language
Writing Home
It is widely acknowledged that the extinction of a language is a devastating cultural loss for ethnic minorities, but these Nubians raise a different question: What happens when an alphabet disappears? And is it possible — or even desirable — to save a script?
An Arab Renaissance in the Age of Print — with Ahmed El Shamsy
In the first of a series of podcasts delving into the big questions of history, Ahmed El Shamsy joins New Lines’ Lydia Wilson to discuss how the printing press became the engine that powered the Arab Renaissance.
In Search of African Arabic
For Africans, the use of Arabic presents a dilemma: Without the historical role of Arabic, African writers would have been compelled to write in former colonial languages, but many also view the language as the medium of the slave trade that preceded trans-Atlantic slavery. Still, not everything magnificent on the continent must have originated elsewhere.
How Arabs Have Failed Their Language
Arabs damned their own language through diglossia and denial. They have tried to elevate fus-ha, the only so-called true or pure Arabic, while working to discredit, disable, and even destroy dialects.