Franco-Arabic Language Analysis

I am not a purist, a chauvinist, a linguist, nor will I ever be, but the rising popularity of Franco-Arabic continues to irritate me. At a glance, the Franco-Arabic language is a Romanized version of Arabic that replaces the missing links with numbers. For instance, the Arabic ‘Ain is expressed with 3, the Ha’a with 7, and so on. Such practice represents, I believe, a cultural immaturity, posing a long-term threat that can tangle the 1500-year-old tongue. Why so, and how can
Language equates civilization. The loss of the former, correspondingly, equates the loss of the latter. In his book “And the Mountains Echoed,” Khaled Hosseini says: “If culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.” (Husseini 362) In the case of Arabic’s rebellious deviation, identity loss cannot be overlooked. And

I recall once visiting a supermarket to buy some groceries. I also recall that moments later, I stopped, froze, and went back home. What I have seen in the market was a sign that said “petrol” in front of an olive oil stand. Dazzled, I later figured out that the writer of the sign naïvely translated oil from English, and that he or she paid absolutely no respect to the host society – one that is located in the Arab world - by using the inedible term of oil in Arabic language. What this incident represents, I believe, is the fact that the Language of Daad is slowly degrading due to its people’s neglect towards it. Whether for convenience or out of laziness, using Franco-Arabic is a practice that cannot be eliminated without a real, Arab leadership. And while it is true that language usage is not today’s Arabs’ biggest issue, losing the Daad in the future by forgetting its sweet, curvy skeleton resembles the death of a language – and I do not have to be a purist, a chauvinist, or a linguist to notice