On the eve of the “World Arabic Language Day”

Did you know that there is an official international day devoted to the Arabic language (https://shorturl.at/chot5)? Bambi was happy to discover the latter because she loves human beings and communicating with them. She also finds all languages fascinating. Some more than others, including the German and French languages. However, Arabic has a meaningful place in her heart or rather mind. Can you take a guess why : )? OK, she can help by giving you a hint… Yes, it is her mother tongue and it is such a RICH Semitic language.

To begin with, when Bambi thinks of Arabic, both the standard (or classical) Arabic and the spoken Lebanese-Arabic come to her mind. Often, both overlap. However, at many other times, these sub-languages seem quite different (https://shorturl.at/chot5).

This being said, it is absolutely incredible if we stop to think about how many people speak this language worldwide: an estimated 390 million individuals (https://shorturl.at/chot5). Indeed, this language is one of the most widely spoken ones on our planet. There is a reason it is “one of the six official languages of the United Nations“… and “although the Arabic language is the language of Islam, it dates back… further than the religion (https://shorturl.at/chot5)”.

Interestingly, “Arabic has its roots in the Semitic languages spoken by people in the Arabian Peninsula around the 1st century CE (Versteegh, 2014). Other Semitic languages, including Aramaic, Akkadian, and Canaanite, influenced the earliest forms of Arabic. Inscriptions dating back to the 4th century CE contain some of the oldest written records of the Arabic language” (https://shorturl.at/pAENU). For those of you who do not know it, Aramaic is the language, which was spoken by Jesus.

Of note, Bambi’s parents, especially her dad, love the Arabic language. They gave all their children, including herself, Arabic names. They precisely selected neutral names, which do not refer to any religion in particular. Indeed, one of Bambi’s sisters, Roula, happens to be named after the leader of an Arabic tribe, which predates Islam, as per the above. If Bambi is not mistaken, this particular tribe may have been even Christian. There is a beautiful poem written by or telling the story of Roula and her lover Issam. When she will see him again [soon “inshallah” as they say in Arabic : )!], Bambi intends to ask her dad to remind her of the full poem. Only the first few words come to her sleepy mind now. Same for Rania, her sister. She has a poem too. Believe it or not, herself as a little deer has an Arabic poem expressed by a hunter who did not have the heart to kill this animal.

To conclude this post in music, as a tribute to the beauty of the Arabic language, Bambi will leave you with a few songs in Standard, Lebanese-, and Egyptian-Arabic (some sub-titled in English). Long live efficient interpersonal communication, along with enriching cultural exchanges, among people and nations. Even if she loves languages such as Arabic, and including the one of music, what matters the most for Bambi is the language of love and shared humanity.