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Like any major language, Arabic is fascinating, complex, and constantly evolving. Many factors influence how languages develop, including cultural exchanges, technological advancements in communication, and overall modernization. With the rise of social media, we observe a new form of Arabic, which we call “Conversational Arabic.” This version is often used in interviews, book reviews, and discussions of current events by political leaders and influencers.

Arabic is a Semitic language that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Many tribes spoke their own dialects for everyday communication. Just before the rise of Islam, a common dialect emerged, enabling Arabic speakers to communicate easily across tribes. This dialect is often called Classical Arabic. Even after adopting Classical Arabic for formal and intertribal communication, speakers continued to use their local dialects, collectively known as Colloquial Arabic. The linguistic phenomenon where community members speak two dialects and choose which one to use based on the situation is called diglossia.

Arabic Dialects and Standards

As Arabic spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, new local dialects emerged. These dialects are often grouped into categories like Gulf, Iraqi, Levantine (Eastern Mediterranean), Egyptian, and Maghrebi (Western North Africa). Starting during Napoléon's era, Classical Arabic was revised and became known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

Classical Arabic, which served as the lingua franca of the Arab world for over a thousand years, is based on the language of the Quran. Sībawayh (Sībūya) Bayżāwī formalized the language in a work called “al-Ketāb” (The Book) in the late 8th century. Interestingly, this leading scholar of Classical Arabic grammar spoke Persian as his native language. Classical Arabic has complex grammar, is mainly a written language, and was spoken only in formal settings.

Colloquial Arabic varies by region, is almost exclusively a spoken language, and is used in informal settings. Some dialects are easy for other Arabs to understand, while others, especially those that differ more from Classical Arabic, are more difficult to understand.

Modern Standard Arabic is a contemporary version of Classical Arabic that is standardized, universal, and formal. It is the written and spoken language used in news broadcasts, academic settings, and international business. To reach broader audiences, spoken MSA is often simplified further by removing cases or inflections. Nevertheless, this simplified version of MSA still derives from Classical Arabic.

Review of English Grammar

In this section, we review aspects of grammar that English speakers rarely consider. According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, an inflection is “the change of form that words undergo to mark such [grammatical] distinctions as those of case, gender, number, tense, person, mood, or voice.” Examples of inflection in English nouns include appending an “s” or “es” to most nouns to indicate plural forms or changing a “y” to “ies” for nouns ending in “y.” Inflections of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are usually called declensions.

Verb inflections are called conjugations. In English, examples of verb conjugations include:

• forming the third-person singular present tense by appending “s” or “es,”
• creating the past tense or past participle by appending “ed,”
• forming the present participle by appending “ing,” and
• making the infinitive by placing the word “to” before the verb.

Passive voice is indicated by using a form of the verb “to be” combined with the past participle, as in “I was helped by them” versus the active voice in “They helped me.”

In many languages, inflections can gradually become simpler. For example, in the English of Shakespeare or the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, the third-person singular present tense was formed by appending “eth,” as in Psalm 23:2, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

English nouns and adjectives do not have grammatical gender or case, so they do not undergo declensions related to those concepts. A rare exception is when phrases are borrowed from more inflected languages like Latin. For example, see declensions of the Latin word “bonus” (good), “pro bono,” “cui bono,” “bona fides,” and “summum bonum.”

Compared to English nouns, English personal pronouns are highly inflected to indicate:

• gender (male, female, and neuter, such as “he,” “she,” and “it”),
• person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd, as in “I,” “you,” & “he/she/it,” or “we,” “you,” & “they”),
• number (singular or plural, like “I” and “we,” as well as “he/she/it” and “they”), and
• case (subjective or nominative, objective or accusative, reflexive, and possessive or genitive).

In the KJV, second-person singular pronouns also expressed formality, The familiar forms, subjective “thou,” objective “thee,” reflexive “thyself,” and possessive “thine” and “thy/thine,” have now been replaced by the originally respectful forms “you,” “you,” “yourself,” “yours,” and “your”.

Review of Arabic Grammar

Unlike English, both MSA nouns and adjectives have declensions based on number, case, and gender. Besides singular and plural forms, MSA also includes a dual form. MSA uses three main cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. The subject of a phrase takes the nominative case, the object of a verb takes the accusative case, and the genitive case indicates possession. MSA uses two genders: masculine and feminine.

In MSA, verbs conjugate for number, tense, and voice. Like declensions for nouns and adjectives, verbal conjugations show singular, dual, and plural forms. Tenses include present, past, and future. Voices include active and passive.

The Arabic term for inflections in Classical Arabic is ʾIʿrab. Languages that have inflected nouns, adjectives, and verbs, like Classical Arabic, tend to have flexible word order.

Conversational Arabic

Unlike MSA, Conversational Arabic is based on a native speaker’s dialect of Colloquial Arabic. These speakers use the informal grammar of their dialect but freely borrow from MSA’s extensive and constantly growing vocabulary. In Colloquial Arabic, nouns and adjectives do not have case declensions, which simplifies sentences but also makes word order more important.

The following is a translation of Matthew 2:1, “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod…” into (1) Arabic script, (2) a transliteration of Classical Arabic using Latin characters, and (3) a transliteration of Colloquial Arabic using Latin characters:

1. وَلَمَّا وُلِدَ يَسُوعُ فِي بَيْتِ لَحْمِ الْيَهُودِيَّةِ، فِي أَيَّامِ هِيرُودُسَ الْمَلِكِ
2. Walamma wulida Yasu’u fi Bayti Lahmi fi ayyami Herodusa al-Malaki…
3. Lamma wulid Yasu’ fi Bayt Lahm fi ayyam Herodos l’Malek…

Notice how nearly every word, except for a few prepositions, has an extra syllable in Classical Arabic. Also, observe that when translating a document from a foreign language, in this case New Testament Greek, into Arabic, all colloquial dialects may use the same vocabulary.

In sharp contrast, everyday phrases, such as “I want to eat something now,” differ greatly among dialects. The following shows the diversity among the Colloquial Arabic dialects:

• Egyptian: أنا عايز آكل حاجة دلوقتي (Ana ‘ayez aakol haga dilwa’ti) I want to eat right away
• Iraqi: أريد أكل شي هسة (Areed akol shi hissa) I wanna eat something now
• Moroccan: بغيت ناكل شي حاجة دابا (bghiit nakul shi haja daba) I would like to eats something right now

Examples of Conversational Arabic

Here are some examples from a rapidly growing list of social media episodes where Conversational Arabic is used:

• An interview with Mar Beshara Butros al-Rai, Patriarch of the Maronite Church
• An interview with Joe Saddy, the Lebanese Minister of Energy
• The Lebanese Foreign Minister’s statement on ending Iran's role in Lebanon
• Al-Hadath interview with Sami Gemayel, the head of the Lebanese Kataeb Party
• Assaad Taha, on the failure of Muslims' experience in Germany

Note that the interviewees or speakers come from diverse professions, including top religious and political leaders as well as government ministers. Many or all of them may feel comfortable using their MSA skills at work; however, they have chosen to use Conversational Arabic during these interviews and statements.

Commentary on Conversational Arabic

Egypt’s history over the past 150 years demonstrates how new media can transform Arab culture and the Arabic language. Compared to other Arab nations, newspapers and theater flourished in Egypt as early as the 1870s. When radio broadcasting was introduced, it was also embraced by speakers of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. This trend not only shaped modern Egyptian culture but also enabled Arabs worldwide to hear and see conversations in a dialect of Colloquial Arabic that was previously unfamiliar to them.

Social media promotes brief, casual exchanges and tends to favor maximizing audience size. As shown when comparing the transliterations of Matthew 2:1 into Classical and Colloquial Arabic, the informal grammar of the latter leads to more concise expressions. Additionally, since native Arabic speakers use their regional dialect of Colloquial Arabic in all their informal and everyday conversations, it is natural for them to be most fluent when speaking mainly in that dialect.

Although literacy in the Arab world has been improving rapidly, it still varies greatly among countries. The best way for Arabic speakers to reach the widest audience is to use the simplest grammar and the most familiar style of speaking, combined with standardized vocabulary. Therefore, we conclude that the rise of social media has been the catalyst for Conversational Arabic.