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The Arabic-Speaking Population in Texas
By Hamsa Aburumuh, M.A.
The University of Texas at San Antonio
Spring 2008
Arabic is the native language of 300 million people and is the official language of approximately twenty countries (Nydell, 2006). Arabic is one of the oldest languages in the world and belongs to the Semitic group of languages. Given that Arabic is the language of the Quran, the Holy book of Islam, it is widely used throughout the Muslim world. In addition, Quranic literacy is broadly used among hundreds of millions of non-Arab Muslims across the globe (Suleiman, 1996). It is not an overstatement to say that “Arabs are passionately in love with their language” (Nydell, 2006, p. 2). This attitude about one’s own language is held by many people in the world, but in the case of Arabs, this attitude points to several factors as proof of this assertion. Nydell says that the most important factor is that Arabic is the language of the Holy Quran. However, while almost all Muslims have some basic familiarity with the Arabic language, not all Muslims speak fluent Arabic (Shaikh, 2002). Arabic is often associated with the religion of Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians and Jews. Arabic is divided into 3 separate groups: Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Colloquial Arabic.
§ Classical Arabic is the language of the Holy Quran and classical literature. It is used for formal written communication, discussions, speeches, and news broadcasts, but not for ordinary conversations.
§ Modern Standard Arabic is the universal language of the Arabic-speaking world and is understood by all Arabic speakers. It is important to note that Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are different in technical aspects (Nydell, 2006). Unlike Classical Arabic, which has Classical Standards of usage, Modern Standard Arabic is more flexible and adaptable to encompass modern concepts, such as the words “electricity,” “computer,” and “technology.”
§ Colloquial Arabic (local dialect) is used for everyday spoken communications. Local dialects vary among Arab countries. With the exception of informal correspondence, films, play scripts, or in cartoons where slang is used, Colloquial Arabic is not used in writing (Nydell, 2006).
Basic Facts
§ Arabic is read and written from right to left, top to bottom.
§ There are no capital letters in the Arabic alphabet.
§ The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters (consonants).
§ Arabic contains some sounds that do not correspond easily to the English alphabet.
§ Arabic vowel sounds are limited to “a,” “i,” “u,” and they are written as vowel signs above and below the consonant letters.
Arabic Writing
Arabic is written in “joined up” writing. When letters join to another letter, they change their shape, and the most common change is that they lose their “tails.” The exceptions to this rule are the following six letters (ذ، د ر، ز، و، أ، ), which do not join to subsequent letters. Because letters change their shape, they have initial, middle, and final forms depending on their position in the word.
Arabic Diglossia
The term diglossia was first used by Charles Ferguson (1959) to “denote a situation in which two forms of what are considered the same language co-exist in a complementary relationship in a society” (as cited in Swann, Deumert, Lillis, and Mesthrie, 2004, p. 82). In other words, two varieties of a language (i.e., one High and the other Low, such as colloquial/regional dialects) are used side-by-side throughout the community with each one having definite communicative functions. In addition, Ryding (2006) uses this definition of diglossia in order to explain the fact that Arabs read and write one form of the language, but for everyday spoken communication with each other, Arabs speak language variants that are substantially different.
Demographic Climate
Growth Trends
The population claiming Arabic-speaking ancestry in the U.S. grew by more than forty‑five percent between 1990 and 2000 (Al-Hazza & Lucking, 2005). The Arabic language is designated as a 'strategic' language by the U.S. government (Saad, 2004). According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), statistics indicate that Arabic ranks tenth among the most widely spoken languages, other than English, in the United States. The following demographics point out that the state of Texas includes the sixth largest Arabic-speaking community in the United States. There has been a significant growth in the Arabic‑speaking population in state of Texas (see Table 1). According to MLA, the total number of Arabic‑speakers in Texas in 2005 was 39,570 compared to 32,910 in 2000. In Texas, Arabic-speaking communities reside in 155 of the 248 counties (A.A.I., 2006).
The following ten counties with the highest number of Arabic-speakers are listed in order as follows: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Fort Bend, Collin, Travis, Denton, El Paso, and Williamson (see Figure 1). Concentrations of Arab‑speaking populations are located in the Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin metropolitan areas. Figure 2 sketches the Top 20 cities in Texas.
Arabic Language Teaching
The Arabic language is taught in only a handful of public schools in the U.S. (Aburumuh, 2007), yet there are 264 community-based schools (i.e., Arabic/Islamic private schools) that teach Arabic throughout the United States (League, 2002). In Texas, there are 22 Arabic/Islamic private schools that teach Arabic as a heritage language. These schools are relatively distributed in the highest concentrations of Arabic‑speaking populations in Texas. For example, in Houston, where the majority of the Arabic-speaking population resides, there are eight Islamic private schools that teach Arabic as a heritage language. There are six community-based schools (i.e., Arabic/Islamic private schools) in Dallas, three in Austin, and two in San Antonio that provide Arabic language teaching in their curriculum.
Arabic courses enrollment in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education
There has been an increase in the enrollment of Arabic language courses in the U.S. institutions of higher education (see Table 2). This fact is illustrated in an MLA study which indicates that Arabic enrollment in U.S. institutions of higher education increased from a total of 5,505 students in 1998 to 10,584 students in 2002; this represents a 92.5% increase (Welles, 2004). Statistics from 2006 indicate that there are 17 higher education institutions in Texas out of 466 in the U.S. that offer Arabic language teaching (lower and upper undergraduate and graduate courses). In addition, out of 23,974 Arabic language learners in the U.S., 879 of those are enrolled in the 17 higher education institutions in Texas (MLA, 2008a). The increase in the number of Arabic language learners in the United States may represent an increase in the number of heritage students learning Arabic as a result of both immigration and birth patterns.
You can find the complete article at: http://saheritagelanguages.wikispaces.com/Arabic