn. In this regard, many Arab students as well as Arab Americans use English which is quite different from conventional, standard English. Similarly, English speaking students become vulnerable to the impact of Arabic because, as they learn Arabic, they acquire Arabic culture and linguistic norms, which they often extrapolate on English for they make their speech stylistically and semantically richer compared to their English before they start learning Arabic. In such a way, it is possible to presuppose that identity changes and semantic implications comprise an important part of the impact of Arabic on English because the acquisition of Arabic language by English speaking students as well as the acquisition of English by Arab and Arab American students can influence the identity of the language learner, while the learner brings in his/her own semantic concepts that the learner extrapolates on the target language. In such a way, English becomes particularly vulnerable to the impact of Arabic language along with the impact of Arabic cultural identity. At the same time, Arabic impact can be traced in the field of semantic, syntax and grammar. However, the impact in the field of semantics is particularly significant because it affects other fields, including grammar and syntax, while the development of a new cultural identity under the impact of Arabic and English also contribute to the mutual impact of two languages on each other.

Literature review

On analyzing the impact of Arabic dialects on English, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that Arabic dialects have a larger impact on English today than they used to be in the past. In this regard, many specialists (Zakeria, 1985) point out that Arabic dialects have become particularly popular in the US after 9/11, while the number of students learning Arabic dialects have doubled since the late 1990s and exceeded 10,000 in the early 2000s. Similarly, along with the growing interest to Arabic dialects, the interest to Arabic culture grew too. As a result, many American students started to learn Arabic dialects. At the same time American and British universities were always reputable higher education institutions that attracted Arab students, who learned English and developed their own, specific English, which they used as the means of communication with English speaking people. Hence the impact of Arabic culture and language on English has grown stronger in recent years that makes the study of the impact of Arabic dialects on English particularly important because the intercultural and linguistic influences are likely to grow stronger in the future.

At the same time, the closer look at the impact of Arabic on English reveals substantial differences between the two languages, which affect the learning of either Arabic or English and determine, to a significant extent, the impact of Arabic on English. In this regard, specialists (Zakeria, 1983) place emphasis on the substantial difference of syntactic structure of Arabic sentences and language compared to English. For instance, Arabic script is written from right to left. There is at present no agreed upon and complete formal description of Arabic (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). The Arabic language is an inflectional language whereas English is an analytic language. The derivation in Arabic is based on morphological patterns and the verb plays a greater inflectional role than in English (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). This difference is very important because the sentence structure changes consistently depending on the inflectional or analytic background of the language, while the difference between the two language may affect the sentence structure of the target language. For instance, Arab students learning English may extrapolate their inflectional model onto English that naturally differs from the analytical principle of English language.

Furthermore, Arabic words are built up from roots representing lexical and semantic connecting elements. This is not the case with English which employs the stem as a basis for word generation (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). Therefore, Arabic dialects often affect learners perception of the language and Arab students may use their traditional roots as the semantic connecting elements as tools of word construction in English that is apparently wrong and leads to morphological errors being made by Arabic speaking students.

Arabic offers the possibility of combining particles and affixed pronouns to Arabic words. This possibility is absent from English (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). Nevertheless, this does not prevent such combinations being made by Arab students while they use English. In fact, the Arabic language involves diacritization (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). However, for technical reasons the diacritization is impossible when using the computer that results in compound cases of morphological-lexical and morphological-syntactical ambiguities (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994).

English imposes a large number of constraints on word order. However, Arabic is distinguished by its high syntactical flexibility. This flexibility includes: the omission of some prepositional phrases associated with verbs; the possibility of using several prepositions with the same verb while preserving the meaning; allowing more than one matching case between the verb and verbal subject and the adjective and its broken plural qualified and the sharpness of pronominalization phenomena where the pronouns usually indicate the original positions of the words before their extrapositioning, fronting and omission. In other words, Arabic allows a great deal of freedom in the ordering of words in a sentence (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). Thus, the syntax of the sentence can vary according to transformational mechanisms such as extraposition, fronting and omission, or according to syntactic replacement such as the use of an agent noun in place of a verb (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). As a result, often Arab students tend to make their sentences in English too wordy and complex that makes their grammar and syntax wrong, while the semantic structure of such complex sentences may be extremely difficult to understand.

The key to searching the Arabic lexicon is the root of the word, whereas the stem represents the key in English (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). This difference has been already mentioned above but it is extremely important to understand it to find out the difference in word formation between the two languages. At the same time, Arabic dialects affect the morphology of English, when Arab students, for instance, use the root of the word for the formation of new words, instead of stem as English language norms require them to do.

The Arabic language is distinguished by its high context sensitivity in several directions. On the writing level, the shape of a letter depends on the letter that precedes it and the one that follows it (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). On the syntactic level, the different synthetic coherence relations such as case-ending, matching, connecting, associating and pronominalizing represent various examples of syntactic context sensitivity (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994).

Furthermore, the context sensitivity feature extends to the lexicon where a lot of vocables are influenced by their associated words. The context sensitivity feature is not only limited to letters, words and sentences but applied to the continuous context consisting of several sentences (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994). Arabic sentences are embedded and normally connected by copulative, exceptive and adversative particles. For this reason it is more difficult to identify the end of an Arabic sentence than is the case in other languages (Al Daimi & Abdel-Amir, 1994).

Obviously, the aforementioned differences are very important but often when the two languages comes into close interaction, these difference tend to disappear because speakers make errors extrapolating Arabic norms on English that is often a case of Arabs or Arab Americans, for instance, who use English as their second language and they just extrapolate the norms of their native language on English that leads to the formation of the specific English, which, though, is not always syntactically, morphologically and grammatically correct, whereas semantics is also quite difficult to define properly.

CORPUS

The study focuses on the syntactic structure of Arabic and English and the impact of Arabic syntactic structure on English as it is used by Arab speaking students. The semantic structure and impact of Arabic is analyzed on the ground of the analysis of Arabic speaking students and an English speaking student. The semantic difference is very important because it affects the comprehension of the language, while the extrapolation of Arabic semantic on English makes the comprehension difficult for native English speakers, while knowing the Arabic language can help to understand English influenced by Arabic semantic structures. Finally, the close interaction between Arabic and English leads to changes in the cultural identity of speakers that implies certain shifts in the cultural and, therefore, linguistic norms used by Arabic and English speakers.

METHODS OF ANALYSIS

Qualitative methods of research were implemented in terms of the current study. In this regard, the study used a single case study method. A case study is defined as “a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (e.g., observations, interviews, audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and reports a case description and case-based themes” (Samimy, 2008). The study involved an English speaking subject, John, who was an American, who had being studying Arabic for fifteen years. The subject had extensive experience of learning and using Arabic, including not only learning Arabic in the US but also living in Arabic speaking communities for a considerable time. I used the method of the study in terms of which the researcher selected individuals and sites for study because they can purposefully inform an understanding of the research problem and central phenomenon in the study (Samimy, 2008). Hence, in order to ensure reliability and validity of the study, I employed several forms of triangulation by employing the following strategies (Merriam, 1998): (1) triangulation by collecting multiple sources of data (e-mail interviews with John and John’s Arabic professors, research papers and course syllabus prepared by John, John’s Arabic class observed by the researcher), (2) a member check by asking John to respond to a draft of the paper making sure that my analysis and interpretation is accurate and plausible, and (3) a peer review by asking a colleague, who is in the field, to see whether my interpretations accurately reflect the collected data (Saminy, 2008). The involvement of English speaking subject was essential for the study to understand whether the impact of Arabic on native English speakers is possible or the impact of the Arabic language is one-sided and involves only Arabic speakers.

Furthermore, Arabic speakers were involved in the study. They were Arabic speaking students learning English. They had different level of proficiency in English but they could speak English fluently. They represented different Arabic language groups and dialects. In addition, the study used a group of English speaking students, who studied Arabic languages. This group was used as a control group to compare the results of students from this group with the results of students from the first, Arabic speaking group. Both groups of students wrote papers, which were supposed to reveal their grammar, syntax and semantic structures. The papers contained identical tasks and papers of Arabic and English students were collected and analyzed. The papers allowed to compare English of Arabic students to that of English native speakers. On the ground of this analysis, it was possible to trace the impact of Arabic dialects on English.

RESULTS

The study involved the analysis of John’s experience of using Arabic and revelation of the impact of Arabic on his English. In this regard, the analysis of John’s experience was extremely important for the current study because it revealed the extent to which Arabic can influence English of English native speakers. After identifying John’s characteristics as an Arabic language learner, I used the constant comparative method by Glaser and Strauss (Saminy, 2008) by comparing my data with the ones generated by Leaver and Atwell (Saminy, 2008) by identifying similarities and differences between the two sets of data and tried to explain possible sources of differences. Furthermore, in order to understand how John positions himself and identifies his multiple identities, I looked for recurring themes or categories from the collected data (Saminy, 2008). In such a way, the study of the experience of John helped to identify the impact of Arabic on English used by English native speakers. In fact, the experience of John reveals the fact that the study of Arabic contributes to the development of a new cultural identity of English speaker. As John spent a considerable time living in Arabic community, he developed a different cultural identity compared to his original, American cultural identity. At the same time, the cultural identity of the native speaker affected the language used by the native speaker. John tended to use more complex language compared to the average English language used by English native speakers, although the risk of errors is quite few.

As for papers produced by native speakers of Arabic, they were selected and examined for mistakes in diction (that is, choice of words in writing). Among such mistakes, a very common type (14 percent) concerned expressions for obligation, necessity, or advisability and the negatives of such expressions. The papers of Arab students were compared to those of English speakers. In this regard, the impact of Arabic on English became evident after the analysis of common errors that was made (See App. Lists 1-3).

After the mistakes in List 1 were recorded, a check was made to see whether they might be errors of competence due to semantic interference from Arabic into English. First, each italicized word or expression in List 1 was replaced by another which corrected the mistake in diction. Then any other changes were made to render each sentence “acceptable” to a native speaker of American English – that is, to make it grammatical, meaningful, and relevant to the contexts of the students’ final compositions (Huxley, 1986).

The sentences of List 2 were then read to six people who were native speakers of Arabic and also speakers of English but not otherwise participants in the study. After hearing each sentence, every person was asked to give an Arabic translation for it, using the sort of language that he/she would speak with close family or friends. This translation was transcribed. Next the informant was asked to translate the “same” sentence as it had appeared originally in a student composition (see List 1). If he/she wished, the entire second sentence was repeated. Then the informant translated this sentence, and this translation was transcribed. In most cases, the speakers translated the error and the correction in exactly the same way. In other words, they said that both error and correction had identical translations in these contexts in Arabic (Huxley, 1986).

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

Through the analysis of the data, it became clear that John needs to be described as having at least three separate but closely related identities: John as a language learner, John as a language instructor, and John as a (non) member of the target language community (Saminy, 2008).

The translation tasks thus gave preliminary indication that the semantic domains associated with some Arabic expressions were differently associated with the English terms used as their translations in the specified contexts. However, closer scrutiny is necessary to establish that language transfer caused the student errors. First it is necessary to specify exactly what the relevant semantic domains are and how they are linked to elements in each language. This can be done by showing how the meanings associated with each word or expression contrast and compare with others in a general semantic domain (such as expressions of obligation, absence, or quantity) for each language. Then the corresponding semantic structures can be systematically compared to discover how often, where, and why one word or expression in either language can serve as a translation for a term in the other. Despite its importance, there is little of this kind of analysis (Zakeria, 1985).

In such a way, Arabic affects grammar and syntactic structure of English used by Arabic speaking as they use English as second language. At the same time, native English speakers are also vulnerable to the impact of Arabic dialects for they change their cultural identity and tend to use semantic elements of Arabic in English. For instance, their sentences become more complex and wordy, although, unlike Arabic speakers have errors, which are determined by the impact of their Arabic grammar and syntax structure.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Therefore, the impact of Arabic dialects on English manifests in virtually all fields of language, including morphology, syntax, grammar, and semantics. In this regard, it is important to distinguish the impact of Arabic on English in relation to Arabic speakers and in relation to English speakers. Arabic speakers using English as their second language tend to make errors in grammar, morphology, syntax as well as semantics because they extrapolate their language’s norms on English. On the other hand, English native speakers learning Arabic tend to develop a new cultural identity. In regard to English speakers, the impact of Arabic on English can be traced in the field of semantics.

DISCUSSION

The further study is needed to conduct the detailed research of Arabic on English in relation to native speakers. In this regard, the involvement of a group of English speaking students learning Arabic may be useful. The comparison of their English to that of Arabic speakers could be helpful, while the group of English speakers, who do not know Arabic could be used as a control group.