RESEARCH General Education

FOREIGN LANGUAGE
UI Arabic language program growing, now includes online component

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

12/1/2001

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —Oddly enough, one of the fastest growing Arabic language programs in the United States isn’t in a metropolis, but rather, at a university in the rural Midwest.

The University of Illinois now offers 10 sections a year in Arabic; more than 100 students are enrolled this semester – a substantial increase over the last five years. The program includes courses in all levels of standard and colloquial Arabic. A course in "Business Arabic" – a mixture of standard and Egyptian Arabic – is being developed, as is a Web-based language project, "Arabic-Online" (www.linguistics.uiuc.edu/arabic/). In the next two years the UI will hire a professor of Arabic literature, and a minor in Islamic studies will be offered.

The UI program is "one of the biggest in the country in terms of numbers of students who regularly take Arabic," says the coordinator of the program, Elabbas Benmamoun, a professor of linguistics. "Also, we are one of the few programs that offer both standard and colloquial Arabic."

Arabic is a "relatively difficult" language to learn, Benmamoun concedes. It uses a writing system, or script, which is different from English, and it’s written from right to left. Also, it doesn’t share as many cognates with English as Romance languages do. "In these respects, it is like Chinese or Japanese," he said.

Benmamoun’s own research focuses on Arabic syntax, sentence structure and word derivations in standard Arabic and the modern dialects. He also is interested in what he describes as "the language situation in the Arab world, and its social, political and educational dimensions." Recently he wrote an article about the history of the situation in Morocco since the Islamic conquest.

"In Morocco," he said, "four languages occupy the linguistic space: classical Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Berber and French. The complex interplay between these languages is driven by religion, ethnicity and issues of identity, education and development. In the article, I deal with the historical background to explain how the current linguistic situation evolved over the last 14 centuries."

UI graduate students also are conducting research on various aspects of Arabic.

"I would say that we have one of the largest numbers of such students in the country. They are working on Arabic syntax, sociolinguistics, semantics, Arabic as a second language and the acquisition of Arabic. The linguistics department has produced a large number of graduates with expertise in Arabic, again, one of the largest in the country."

Still, the state of Arabic language programs in the United States is wanting.

"It is in need of improvement in terms of methods of delivery, quality of textbooks and integration of technology. More funding is needed to undertake the necessary improvements and accommodate the increase in demand."