REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC:

WELL-DEFINED VS. ILL-DEFINED*

ALAN S. KAYE

L INTRODUCnON

In 1959 Charles A. Ferguson published a paper called "Diglossia".1 Here

he made several astute observations concerning linguistic realities for four
diflferent speech communities: Arabic, Modern Greek, Swiss German, and

* I wish to thank Prof. T.F. Mitchell (T.F.M. in this paper), Professor of Contempo-
rary English, Univ. of Leeds, England, who read and commented in detail on my
paper, "Modern Standard Arabic and the Colloquials", presented at the XXVIIth In-
ternational Congress of Orientalists, Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 1967, anabstract
of which is published in the Proceedings ofthe XXVII International Congress of Orien-
talists (Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1969). (I have not yet seen the two-volume
Proceedings..., but I have seen them advertised in Brill's latest catalogue.) Several of my
ideas in that paper have been revised and are incorporated here.
Words cannot express. my appreciation of T.F.M.'s inspiring lectures in "Non-
Western Linguistic Structures" and "Introduction to Applied Linguistics", Linguistic
Institute of the University of Illinois and the Linguistic Society of America, Urbana,
Summer 1968, äs well äs his Forum Lecture presented to the Institute on July 23,1968,
entitled, "The Relevance of Linguistics to Language Teaching". I have been greatly
influenced by his ideas. All references to T.F.M. are in the form of personal Communi-
cations. Thanks are also due to Profs. T.S. Kaufman and M.R. Haas, Dept. of Lin-
guistics, Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley, for reading a preliminary version of this paper.
Needless to say, none of these scholars are to be blamed for any errors or inconsisten-
cies to be found within this paper.
1
Charles A. Ferguson, "Diglossia", Word 15 (1959), 325-340, reprinted in Dell Hymes
(Ed.), Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology
(New York, 1964), 429-439. H. Blanc's remarks on this paper in his "Stylistic Varia-
tions in Spoken Axabic: A sample of Interdialectal Educated Conversation", in Contri-
butions to Arabic Linguistics ( = HarvardMiddle Eastern Monograph Series ), Charles
A. Ferguson (Ed.) (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), are: "A tentative and not wholly success-
ful attempt to incorporate the Arabic Classical-colloquial dichotomy into a more
general linguistic theory using Modern Greek, Swiss German, and Haitian Creole äs
homologous cases." (p. 160). According to Blanc, the term Diglossia äs used for Arabic
stems from the paper of W. Margais, "La diglossie arabe", Uenseignement publtc 97
(1930), 401-409. For short summaries of the Diglossia Situation, see T.F. MitchelTs
Colloquial Arabic: The Living Language of Egypt (Teach Yourself Colloquial Arabic),
(English Universities Press, 1962), pp. 10-13; and Mary Catherine Bateson, Arabic
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 33
2
Haitian Creole. It is our intention to add to the understanding of Diglos-
sia by restricting ourselves to the Arab world, thus enabling other lin-
guists to generalize what we say here for other parts of the linguistic globe.
Ferguson's opening Statement may serve äs an introduction to our dis-
cussion: "Inmany speech communities two or more varieties of the same
language are used by .some Speakers under difFerent conditions." That
this is really NOT so simple äs it seems for Arabic will become apparent in
the course of this paper. The task for the linguist is to clarify the some-
what ambiguous "two or more varieties of the same language"; to state
under which conditions variety l or 2 or 3, etc. is used, and to describe the
linguistic characteristics of each variety. For Ferguson's H (high variety
of the language) we substitute the term "Modern Standard Arabic'*, here-
after known äs MSA (defined later), thus trying to be more exact (for our
case here), and for bis L (low variety of the language) we substitute the
term "Colloquial", hereafter C.
It is much easier for the linguist to say what MSA is NOT than what IT
is. This isobviously NOT the case for C. We can describe relevant features
of phonology, morphology, and syntax for a given'C, and there will be
little debate äs to the linguistic facts themselves. Thus /kitäab/ 'book', or
/biyiktib/ 4he writes', or /madräsa/ 'school' are all Cairene. They may be-
long to other C's äs well; thus Damascene /fctäab/ 'book', and /byoktob/
'he writes*, and /mädrase/ 'schooP or Moroccan /ktäb/ 'book', and
/kayekteb/ 'he writes', and /medräsa/ 'school' are extremely close to the
Cairene forms, yet they are NOT Cairene. The point is, however, that the
first set of forms is Cairene. Üut we CANNOT describe the phonology of
MSA with the same precision äs we can for a given C. For example, what
is the MSA form for 'they wrote (fern, dual)'? Graphemically this is very
simple to answer, viz. <ktbt?> or with vocalization /katabataa/. What is
the MSA form phonetically speaking, however? Here the answer is not so
simple. What, for example, are the phonetic realizations of the vowels
transcribed äs /a/ and /aa/? This depends on the nature of the C, äs well
Language Handbook (Washington, D. C, Center for Applied Linguistics, 1967), 112-114. ,;
For a recent Statement conceraing MSA, see William Cowan, "Notes Toward a Defini- j
tion of Modern Standard Arabic", Language Learning 18 (1968), 29-34. See also ·
Frederic J. Cadora, "The Teaching of Spoken and Written Arabic", Language Learn- \
ing 15 (1965), 133-136, especially p. 135 for his remarks on Intercommon Spoken Arabic. \
R. B. Le Page, "Problems of Description in Multilingual Communities", TPS, 1968, |
189-212, came to my attention after this paper was completed, unfortunately. l
2
For a discussion of speech communities in general, see John J. Gumperz, "Speech ;
Communities", Encychpedia ofthe Social Sciences (1966). I have only seen the pre- |
print of this article. [This has appeared äs "Speech Community" under "Linguistics" in |
£55, vol. 9 (1968), 381-386.] l
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34 ALAN S. KAYE

as on many other features. The same with regards the placement of stress;
thus native Speakers of Arabic from different regions may stress any syl-
lable in this word, i.e. any of the four syllables, and the form is still MSA.
Are the allophones of/k/, /t/, and /b/ the same for all native Speakers of
Arabic? Certainly not! In the matter of stress and accentuation, it is
well-known that the Arab grammarians never wrote about the subject,
largely because stress in Arabic is almost entirely predictable knowing
certain phonotactic and syllabification principles; yet to be sure, there are
many notions (prescriptive) as to where to place stress. William Wright
(i.e. Caspari), for example, notes that stress should be placed on the ulti-
mate syllable in words such as /bihi/ 'in him', /lahu/ 'to him', /faqät/
Only'.3 The source and/or sources used by Wright (or Caspari, De Goeje,
or Robertson Smith, for that matter) for this bit of Information regarding
stress are not known to me, yet there exist many such Statements on the
topic of stress and accentuation in Literary Arabic, especially in Western
grammatical treatises of Arabic. And we have similar problems with the
description of the morphology and syntax of MSA, although they appear
on first examination to be less intricate than phonology. Does this mean
that MSA is not language? If language is primarily an oral System of com-
munication for a given speech Community, then MSA is certainly lan-
guage. No one will deny the existence of A MSA, although scholars con-
tinually debate the 'meaning' of this designation. On the other band, if
language and native Speaker go together, then MSA is NOT language,
since it has no native Speakers (nor did it ever have any native Speakers).
We suggest that the meaning of 'language' in the context of the Arab
world of more than 100 millions must be viewed in between these two
extremes. (By Arab I mean anyone who speaks an Arabic C as his native
language.)
All linguists seem to agree, on first examination, that a sentence like
/raah Sassaam/ 'he went to Damascus/Syria' is C, the equivalent of which
is /öahaba Pilaa ssaam/ in MSA, of course with the appropriate allophonic
rules for vowels and consonants, and stress and accentuation, etc. If a
native says /§saami/ with /-i/ 'the genitive case marker', or /ssa?m/ with a
glottal stop for /aa/, or even /§sa?mi/, these are PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE
MSA forms. If a native says /Öahab/ for /öahaba/ 'he went' — this is also
acceptable, indeed normal. But what are we to say of a form like /zahab/
8
I have never heard a native Speaker of Arabic stress the ultimate syllables for these
words. See William Wright, A Grammar ofthe Arabic Language, 2 vols. (Cambridge
University Press, 1955), I, p.27. (This work was translated from the German original by
Caspari, with notes and revisions by W. Robertson Smith and M. J. De Goeje.)
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 35

for 'he went'? Purists would simply say, "Not acceptable". And /dahab/?
Even less acceptable. And then there is /raah/; "Pure colloquial", and
"Impossible", say the purists and the philologists, while /laah/ is wholly in-
tolerable. The fact is, however, that MSA is not the language of the
purists, nor of the language academy in Cairo, nor of Wright's grammar
of Classical Arabic, not of the MECAS grammar (Middle East Center for
Arabic Studies, Shemlan, Lebanon), nor of Haywood and Nahmad's
revised Version of Thatchers Arabic grammar. All the aforementioned
works do not take the facts of LANGUAGE USE into account. They are
mostly (I hesitate from saying "entirely") prescriptive, and the prescriptive
linguist cannot contribute anything to an understanding of the Diglossia
Situation in the Arab worid.
For Arabic, Ferguson missed an important point, which, it so happens,
turns out to be the key to the handling of the problem. He assumes that
THERE is a "high variety of language'' (i.e. MSA) on a par with a "low
variety of language" (i.e. C). This assumption seems most certainly to be
a false one. I shall hope to demonstrate this in what follows.

II. THE ILL-DEFINED NATURE OF MODERN STANDARD ARABIC

The hypothesis to be advanced is that C is always a well-defmed System of

language, whereas MSA is ill-defined.4 If a Cairene is asked to supply the
word for 'bread' in his colloquial (his native language), the answer is
INVARIABLY /S6es/. Similar responses would include *I will write' /haktib/,
'the name Mohammed' /mahämmad/, 'man' /räagil/, 'house' /beet/,
'what do you want? (mas. sg.)' /Säawiz eeh/ or /Säayiz eeh/, etc., etc. All
4
Charles F. Hockett was the first, äs far äs I know, to use the terms WELL-DEFINED
and ILL-DEFINED for linguistics. See his The State of the Art (Janua Linguarum, series
minor, 73) (The Hague, Mouton, 1968). (I first heard mention of these terms when
Hockett read the manuscript of this work to the Linguistic Institute of the Univ. of
Michigan and the Linguistic Society of America, Summer, 1967, Ann Arbor.) In eh. 3
Hockett defines the concepts: "A WELL-DEFINED SYSTEM is any System (physical, con-
ceptual, mathematical) that can be completely and exactly characterized by deter-
ministic functions." (p. 45). Anything not WELL-DEFINED is then, according to Hockett,
ILL-DEFINED. He says: "Even against no Opposition, scoring requires time, and play is
confined, at most, to slightly more than 60 minutes of time in. A score of 1,000,000 is
obviously irapossible. The highest score on record is 227. Could speed and skill be
increased (and strength of Opposition decreased) to squeeze this up to 228? Possibiy.
To 229? Perhaps. The fact that we can easily name an integer greater than any mem-
ber of Sf does not mean that there is a precise maximum element in Sf. The set is
neither computable nor noncomputable: it is ILL-DEFINED." (p. 47). For a very un-
favorable review of the book, which is most unwarranted, see George Lakoff, "Empi-
ricism Without Facts" (review article), Foundations of Language 5 (1969), 118-127.

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36 ALAN S. KAYE

forms and all sentences which one could elicit must (and do) confonn to
well-defined rules of phonology, morphology, and syntax. Needless to
say, if our rules do not adhere to the linguistic facts, we CAN and MUST
change them so that they do. No one would argue that Cairo Arabic, for
example, is not a weli-defined System, äs are all languages learned by üa-
tives, spoken by natives, and used by natives. Furthermore, our descrip-
tion of Cairo Arabic can be tested in natural Speech situations. Native
Speakers of Cairene may sometimes use /§uu biddak/ (a general Syro-
Palestinian Arabic) or /maaöaa turiid/ (a Classical or Literary Arabic) in
natural Speech situations for our aforementioned Cairene /Säawiz ~
Säayiz eeh/ *what do you (mas. sg.) want?'. The general Syro-Palestinian
sentence may be heard, for example, in talking with a Lebanese business-
man, and carries certain stylistic and extra-linguistic information with it.
The Literary Arabic sentence may be elicited, for example, in speaking
with a professor at Al-Azhar University, carrying very different stylistic
and extra-linguistic information. So even though both of these sentences
can be elicited in natural Speech situations from a native Cairene, they
are NOT Cairene, however. They are, statistically speaking, extremely rare
in comparison to normal /Säawiz ~ Saayiz eeh/ and have embedded in
them, so to speak, extra-linguistic materials. Frequency should be our
guide line in all matters of this type.5
Similarly, one can perform these types of tests for all Arabic speech
communities. For example, Damascus, Beirut, Casablanca, Baghdad,
Khartoum, SanSa, etc. Our description of a given colloquial X or
would reflect uniformity, and if further consistent or even non-consistent
differences occur, one can account for them in terms of Muslim vs.
Christian vs. Jewish, for example, or male vs. female (äs is the case for
Yana), or carpenter vs. waiter, or any other categories appropriate to a
given contrastive set or sets of linguistic phenomena. For idiolect, variety,
and style, one has a much more difficult time in trying to set up linguistic
categories of differentiation (a componential analysis). Presumably such
terms need definition, at least for Arabic, but they can, I think, also be
worked out and still meet our requirement of being well-defined. Thus
we see that all colloquial forms of Arabic are learned natively and must by
definition be well-defined Systems. On the other band, all non-colloquial
forms of Arabic, by which I mean any type or variety of Arabic learned
6
T.F.M. has commented on this by saying: "How measured, however?" This is a
very difficult question to answer. This problem is surely interrelated with.the old
Problem of how many Speakers or informants one has to have to know whether one's
data are representative of a speech Community in general. ' .'
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 37

non-natively, äs for example in school, are ill-defined Systems. (I equate

MSÄ with non-colloquial Arabic, äs just defined.) There are many names
and designations for these kinds of Arabic in the literature. Some of them
are: Inter-Arabic^ Intercommon Spoken Arabic, Spoken Classical Arabic,
Middle Arabic — referring to a mixture of MSA and C, and Spoken Liter-
ary Arabic. It is also true that it is much easier for the linguist to say what
these 'languages' ARE NOT than what they ARE. I lump all these kinds of
Arabic under the designation MSA, since all of them are non-natively
learned, and all of them belong to one ill-defined System. This will be
treated later in this section (II) of the paper. And it is precisely with these
ill-defined Systems of language that linguistic theory has difficulty.6
All linguistic 'schools' have failed to cope successfully, I think, with
languages such äs MSA; it seems äs though linguistic theory has so far
been unable to handle Diglossia, i.e. Standard languages, be they artificial,
äs is our case for MSA or not. (By artificial I mean MSA has no native
Speakers.) Philologists and linguists alike for many centuries have debated
the meanings of terms like language, with a small and capital L, language
äs opposed to speech, langue äs opposed to parole, competence vs. per-
formance, Standard language and standardized language, dialect, idiolect,
variety and style, to mention but a few. So today we have, for example,
Scandinavian languages close enough to be called dialects, and Scandina-
vian dialects distant enough to be designated languages, äs was demon-
strated in a 1967 Forum Lecture to the Linguistic Institute of the Universi-
ty of Michigan and the Linguistic Society of America, Ann Arbor, entitled
"The Rise of Standard Languages in Scandinavia", by Binar Haugen. In
fact, in a recent paper of his,7 he discusses many of these topics in great
detail, and still concludes that the final answer is far from settled, at least
for a universal picture of all facets to be considered. What seems to be
very surprising, however, is that linguists do not appear at all perturbed at
the afofementioned language Situation in Scandinavia. It appears that
somehow linguists 4feeF what language and dialect mean, at least for
Scandinavia. How does a linguist go about declaring X or dialect or
language? (This impressionism is more readily apparent for Arabic than
6
T.F.M. has questioned my use of SYSTEM here. He says: "One has to set up so many
Systems and sub-systems in analysis, that to call a language a System (äs in Meillet's
famous dictum) is misleading." Perhaps this is so. I use SYSTEM äs a very impressionis-
tic term. T.F.M. has also suggested "more easily described" and "less easily described"
for well-defined and ill-defined, respectively. The reason that MSA is less easily de-
scribed is that it is ill-defined.
7
Einar Haugen, "Dialect, Language, and Nation", American Anthropologist 68, 4
(1966), 922-935.

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38 ALAN S. KAYE

for Scandinavian. In fact, T.F.M. has concluded [lecture notes] that there
are many languages all being called Arabic today.) The linguist does not
seem to have any formal-objective criteria for these classifications and
sub-classifications. Might one not ask, therefore, if the aforementioned
terras mean anything at all CONCRETE to the linguist, or is it all merely
impressionistic at best? Does the linguist use such terms only in very
vague senses? It may seem so.8
As an Illustration of the nature of an ill-defined System, consider the
following. A vowel phoneme may have a tremendous ränge of phonetic
realizations. For example, a phoneme /a/ of a certain language may be
realized, depending on environment, äs [a, s, o, I, ae, ] etc., etc. These
phonetic differences may all be in complementary distribution or conceiv-
ably in free Variation, but such would be well-defined differences belong-
ing to a well-defined System. Yet on the other hand, if I were to ATTEMPT
to speak English (my native language) in iambic pentameter for all natural
Speech situations, if this were possible,9 or TRY to conform to the rules of
King James English äs found in the Authorized Version of the Bible, my
listener would be hearing an ill-defined System. (As there is an infinite set
of sentences for any well-defined System of language, so too there is an
infinite set of sentences for any ill-defined System. It is important to keep
in mind that ill-defined sentences are not the same äs ungrammatical sen-
tences, it also being the case that there is an infinite number of ungräm-
matical sentences belonging to any language.) This is precisely the case
of the Arab who TRIES to speak Classical Arabic (e.g. Koranic Arabic),
only my System of "iambic-pentameter English" would be the more ill-
defined of the two, i.e. it would be much more impossible to write a GRAM-
MAR (in the transformational-generative sense) for the 'iambic-penta-
meter' case than for our case of Koranic Arabic. Needless to say, we are
faced with a hierarchy of well-definedness and ill-definedness, viz. certain
Systems are more well-defined or ill-defined than other Systems. These
hierarchies are extremely important for any kind of understanding of
language in the most general and abstract sense. They remain to be
studied, however.
Let us return once again to Arabic. For several Arabic Speech com-

8
T.F.M. has commented: "One is dealing, however, with an infinite gradation, and
language, like the human beings who use it, is subject to constant flux and change. As
a Britisher, I am prompted to ask, 'Is dialect not language?' But perhaps the-distinc-
tion you seem to be making is a quasi-Saussurean one; am I to equate dialect with his
parier, for example?"
9
It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss this topic.
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 39

munities, like one in Kormakiti, Cyprus, one finds only C.10 All Speakers
of this C, called CMA (Cypriot Maronite Arabic) are illiterate, Maronite,
thus preserving some kind of oral Syriac tradition (?), bilingual in Modern
Cypriot Greek, and presumably have no non-colloquial form of Arabic,
i.e. MSA. So pur Situation oifers very little that may be deemed problem-
atic. Speakers of CMA have only a well-defined system of Arabic (and of
Greek too), with certain discrepancies to be explained by bilingualism and
religion. Yet illiteracy, for example, in no way MARKS a person äs not
having a non-colloquial form of Arabic. For many Arabic Speakers in
Egypt, to mention only one area, who are also illiterate, we could not make
such a Statement. Many of these Arabic Speakers do have a knowledge of
non-colloquial Arabic (MSA), at least a spoken form thereof. They have
heard so-called 'educated' people, for example, using this language under
certain conditions, äs in formal debates concerning religion and politics,
or have listened to radio broadcasts from Cairo in what has been called
Egyptian Radio Arabic11 (another type of MSA), or have been read to in
the 'written language' (still another type of MSA), and so on. These
people, on certain occasions, will speak their Version of MSA, i.e. what
they think MSA should be. On the basis of their exposure to MSA, they
TRY to imitate with respect to phonology and morphology, generally, but
more importantly, lexically. What comes out of their mouths has been
called a 'bastardized-corrupt-vulgar' Arabic by the purists of the lan-
guage academy, by professors in Arab universities, and by philologists
dealing with Arabic. One might wish to compare their utterances to
English Speakers ATTEMPTING to speak Engjish with reverse word order in
all natural Speech situations, if this were possible. (Imagine the inconsist-
ency one would observe, phonblogically speaking, for example, in a
single person's idiolect.)
Consider, on the other band, the other extreme of the pole of an Arabic
Speaker who holds the Ph.D. degree from Cairo University in Arabic
rhetoric, grammar and philology. Clearly enough, these two types (the
illiterate and the Ph.D.) or varieties of MSA areTOTALLYdifferent Systems.
Do we say that they are speaking (using) two varieties or types of the
same Standard language, pr two different languages, or two diflerent

10
See the doctoral dissertation of Maria Tsiapera, A Descriptive Analysis of Cypriot
Maronite Arabic (University of Texas, Dept. of Linguistics, 1963). This work has
recently been published, Janua Linguarum, series practica, 66 (The Hague, Mouton,
1969).
11
Richard S. Harrell, "A Linguistic Analysis of Egyptian Radio Arabic", in Charles A.
Ferguson (Ed.), op. cit., 3-77.

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40 ALAN S. KAYE

varieties of two Standard languages? I think it most appropriate to say

that we are dealing with one ill-defined system, to which one can corre-
late the given C (perhaps most importantly), the level of formal and infor-
mal education, the given speech Situation, viz. formal or informal, the
attitudes of the Speaker to the listener and vice versa, bilingualism and
multilingualism, occupation, and so on. These are important correla-
tions which must be worked out and clearly defined. Needless to say,
it is not within the scope of this paper to do this.
Clearly we have for the educated male Moslem Cairene DIFFERENT
phonologies for MSA, äs one may elicit /jawäab/ and /gawäab/ 'letter',
/Piöan/ and /Pizan/ 'therefore', /mafaatiih/ and /mafatiih/ 'keys', /Parrijäal/
and /Pirriggäal/ 'the men' (Cairene has /Pirriggaala/), etc. We also have
DIFFERING phonologies (which overlaps with our established category of
DIFFERENT phonologies), for one can elicit from the same Informant in the
same sentence, or more likely in successive sentences,formslike/0alaa0a/,
/taläata/, and /saläasa/ 'three'. All these ill-defined differences, we assume,
can be correlated with our relevant criteria (mentioned above). The same
could easily be demonstrated for our informant's morphological and
syntactic Systems. Consider, for example, the types of Variation one can
observe in the relative clause (syndetic and asyndetic), the use of the so-
called Aöa/(the circumstantial clause), the tamyiiz (the accusative of speci-
fication), the Pidaafa (the construct state), subject-adjective-predicate-
concord, and so on.12 (Perhaps ill-definedness is clearest in the case of the
numerals,)

. MODERN STANDARD ARABIC AS A MARKED SYSTEM; COLLOQUIAL

AS AN UNMÄRKED SYSTEM

To be sure, most linguists would agree that MSA is the marked System of
Arabic äs opposed to any C which is unmarked, assuming only two possi-
bilities, of course. That is to say, MSA (by MSA in this section I mean
PRESCRIPTTVE MSA) marks many more categories of grammar than does
any C; C also has marked-unmarked grammatical categories (sometimes
agreeing with MSA, sometimes not). C is, therefore, always grammatical-
ly simpler than is MSA. For example, one marks in MSA for case, for
duality in the adjective and verb, etc. No C has these grammatical cate-
' 1

18
All these grammatical terms are explained at length (from a prescriptive point of
view), in William Wright, op. dt.
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 41

gories. Consider the following sentences and sentence fragments in MSA

and in Cairo Arabic:

MSA (prescriptive) Cairo Arabic

(1) /jaaPa Iwaladaani/ /gumilwaladeen/ The two boys
came'
(2) /raPaytu Iwalada öaahiban/ /suft ilwalad raayih/ saw the boy
going'
(3) /Palbaytaani Ikabiirani/ /Pilbiteen ilkubaar/ The tv/o big
houses (nom.)'
. (4) /kitaabu Imaliki/ /Pilkitaab bitaaS The king's
ilmalik/ book (nom.)'
(5) /yabiiSu Ixubza/ /biyibifi iKees/ 'He sells
bread'

One notices immediately that Cairo Arabic (or any C for that matter) has
'simplified' the System considerably. For example, Cairene /beet/ 'house'
corresponds to MSA /baytu/, /bayta/ and /bayti/ — nom., acc., and gen.,
respectively (and also to the MSA forms with nunation 'the indefinite
article'). In other words, categories of case are unrecognized for Cairene.
There is no longer (from the diachronic point of view) any marking for
duality in the verb or adjective, yet it remains for most nouns (c.f. the
parallels in Indo-European languages), but here too, there has been
SIMPLIFICATION, äs the Casus Obliquus has been generalized, i.e. /-aani/
'nom.' has mergedwith /-ayüi/Obl.', resulting in/-een/ (normal develop-
ment of the loss of final short vowels and the monophthongization rule
that shifts /ay/ to /ee/). One can see the so-cailed 'drift' from synthetic to
analytic (typology), in comparing MSA (representing an older stage of
Arabic) and C.
(1) /jaa?a/-3rd mas. sg. perfect; /gum/-3rd common pl. 'they came'
/-aani/-dual mas. nom.; /-een/-dual mas. 'two'
The MSA word order can be reversed (stylistic, NOT optional), result-
ing in /Palwaladaani jaa?aa/ (/jaa?aa/-3rd mas. dual perfect). The definite
article is /Pal-/ in MSA, /Pil-/ in Cairene, both of which are subject to very
similar types of automatic morphophonemic rules, viz. those of elision.
(2) /ra?aytu/-lst common sg. perfect; /suft/-lst common sg. perfect
saw'
/lwalada/-acc.; /ilwalad/ 'the boy'
/öaahiban/-active participle, sg., mas., acc.; /raayih/ 'going*
Note the different lexemes for 'see' and 'go' äs well äs the loss of case
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42 ALAN S. KAYE

endings in Cairene. (There are a number of lexical items in Cairene in

which the /-an/ 'adverbial aec.' remains. It is not within the scope of this
paper to consider this and related phenomena, nor to consider PAUSAL
pronunciations, e.g. /öaahiban/ > /öaahibaa/before . Strictly speaking,
there are no short vowels before # in the most prescriptive MSA, yet I
include them in our illustrative sentences, considering the non-pausal
forms äs the more statistically favored.)
(3) /Palbaytaani/; /Pilbiteen/ 'the two houses'
/lkabiiraani/-dual mas. nom.; /ilkubaar/-pL common 'big'
In MSA the adj. agrees with the noun it modifies in number, gender, and
case. Cairene, since it has no duality marking in the adj., shifts the cate-
gory to pl(dual[marked] > plural[also-marked]), viz. /kubaar/. (A bet-
ter transcription is /kubaar/. We shall not enter into any discussion of
why Cairene has /r/ while MSA has /r/. MSA äs used by a Cairene will, of
course, usually have /r/; if the C has /r/, so will its MSA counterpart, at
least for our case here.)13 Mention of an apparent discrepancy between
MSA /bayt/ 'house' and Cairene /bit-/ is important. From our discussion
earlier (p. 41), one would expect /ay/ to correspond to /ee/, äs /bayt-/
corresponding to /beet/, however, äccording to the automatic morpho-
phonemic rules of Cairo Arabic, /ee/ is shortened in certain environments
(i.e. /ee/ -» /e/), but Cairo Arabic has no /e/ and in cases in which one
would expect i t, one notes /i/. In other words, /ee/ (after the application
of the vowel shortening rule) merges with /i/. (Some scholars operate with
/e/, however.)
(4) The fourth example illustrates a syntactic difference between the
two Systems. Cairene uses the particle /bitaaS/ Of' whereas MSA knows
no such particle or construction. Most Cs have developed an Of 'par-
ticle; corresponding to Cairene /bitaaS/ is Baghdadi /maal/, literally
'property', and general Syro-Palestinian uses /tabaS/ 'belonging to'. One
might expect, knowing the rule that case endings drop in Cairene,
/kitaab ilmalik/. /kitaab ilmalik/ does occur in Cairene and in many
other Cs äs well; it is a free alternant to the construction with /bitaaS/ or a
stylistic variant thereof. The MSA form does not employ /?al-/ in the
18
On this important topic in Arabic phonology, see R.S. Harreil, The Phonology
of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic (New York, ACLS, 1957); Roman Jakobson, "Mufaxxa-
ma: The 'Emphatic' Phonemes in Arabic", in Studies Presented to Joshua Whatmough
on his Sixtieth Birthday (The Hague, Mouton,j 1957), 105-115; Walter Lehn, "Empha-
sis in Cairo Arabic", Language 39 (1963), 29-39, and most recentJy, TVF. Mitchell's
review of David Abercrombie, Elements of General Phonetics (Edinburgh University
Press, 1966), in Journal of Linguistics (1969), especially p. 157 and p. 162, for his re-
marks on Emphasis, and his criticisms of the terms pharyngealization-velarization.
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 43

CONSTRUCT STATE (Status Constructus)', Cairene uses /?il-/ since the noun
has to be de definite (not necessarily marked with /?il-/) if the /bitaaS/ con-
struction is used.
(5) /yabiiSu/-3rd mas. sg. imperfect-indicative; /biyibiiS/-3rd mas. sg.
b-imperfect .(indicative) 'he sells'
/lxubza/-acc.; /ilSees/ 'the bread'
We note the /-u/ of /yabiiS-u/ 'an indicative mode marker' correspond-
ing to /bi-/ in Cairene, also 'an indicative mode marker'. Both Systems
mark the indicative. However, MSA also marks the subjunctive with
/-a/; /yaktub-a/ 'that he write, in order that he write', while the jussive is
unmarked or marked with /0/; /yaktub/ 'let him write, that he should
write'. All non-indicative modes have merged in Cairene in the form of
the non-b-imperfect. Note also the different lexemes being used for
'bread'. (It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss hyper- and
hypo-correct fonns, both of which Blau has labelled "pseudo-correct",
nor to discuss the intricate natüre of spelling-pronunciations in Arabic.)14

IV. WRITTEN ARABIC AND ILL-DEFINEDNESS

A special word inust be devoted to what we mean by written Arabic. Due

to the natüre of the Arabic script, we cannot always correlate what is
written (i.e. graphemic Arabic) with ALL relevant features of phonology
and morphology, although it seems we can to a much larger extent with
syntax.
During the past couple of years, I have taken the first fifty pages of
Ahmad Amin's autobiography, MyLife ( -ayaatii), andrecorded 'educat-
ed' Arabs from several parts of the Arab world reading this text. Where
written Arabic does not explicitly mark certain linguistic features, I have
noticed the following which will serve äs illustrations: /qaala Panna/ for
/Firma/ 'to säy that'; /fii maqha/ for /maqhan/ 'in a cafe'; /kaslaanun/ for
/kasaanu/ 'lazy (mas. sg.)'; /fii Pawqaatin Pahsanin/ for /Pahsana/ 'at
better times'; /lan Paktib/ for /Paktuba/ will not write', and many more
14
See the to-be-published book by Joshua Blau, Pseudo-Corrections in the Semitic
Languages (Jerusalem, 1969). I should like to mention two cases of pseudo-correct
fonns: (1) an Egyptian who (sub-consciously) knows that bis glottal stop SHOULD be
pronounced äs a voiceless uvular plosive in MSA, and pronounces /qurPäan/ äs
/qurqäan/ 'Koran', and (2) a Lebanese who says /rizft/ for 'he returned' in C, and when
switching to MSA says /räziSa/, when the dictionary entry is /räjaSa/. These are not to
be regarded äs mistakes; they are USED and can be attested in natural speech situations.
Many other examples could be listed. (For /2/ = /]/, see my "Arabic /Ziim/: A Syn-
chronic and Diachronie Study", Linguistics 79, 1972, 31-72.)
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44 ALAN S. KAYE

so-called errors.15 Jt is much more difficult to correlate what the Arabic

script marks explicitly, and what it does not mark explicitly with our
given criteria. Thus I have never heard a native Speaker of Arabic read
/baytin/ or /baytun/ (gen. and nom., respectively) for /baytan/ (acc.) 'a
house', because the Arabic script explicitly marks the /-an/ by <?> 'acc.
mas. sg.'.
Our ill-defined nature of MSA is such that we do not expect consistency,
not only from the educated male Moslem Cairene äs a group, but also
from the individual. (Written Arabic äs a graphemic System is well-de-
fined, although not so well-defined äs C; written Arabic äs read or recited
from memory is ill-defined for most native Speakers of Arabic.) On the
same page of Amin's -H-ayaatii, l have heard /fii madaarisin/ and /fii
madaarisa/ 'in schools' from the same Informant, and when questioned
about this, he replied that it did not make any difference, and that one
could read it both ways. I have heard very formal lectures in MSA in
which 'my teachers' (nom. sg.) is consistently /muSallimuuya/ for our
prescriptive /mirtallimiyya/. The purist will jump up and down saying
that such a form, i.e. /muSlallimuuya/ is wrong, but fortunately, the purist,
native or foreign can no more influence how people speak (or write) than
the linguist or the language academy.

V. COEXISTENT PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

George D. Selim in a recent paper uses designations such äs "monologue

Arabic" and "dialogue Arabic". He says: "Since one can NEVER [empha-
sis mine] carry on a dialogue or a conversation in Classical Arabic,
Classical Arabic could also be called — in terms of language äs Speech —
'monologue Arabic', while Egyptian Arabic or any other colloquial
'dialogue Arabic'."16 Nothing could be further from the truth. These
terms (i.e. monologue vs. dialogue), äs well äs those already mentioned
(p. 37), are misleading and convey misinformation. All of these terms
make use of the assumption which we have been trying to discredit, viz.
that MSA (all non-colloquial forms of Arabic) is well-defined. Selim is
partially correct in saying that phonologically speaking, MSA and C are
15
By ERRORS here I mean prescriptive ones. Our Standard for prescriptive Arabic is
William Wright, op. cit.9 and Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
(J Milton Cowan, (Ed.) (Cornell Üniversity Press, 1961), translated from tfie German
original.
16
George Dimitri Selim, "Some Contrasts Between Classical Arabic and Egyptian
Arabic", in Linguistic Studies in Memory of Richard Slade Harreil, Don Grahatn Stuart
(Ed.) (Georgetown Üniversity Press, 1967), p. 137.
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 45

moderately different, and that grammatically, C is simpler. However, bis

phonological charts17 (which I reproduce here) are misleading since, s
we have tried to demonstrate, MSA is ill-defined (i.e. has no well-defined
phonology, if speaking in the realm of phonology). Thus coexistent
phonological (phonemic) Systems for Arabic can only be understood in
terms of well-defined (C) vs, ill-defined (MSA).

MSA
b t t k q ? i u ii uu
d d a aa
I
f θ ss s· , , · χ h h
δ δ ζ γ S
r
l i
m n ' ·
w y

Cairene
b f t t k q P i u i i u u
d 4 g ee oo
a a aa aa
s s § χ h h
z z . γ S
r
l
m n
w y

VI. MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS

Native Speakers of Arabic are aware of different lexemes (which partially

denote MSA or Q in use for the same sememe. Thus a verb like /§aaf/
'he saw' is almost universafly feit to be C (actually *pure* C), the corres-
ponding verb of which is /ra?aa/ in MSA (supposedly). But when told
that there are Cs which have /ra?aa/ but no /saaf/,18 they almost die in
" Ibid., pp. 134-135.
18
CMA is one dialect that has /ra?aa/ but no /§aaf/. But CMA has no MSA counter-
part. Maltese, sometimes called Maltese Arabic, although this nomenclature is mis-
leading and erroneous, also has /ra?aa/ but no /§aaf/. See Kaye, op. c//., Note 41.
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46 ALAN S. KAYE

utter amazement. A complete study of lexical differences in Cs and in

MSA is badly in need. It is not within the scope of this paper to do this.
At the Georgetown Conference on Arabic lingiristics a few years ago,
Charles A. Ferguson defined MSA äs the Arab's ATTEMPT to speak Clas-
sical Arabic. Others who participated in the Conference objected to the
use of the word 'attempt'. The real answer is ill-definedness. (See VII.)
AU linguists who have worked with Arab informants from different
parts of the Arab world have been told, on one occasion or another, that
such and such C is closest to the Classical (i.e. MSA here). I should like
to destroy this myth once and for all. There is no such entity äs any C
coming closest to Classical Arabic; the two are not even comparable.
They are entirely in two diiferent dimensions; one in the realm of well-
definedness — the other in the realm of ill-definedness. It has often been
claimed too that a Beiruti will have an easier time in learning MSA than a
Cairene or a Moroccan, for example. (Let us assume that all of them are
Moslem, belong to the same Professional group, are male, etc.) Let us
consider one syntactic feature. A Cairene has the order Noun-Demonstra-
tive (e.g. /Pilkitaab da/ 'this book'); a Beiruti just the opposite — Demon-
strative-Noun (äs does MSA — at least MSA äs USED by rnost Arabs; e.g.
/haaöaa Ikitaab/). It seems logical to assume that the Beiruti will be able
to adjust to the word order easier (faster) than his corresponding Cairene.
But is this really true? I do not know. This question actually assumes
that similarity (here syntactic) implies ease. Sometimes, äs many have
observed, similarity implies difficulty. Many other examples from the
syntactic and morphological domains could be listed in which two C's
seem to go hand in band (similarity) with prescriptive MSA, but äs oppos-
ed to all other C's. This is certainly a field worthy of the linguist's atten»
tion. (One of the great failures of Contrastive Analysis is in problems
(pedagogically) of these kinds.) It has been my personal experience that
Baghdadis have the easiest time in learning prescriptive MSA, i.e. their
Performance in terms of prescriptive grammar is better than any other
group's. What are the reasons for the Baghdadi's success, however? Is it
true that his C comes the closest (grammatically) to prescriptive MSA, or is
language teaching just better in Baghdad than it is in Rabat, for example?
I do not have the answer to this question; it would be most revealing.

. CONCLUSION ^

The noted Iraqi author, SatiS Alhusari, discusses the Diglossia Situation
in Mukhtaaraat Min Kitaab 'Aaraa* Wal-Ahaadiith Fil Al-Lugha Wal-
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 REMARKS ON DIGLOSSIA IN ARABIC 47

'Adab. (I have seen only a mimeographed edition of this.) He submits to

the state of confusion prevalent among other Arabs writing about MSA and
C. Arabs, he says, lack a unified language in which everyone can com-
municate. He suggests a universalization of only one of the major dialects
to remedy the Situation. This is, in my opinion, the best alternative
available. He also suggests the possibility of a universalization of MSA,
or the universalization of an admixture of MSA and C. He too must
assume, therefore, that MSA is well-defined; that is why the last two pos-
sibilities are totally impossible i.e. the assumption is false. The Arab
countries are massly illiterate (on the whole), and I suggest that the main
reason for this fact is that teachers have to teach an ill-defined system
(MSA) to Speakers of well-defined Systems. It would certainly be much
easier to teach one well-defined C, and I would suggest that C be Damas-
cene, since it has been recently shown that Damascus Arabic shares
more compatibility (lexically) with all other C's and MSA äs well.19
Damascene is an excellent choice for another reason also, viz. Damascus
happens to be located more or less in the geographical center of the Arab
world. Thus linguistically speaking (not politrcally, socially, etc.),
Damascene is the logical choice to serve äs the dialect to be universalized.
(I am also in favor of doing away with Arabic script and substituting in
its place a Latin-type orthography. My reasons for this are the subject of
another paper in itself.)
Ferguson's füll definition of Diglossia with regards to Arabic is,
therefore, IMPRESSIONISTIC at best. He says:
DIGLOSSIA is a relatively stable language Situation in which, in addition to the
primary dialects of the language (which may include a Standard or regional
Standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more
complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of writ-
ten literature, either of an earlier peribd or in another speech Community, which
is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal
spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the Community for ordinary
conversation.20
Arabic Diglossia is NOT a relatively stable Situation. As we have tried to
demonstrate, Diglossia in Arabic (perhaps elsewhere too) involves the in-
teraction of two Systems, one well-defined, the other ill-defined. No ill-
defined system is stable; neither is the interaction between MSA and C.
Both are subject to change äs fast äs an individuaFs personality changes
(from second to second).
" See Frederic J. Cadora, An Analytical Study of Interdialectal Lexical Compatibility
in Arabic, unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Michigan, 1966).
*° Ferguson, op. cit., p. 336.

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48 ALAN S. KAYE

Ferguson was well-aware, to be sure, of the IMPRESSIONISM mentioned

earlier by referring to "the impressionistic remarks" in bis paper.21 It is
futile to try to write a GRAMMAR (in the transformational-generative
sense) for MSA äs here defined; there are already dozens of prescriptive
granunars of MSA published. All of them fail to concede the matter of
language USE in the Arab worid. It is futile to try to write a GRAMMAR of
MSA because that would be an impossible task (so too for all ill-defined
Systems). One can only postulate CORRELATIONS (of the types already
discussed in some detail) between MSA and a given C. These correlations
are the true nature of Diglossia in Arabic. This work must be done for
any füll picture of the facts. As T.F.M. remarks, "The task is ultimately
in the hands of the Arab linguists themselves." Ferguson ended his Diglos-
sia paper by calling for investigation and thought. I do the same.

PostScript
The reader is directed to three recent articles germane to this discussion.
Firstly, Joshua A. Fishman, "Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia;
Diglossia With and Without Bilingualism", Journal of Social Issues 23, 2
(1967), 29-38. The bibliography at the end of the article is particularly
useful. Secondly, Albert Valdman, "Language Standardization in a
Diglossia Situation: Haiti" (who considers Haitian Creole and French
different languages rather than different varieties of the same language),
in Language Problems of Developing Nations, Joshua A. Fishman,
Charles A. Ferguson, and Jyotirindra Das Gupta (eds.) (John Wiley and
Sons, Inc., 1968), 313-326, and thirdly, on koineizing and Standardization
processes in a kindred Semitic language, Haim Blanc, "The Israeli Koine
äs an Emergent National Standard", Ibid., 237-251.
I would also like to thank Professor Haim Blanc for correcting two
Statements in fn. l erroneously attributed to him. It was Ferguson who
wrote the annotated bibliography which followed Blanc's paper in Con-
tributions to Arabic Linguistics, äs indicated no doubt too vaguely on
p. iv of the volume. Also it was Ferguson, not Blanc, who states that the
1930 paper of Margais started the term "diglossia" for Arabic linguistics,
although it was Ferguson who coined the term (or introduced it) into
English, modeled on'the French diglossie (cf. Ferguson, "Diglossia",
op. cit., p. 429, in Hymes, op. cit.).
'->
University of California, Berkeley

21
Ibid., p. 340.
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