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AMMAN — Ali Hawamdeh, who was an Arabic teacher for more than 30 years, told The Jordan Times that “the current reality of the Arabic language is rapidly and continuously deteriorating”.
“The focus nowadays is on foreign languages; even the Arabic curriculum is no longer comprehensive nor is it able to develop the students’ sense of language. I believe that the only thing keeping the Arabic language alive is the Holy Quran,” Hawamdeh added.
The Arabic Language Academy (ALA) on Sunday held a meeting with journalists on the subject of safeguarding the Arabic language. The meeting falls under the academy’s efforts to implement the Arabic Language Protection Law.
According to the Jordan News Agency, Petra, the meeting was attended by a number of academics, media professionals and those concerned with a number of the law’s articles, which stipulate that ministries, government departments and public and private institutions must use the correct form of the Arabic language in all that is published, broadcasted and written.
The meeting recommended the launch of media campaigns under the banner, “Our Language, Our Identity”, and a communication campaign through the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) to broadcast short messages to raise awareness on the language and its importance.
According to the ALA, the law “serves the second article of the Constitution which stipulates that Arabic is the language of the Kingdom”.
“The current situation is painful, in regards to the Arabic curricula in schools and higher education. The courses and curricula are outdated. Moreover, the level of language skills of Arabic language graduates is below what it should be, and in other majors the situation is worse,” the ALA told The Jordan Times. “Add to that the phenomena of Arabezy [English and Arabic words combined], and the teaching of humanitarian and scientific majors in English all affected the usage of Arabic in Jordan.”
The ALA has taken steps to enforce the law, among which was forming inspection teams to ensure the correct use of Arabic in commercial materials and store banners, in addition to a collaboration project with the University of Jordan to introduce mandatory Arabic language courses.
Alaa Armouti, a lawyer and member of the Amman Group for Future Dialogues, who worked on drafting the Arabic language protection bill told The Jordan Times that “the current law is not strict enough and is not implemented well”.
“The implementation of the law needs a budget to enforce its regulations. More inspection teams, a centre for receiving complaints and teams working on the Arabisation of school curricula”, Armouti added.
“Arabic language is one of the cores for our culture and identity; there is a serious threat to the Arabic language due to globalisation. Arabic [has] become a secondary language among the elite and even in our educational process,” Armouti concluded.
