Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0215/02152.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 25KB | 416 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02152}
$Pretitle{224}
$Title{Lebanon
Chapter 2C.   Languages}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{As'ad AbuKhalil}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{family
arabic
lebanese
marriage
language
lebanon
beirut
women
war
within}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Lebanon
Book:        Lebanon, A Country Study
Author:      As'ad AbuKhalil
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 2C.   Languages

Arabic

     Arabic is the official language, as well as the religious language for
Muslims, Druzes, and some Christian communities. Like Hebrew and Aramaic, it
is a Semitic language. One of the earliest recorded instances of Arabic is
found in an Assyrian account of a war fought with Arabs between 853 and 626
B.C. Arabic inscriptions in various alphabets have been found in the Arabian
Peninsula. By the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Arabic had developed into a
refined literary language. The Arab conquest brought it to Lebanon.

     In Lebanon, as elsewhere in the Arab world, there are essentially two
forms of Arabic--colloquial, of which there are many dialects, and classical.
Classical Arabic, uniform throughout the Arab world, is chiefly a written
language. It is also used for public speeches, poetry recitations, and radio
and television broadcasts. Modern Standard Arabic has been developed from the
classical language of the Quran, the Islamic scripture; the syntax has been
slightly simplified, the vocabulary considerably expanded, and the literary
style made less complex.

     The classical Arabic language is the principal unifying factor in the
Arab world. It is revered by Arabs as the symbol of their unity, as a sacred
language, and as the vehicle of a great literature. They think of it as their
original language and of their spoken dialects as corruptions.

     Lebanese colloquial Arabic developed from the Syrian Arabic dialect,
which includes the Arabic spoken by Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and
Lebanese. It has been influenced by Aramaic, which preceded it in the area.
Within Lebanon, the dialect changes from region to region, and the dialect of
the Druzes is regarded as distinctive.

     Colloquial dialects are seldom written, except for some novels, plays,
and humorous writings. However, a call for the adoption of the spoken language
to replace the classical as the national language emerged in the 1960s among
Maronite political and intellectual circles. The movement, which was
championed by the prominent Lebanese poet and political activist Said Aql,
attracted a number of supporters by 1975, with the rise of a right-wing trend
to dissociate Lebanon from its Arab ties. Nevertheless, few took the movement
seriously, apart from a handful of writers who wrote in colloquial Arabic.

     Proposals also exist for improving the Arabic alphabet and for updating
Arabic vocabulary to include scientific and technological terms. In written
Arabic, short vowels and doubled consonants are not indicated but must be
supplied from the context.

     Scholars tend to adopt foreign words without changing them and use them
in both Arabic and Roman alphabets. The language academies in Cairo and
Damascus, apprehensive of this practice, have achieved a certain amount of
success in forming new words from old Arabic roots.

Other Languages

     Armenian is an Indo-European language, distantly related to English,
although a large part of its vocabulary is derived from Arabic and Turkish.
When the Armenians were converted to Christianity in the fifth century, they
acquired an alphabet based on Greek and developed a classical literature,
which differed considerably from modern Armenian. Modern Armenian literature
flourishes today in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and to a lesser
degree in Lebanon, where a printing and publishing industry is active.
Armenians are strongly attached to their language, which is important as a
means of maintaining their identity.

     Assyrian, a Semitic language, is a modern spoken form of ancient Syriac,
a dialect of Aramaic. The Assyrians increasingly use Arabic as their spoken
language, but Syriac continues to be used for religious purposes.

     French and English are the most widely used Western languages. Although
French is not an official language, almost all government publications appear
in French as well as in Arabic. Since World War II, United States influence,
and consequently the importance of English, has increased. Some Lebanese
authors choose to write in French or English, and fluency in these languages
generally marks the educated man and woman. The Lebanese Arabic dialect,
particularly in Beirut, has acquired some French words. Arabic literary style,
especially in poetry, has also been influenced by the style of Western
languages.

Structure of Society

     In 1987 Lebanese society was riddled with deep social, economic,
political, and sectarian divisions. Individual Lebanese were primarily
identified with their family as the principal object of their loyalty and the
basis of marriage and social relationships as well as the confessional system.
This, in turn, tended to clash with national integration and cohesion. Society
was divided not only into diverse sectarian communities but also into
socioeconomic strata that cut across confessional lines.

The Family

     The primacy of the family manifests itself in all phases of Lebanese
life, including political, financial, and personal relationships. In the
political sphere, families compete with each other for power and prestige, and
kin combine forces to support family members in their quest for leadership. In
business, employers give preference to hiring relatives, and brothers and
cousins often consolidate their resources in operating a family enterprise.
Wealthy family members are expected to share with less prosperous relatives, a
responsibility that commonly falls to expatriate and urban relatives who help
support their village kin.

     In the personal sphere, the family has an equally pervasive role. To a
great extent, family status determines an individual's access to education and
chances of achieving prominence and wealth. The family also seeks to ensure an
individual's conformity with accepted standards of behavior so that family
honor will be maintained. An individual's ambitions are molded by the family
in accordance with the long-term interests of the group as a whole. Just as
the family gives protection, support, and opportunity to its members, the
individual member offers loyalty and service to the family.

     The traditional form of the family is the three-generation patrilineal
extended family, consisting of a man, his wife or wives, their unmarried
children of both sexes, and their married sons, together with the sons' wives
and children. Some of these groups live under one roof as a single household,
which was the norm in earlier generations, but most do not.

     The family commands primary loyalty in Lebanese society. In a study
conducted by a team of sociologists at the American University of Beirut in
1959, loyalty to the family ranked first among both Christians and Muslims,
among both males and females, and among both politically active and
noncommitted students. Next to the family in order of importance were
religion, nationality or citizenship, ethnic group, and finally the political
party. The results of this study probably reflected the attitudes of the
Lebanese in 1987. If anything, primordial ties appear to have increased during
the 1975 Civil War. The rise of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism
encouraged the development of ethnic and familial consciousness. Among
Maronites, there has always been an emphasis on the family; for example, the
motto of the Phalange Party is "God, the Fatherland, and the Family."

     The family in Lebanon has been a means through which political leadership
is distributed and perpetuated. In the Chamber of Deputies of 1960, for
example, almost a quarter of the deputies "inherited" their seats. In the