Arab Preference for Foreign Words Over Arabic Equivalents

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th century, Arab countries were mainly colonized by Britain and France. English and French became dominant in education and business. As most Arab countries gained independence in the 1950-1960’s, the cultural and linguistic influence of those colonizers continued. Therefore, use of Arabic as a national language was called for. Arabization became a widespread endeavor. Despite that, English became a dominant second/foreign language in some Arab countries, French in others, especially in the past decade or so with the advent of satellite T.V., Internet, social media and advancements in technology. A new linguistic phenomenon has appeared. Many Arabs, T.V. anchors and social media users prefer to use English or French words although Arabic equivalents exist. For example, students use "class, project, cancel, mobile"; Facebook and Twitter users use "share, comment, like, profile, message, tweet, hashtag"; and T.V. anchors use "break, agenda, politic, media" and others. A corpus of commonly used English/French words was collected. A sample of language and translation students and faculty was tested and surveyed to find out whether they were familiar with the Arabic equivalents to foreign words commonly used, reasons for preferring to use foreign words, although Arabic equivalents exist, and the effects of this phenomenon on Arabic and education. Results showed that instructors identified 56% of the Arabic equivalents to foreign words on the test, whereas students identified 52%. Students gave more accurate Arabic equivalents. The participants gave historical, sociolinguistic, technological and globalization factors that affect the preference of foreign words to Arabic equivalents, in addition to brevity, poor knowledge of Arabic equivalents, especially new coinages. They think it is more prestigious to use foreign words, "everybody is doing it" and "it's a habit". Foreign words attract customers' attention more than native words, and more customers can be reached worldwide.

Keywords: loan words, code-switching, use of loan words, English as a international language, dominance of English