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MODERNITY COLONIALISM? The controversy surrounding “Arabizi” BY RUOFEI SHANG ’21
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nlike many other language communities, a majority of native Arabic speakers, especially those of younger generations, choose to utilize the Latin alphabet to replace Arabic letters in digital communication. This phenomenon is called ‘Arabizi’, a resulting combination of the Arabic words for Arabic (‘A’arabii’) and English (‘Inglizii’). While a majority of Arabic speakers are firm supporters and users of Arabizi, many oppose it entirely, including but not limited to scholars and self-identified nationalists. In employing Arabizi, Arabic letters are transcribed into Latin letters or numbers based on their corresponding phonemes and shapes. For example, 24
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the letter ‘’ع, which does not exist phonetically in English, is transcribed as the number ‘3’ because of the similar shape. Sounds like ‘ ’سand ‘ ’شare transcribed as ‘s’ and ‘sh’, respectively, because they are pronounced the same way phonetically. Oftentimes, Arabic speakers type words such as ‘ya3ni’ (يعني, English meaning: to mean), ‘5alas’ (خلص, English meaning: stop, enough), and ‘alhamdillah’ (الحمد لله, English meaning: thank God). However, due to regional and dialectic variations, certain sounds are not standardized throughout the entire Arabic-speaking world, rendering Arabizi loosely structured and largely based on an individual’s intuition and preference. For example, the sound ‘ ’قcan be represented as the phonemic equivalent of /q/, /k/, /g/ or /a/.
This form of Romanized Arabic did not exist until the creation and advancement of the internet. Towards the end of the 20th century, short message service (SMS), email and instant chat platforms became more widespread in the Arab world. However, since many early electronic systems could not support non-Latin scripts, Arabizi presented an alternative approach to accessing digital communication. It has also appeared as the result of English’s global expansion since many English words have been integrated into the Arabic language through Arabizi. In Egyptian Arabic, for example, the English word ‘creative’ is used colloquially as “( ”كرييتيفkeryeitif) and ‘message’ is “( ”مسجmisij). Users in favor of Arabizi particularly enjoy the versatility and ease it provides. For multilingual speakers, code-switching can be difficult in online communication. Unlike oral communication, speakers are required to take an additional step to switch to a different keyboard on most digital devices. By using Latin alphabets, Arabic speakers who possess skills in other languages with Latin alphabets are able to type faster and communicate more effectively. As reported by several researchers, Arabizi is “easier and faster to use” since the Latin keyboard has fewer letters than Arabic, leading it to be considered a less time-consuming system. Users can also type out certain loan words from English such as “video”; since the ‘v’ sound does not exist in Arabic, the word would be written as ‘fideo’ ( )فيديوinstead.