Linguistic twist: is Arabic in crisis?

Throughout the Arab world, young people are rejecting classical Arabic in favour of a mish-mash of English and their own local dialects – ‘Arabish’ – a popular chat language that mixes the two, writes Nick Leech.

When Jihad El Eit opened the first branch of his fast food business in Dubai, he relied on little more than gut instinct when it came to choosing a name. At the time, ‘Man2ooshe & Co’ seemed like an inspired choice. Not only did it fit with the company’s contemporary take on traditional Arabic street food but it also used the Arabic chat alphabet in its name, a phonetic mish-mash of Arabic sounds and Roman characters that has become one of the most common and convenient modes of written communication for Arabic-speaking youth.

In the phonetic Arabic chat alphabet, ‘Man2ooshe’ becomes ‘Man’oushey’ because the ‘2’ is used to represent a pause between syllables in Arabic. The name spoke directly to the young, hip, Arabic but English-speaking market Jihad El Eit was aiming for.

Unfortunately, ‘Man2ooshe & Co’ soon became the victim of its own success, as non-Arabic speakers, unfamiliar with the phonetic transliteration that defines the Arabic chat alphabet, also started to demand the firm’s home-made take on traditional Middle Eastern snacks such as manakeesh, burek, and minikeesh.

“We never expected a non-Arabic audience to be interested in our food,” explains El Eit. “As more Western and Asian customers started coming to our stores, they didn’t understand what the ‘two’ meant. Some people started calling us ‘mantooshey’. Some people thought we were called ‘man-two-ooshey’. The name started to distract from the essence of the brand.”

Three years and five Man2ooshe stores later, El Eit wanted to expand his business further, but felt he had no choice but to employ the services of a consultancy to remedy the issue surrounding the brand’s name. The result was what the chief executive now describes as a “costly facelift”. ‘Man2ooshe & Co’ became ‘Man’oushe Street’ and no longer employs the Arabic chat alphabet in its branding, menus or signage.

“We didn’t do our homework properly when we started in terms of acceptance of the brand,” El Eit explains. “If we had used a generic texting message that was understood by all audiences, I don’t think we would have changed our name, but we used an Arabic word with a twist of English and that created confusion. I regret it now because I paid much more for the rebrand than I did when we started.”

While El Eit’s experience may provide a salutary business lesson for companies targeting non-Arabic speakers, the exponential growth of the Arabic chat alphabet since the 1990s has led to a sea change in the way the language is written by young people across the Arabic-speaking world. Arabish or Arabizi (a contraction of Arabic and Inglizi) even appears in advertising and on TV, especially on youth-oriented shows and channels such as Na3na3 on MTV Middle East. Throughout the Arabic speaking world, Arabish has become a default for written communication among the young in text messages, in email and online.

The preponderance of Arabish in the digital realm should come as no surprise. The language was born online during the 1990s, when operating systems, web browsers, personal computers, keyboards and keypads were unable to support Arabic.

The only readily available option at the time was to use the Roman fonts and characters defined by the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a character-encoding scheme based on the English language that defined the 128 characters – including the numerals 0-9 and the letters A-Z – that appear on printers, keyboards, computers and communication equipment. Originally developed for telegraphic communication, ASCII soon became the effective lingua franca of the internet, a huge benefit to languages written in Roman script, but a massive problem for the users of different alphabets.

Arabic speakers responded to the absence of Arabic script in two ways: some used English, but many more began to use Roman characters to recreate the appearance and the sounds of Arabic words. Arabic was effectively ASCII-ised so that it could be written on a standard keyboard, and numerals were enlisted to represent specific Arabic sounds that do not occur in English. The number 5 became kha; 6 became taa; 8 qa and so on. It was from this ingenuity and the desire to communicate that Arabish was born.

David Palfreyman, a linguist based at Zayed University in Dubai, was the co-author of a 2003 research paper, A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use: Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging, one of the first academic studies of ASCII-ised Arabic. Palfreyman had arrived in the UAE in 1999 and soon became interested in the way the university’s female students were making use of technology and social media to express themselves.

“I’m interested in the creative aspect of ASCII Arabic and how the issue is playing out in a society that is changing,” Palfreyman explains. When the linguist conducted his research back in 2003, he had no way of knowing just how successful and pervasive ASCII-ised Arabic would become. Not only has it survived the introduction of technologies that now support the Arabic language, but it has thrived.

“Students could write in Arabic now, but I still find lots who continue to type in Roman script. In theory, the technical reasons for using ASCII-ised Arabic have disappeared, but the fact that it has survived shows there must be other reasons for its use.”

Palfreyman believes that ASCII-ised Arabic is not only an important expression of youth culture but that its use of Arabic, English and Roman characters also allows it to act as an identity marker that simultaneously references global, non-Arabic norms. It also gives a voice to the very local Emirati dialect.

“In Emirati Arabic there is a ‘ch’ sound in words like ‘kitabitch’. It’s the feminine form of ‘your book’,” the linguist explains. “In standard Arabic, the same word would be ‘kitabuk’. There’s no normative way in the Arabic script … to write ‘ch’, whereas English has an accepted way of writing that sound. The use of the English ‘ch’ allowed the student in my study to write in the way that she spoke.”

Palfreyman also believes ASCII-ised Arabic contributes to literacy by encouraging reading and writing, but admits he takes an optimistic view of an issue that has become something of a moral panic throughout the Middle East. Instead, there is a widespread and growing perception that classical and modern standard Arabic – the official language of government, news and the Quran – are in a state of crisis.

An increasing number of column inches have been dedicated to the apparent rejection of standard Arabic by the younger generation, while concerned parents have added fuel to the debate by voicing their concerns about the standard of Arabic teaching and the seeming inability of their children to master even basic Arabic skills. Their fears appeared to be confirmed by the findings of a recent report, issued by Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which showed that over the last five years, students in the emirate’s private schools had shown little or no improvement in the language.

Educational experts may identify outdated teaching methods and a reliance on rote learning as reasons for the current malaise, but there is also a widespread perception that the increasing use of English in schools and the popularity of Arabish are also to blame.

“Arabish started with our generation, but it has passed on to the next and now it is even worse,” bemoans Jaber Mohammad, a 35-year-old businessman from Dubai. “We did our 12 years of schooling with normal Arabic and never used Arabish until we were in college, but now the younger generation start using it when they are in school,” he explains. “I see it with my cousins and my nephews – they all use Arabish – I doubt they even have Arabic installed on their mobile phones.”

Mohammad has a long history of promoting the use of the Arabic language and Arabic content online. In 1997, he helped to develop an early Arabic chat room that provided users with an on-screen Arabic keyboard that allowed them to type with their mouse. Since then, he has helped to develop Arabic literacy, football and medical websites and his latest project is tajseed.net, a not-for-profit initiative that seeks to promote the development of Arabic infographics. He is alarmed and mystified by the enduring popularity of Arabish, but is clear about the scale and the nature of its threat.

“Lots of companies in Dubai and Abu Dhabi might not care if you can’t speak proper Arabic, but you might not get the job if you can’t speak proper English. We’ll end up with a generation who aren’t even linked to their own language and Arabish isn’t helping. It used to make sense back at the time, but not any more.”

Omar Al Hameli is one Emirati who is determined not to lose his relationship with the language he describes as his mother tongue. The 25-year-old insists on using Arabic in all forms of written communication and thinks that it is “ridiculous to talk with other Arabic guys in English.” He readily admits however, that this marks him out as unusual among his family, colleagues and friends.

“I am the only one of my friends who is like this. Some use the mixed language, but some use only English and when they try to type in Arabic I always find lots of mistakes. Sometimes I poke fun at them and tell them that they should use their own language.”

For Al Hameli, an environmental science student at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, the correct use of Arabic is central to his sense of self.

“I hate it when somebody messes with Arabic because I love this language. It is part of my identity. The Quran is in Arabic and I am an Arab and a Muslim. I would love to do my Master’s in Arabic because I want to learn more about the language and I want to understand the holy book.”

Salem Al Qassimi has rather a different perspective on Arabish, and is used to having to defend his views. “People have criticised me for advocating this way of writing, but I have never said that Arabish is good or bad.”

The 30-year-old designer and founder of the Fikra Design Studio in Sharjah started researching the cultural significance of Arabish and its impact on Emirati identity while studying as a postgraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design. Language is also central to his sense of identity, but bilingualism was something with which Al Qassimi has grown up.

“I went to an American school, an American university, and I was trained as a designer in English. There are certain design terms that are difficult to translate into Arabic, so I use English when I talk about design. At home with my family and friends however, I use Arabic, and if I am speaking about religion, there is no way I can translate that into English because Arabic is the language of Islam.”

For Al Qassimi, Arabish is something more than a matter of emails and text messages, it is a concept that has become central to his design practice and his whole way of life. Right or wrong, Arabish is a cultural reality that cannot and should not be ignored.

“Right now, I feel that we live in a hybrid culture and Arabish is a philosophy about the merging of cultures. The way we dress, the cars we drive, the lifestyle we carry, all of those confirm Arabish as a fact.”

The cultural and linguistic hybridity of Arabish is something that Al Qassimi investigates through graphic design, typography and film, media that come together in projects such as Typographic Hybrids in the City, an animation that sees Arabic letters and their Roman replacements fly across the cityscape of Dubai, set to a soundtrack that mixes classical Arabic oud music with modern electronica. In Hybrid Dress, Al Qassimi created a series of posters that overlaid a kandura, the traditional clothing of Emirati men, with Western shirts and jeans and the words “Arab” in Arabic, and “Western” in English.

Rather than trying to resist the kind of cultural change that Arabish represents, Al Qassimi believes that it should be embraced, not only because it is inevitable, but because it also denotes an openness and a vitality in contemporary Emirati culture that he believes are necessary and that should be encouraged.

“To identify Emirati culture today as something that it was 50 years ago is incorrect. We are creating our own culture and a new identity right now by taking the identity we had previously and building on it, but if we restrict ourselves by not absorbing or taking things from other cultures, then our culture will become stagnant.”

“Will English affect our local, colloquial Emirati Arabic? For sure. Is it going to affect formal, classical Arabic? Not so much, because that is the Arabic of the Quran and we will always go back to that. It is the biggest protector of Arabic that we have.”

If the use of hybrid text and language has assumed the status of a moral panic in discussions about the fate of the Arabic language – a term used by sociologists to describe phenomena that are perceived as threats to cultural values and social order – there are Arabs who are campaigning for a brighter future for written and printed Arabic.

The Lebanese designer, academic, and writer Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares is one of these. As the founding creative director of the Khatt Foundation, a largely virtual cultural organisation and network of experts, designers, and researchers, Smitshuijzen AbiFares has been responsible for organising a series conferences, exhibitions, books and workshops dedicated to improving the quality of contemporary Arabic typographic design.

Her vision is nothing less than the regeneration and the renewal of Arabic visual culture – something that she currently defines as “poor” – and her aim is to achieve this using the medium of Arabic type. “Our main goal is to talk about a constant rejuvenation of the culture through typography” she explains.

“It’s important that we look at our script. In Arab culture, two of the highest forms of art we have are calligraphy and poetry, but we no longer see these in our public spaces and our cities. That is a loss.”

Smitshuijzen AbiFares has been in Dubai for the last nine days, coordinating a series of daily, nine-hour-long practical workshops in Arabic calligraphy and font design. Despite its gruelling workload, the course, the third of its kind to be held at the Tashkeel studios in Nad Al Sheba, has succeeded in attracting a dedicated band of delegates from across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the United States.

The quality of tutors, internationally recognised luminaries such as the Syrian calligrapher Mounir Al-Shaarani and the specialist Arabic type designer Lara Assouad Khoury attract some. Others are drawn by the prospect of producing their own unique digital font, no small matter in a world where the number of Roman fonts outnumber their Arabic counterparts by more than 100 to one. The course’s biggest pull however, is its rarity, as Smitshuijze AbiFares explains.

“Arabic type design has not been properly covered in design education, especially in the UAE. There are graphic design courses, there are typography courses, but Arabic specific courses are lacking. Even elsewhere in the world, these kind of courses are not widely spread.”

“We need these courses in the Middle East because we do not have enough well-crafted, good quality Arabic typefaces. I have a class full of Arabs, but every one of them speaks a different Arabic. That should also be seen in the way they design.”

For Smitshuijzen AbiFares however, the main obstacles to the cultural rejuvenation she seeks are not only a lack of knowledge and expertise but something more profound, an over-protectiveness of Arabic that stems from a lack of self-confidence among Arabs.

“There’s a sense that we do not know how to define ourselves because everybody tears you in different directions. If you try to do something new, everybody automatically labels it as Western, but if you do something traditional, it doesn’t quite relate because you’re dealing with something that comes from a thousand years away.”

For Smitshuijzen AbiFares, the success of the Khatt Foundation’s project relies on the development of tools that will enable designers working in Arabic to develop a contemporary and authentic voice of their own, independent of Western firms, commercial concerns, and unfettered by what she sees as a widespread tendency to constantly revisit and refine things from the past.

“There’s a misunderstanding that being contemporary is not being Arab,” she explains. “I don’t believe we should shut other cultures out, not at all, but instead of just absorbing everything that comes from abroad, just because it comes from Europe, [that] is a bit strange … Our culture is not dead and I don’t believe we need to preserve it, but to evolve it and to nurture innovation. That is the best way to ensure our culture goes on.”

This article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

 

 

The shape of things to come? contemporary design culture in the UAE

As the region’s design community gathered for Design Days Dubai, Nick Leech considered how transformations in the UAE’s economy and new ways of ‘design thinking’ are influencing the UAE’s burgeoning creative culture

Design Days Dubai 2013

Cyril Zammit’s phone rings continuously. Now there are only a few weeks to go before the opening of Design Days Dubai 2013, the Fair Director’s time is no longer his own. There are details of bespoke installations to finalise, public lectures to organise, exhibitors to shepherd, and media interviews to complete, but as he sits in a coffee shop in the industrial heart of Dubai’s Al Quoz district, Zammit finds time to take stock of the journey both he and the fair have made over the last twelve months.

“After the last show we all felt that we needed to work on the perception of what design is, how we think of it. I’m not saying we’re right, they’re wrong, but people here have a perception of design as an end-of-line object. ‘I need tables and chairs for my living room, so I’m looking for tables and chairs’. We are not a furniture show.”

Design Days Dubai may be a commercial fair aimed at collectors, but in its championing of international contemporary practitioners, much of whose work sits somewhere in the boundaries between design, craft and art, it’s also clear that the fair sees itself in a wider role as both a national and a regional catalyst for a broader notion of design culture. “For the first few years we want to have a large view of what design is.” Zammit explains. “We want to position ourselves as a fair of discovery.”

United Visual Artists’ Always/Never, a work that explores time and our experience of its passing, Design Days Dubai 2013

Nowhere is the fair’s sense of a broader remit better illustrated than in Design Stories, the public lecture series it sponsors that is aimed at engaging the local community in a conversation about the nature of good design. The latest talk, Design: from the city to the spoon, was presented by Philippe Garner, Christie’s international head of photographs and 20^th century decorative art and design, and sought to discuss key icons of twentieth design not just as collectibles, but as important forms of aesthetic, social, and cultural investigation.

For Zammit, this quality gives the objects exhibited at Design Days their value. “These things are the product of a long intellectual process of research, designing, sketching, and prototyping. They are creations by artists. You can call them designers if you want to, but they are artists and their work is a new form of art.”

Zammit’s goal is to build on the success of Art Dubai in establishing the city as a global hub for collectors of design as well as contemporary art. Not only does he see Dubai – with its convenient location, business infrastructure, and mercantilist spirit – as the logical venue for the fair but he also believes the UAE has all the necessary qualities to become a leader in the creative economy of the region.

‘A million times’ by Humans Since 1982, on display at Design Days Dubai 2103

“I’m not sure if it’s thanks to us, but you now have some of the most unexpected galleries that have opened since the inception of the fair… We also have great institutions like the American University of Sharjah (AUS)… the political wish to create an exquisite city… people with a decent job who can spend and the UAE is probably one of the only countries in the region with all the heavy industries on site – plastics, steel, aluminium – everything can be produced here. We just need to join all the dots together.”

Zammit’s analysis may sound like a neat pitch but the issues he raises – about the nature of design, the breadth and depth of design culture in the UAE, and the emergence of a new creative economy based on home-grown talent – also exercise many of the designers, curators, critics and academics who constitute the UAE’s burgeoning design community. Among these is Peter Di Sabatino, Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Design (CAAD) at the American University of Sharjah (AUS).

“It’s a very active moment. At this second, [design] may not be as active as the art market, but the momentum is building rapidly and the work is increasing rapidly and I am very optimistic.”

Phoenician reading table by Noor Jarrah, a student at the American University of Sharjah.

Mr Di Sabatino’s optimism seems well founded. The past twelve months have seen the university, which already enjoys an enviable regional reputation, establish itself on the international scene. In April 2012, eight students and alumni from CAAD joined 700 of the world’s other designers at the Milan Furniture Fair’s SalonSateliite, an international showcase for the world’s brightest young design talent. The invitation was a first for any design college from the Middle East and, while it was primarily recognition of the quality of work produced by CAAD students it was also, explains Di Sabatino, evidence of a growing international awareness of the region.

“I have a lot of conversations with institutions, government, and industry. The interest in the Middle East from those outside the region is extreme. Perhaps some of that is recognising that it is an important market place and wanting to get in deeper, but there is also a desire to engage the region in design.”

Sarah Alagroobi’s ‘Amal’s Prayer Chair’, a scale prototype made using the American University of Sharjah’s 3D digital printer, displayed at the Milan SaloneSatellite in 2012

Di Sabatino cites pieces such as Sarah Alagroobi’s ‘Amal’s Prayer Chair’ – a rocking chair with a curved, organic shape designed to allow the elderly or the infirm to bow their head while praying – as just one example of “the voice of the Middle East making its presence felt directly and very well in Europe”. He also identifies a trend that he believes sits well with the UAE’s stated desire to diversify and to move toward a knowledge and an innovation-driven economy: the entrepreneurship of a growing number of CAAD graduates who leave AUS to establish their own design studios and businesses.

“Our alumni understand that they are part of a creative culture, for the nation and for the region and they know they are a part of a growing creative economy. They are creating and deepening [the] design culture.”

Salem Al Qassimi, founder of Fikra Design Studio, giving a talk on bi-lingual typography at Visual Arabia 2013

Key amongst these is Salem Al Qassimi, founder of the multi-disciplinary, Sharjah-based Fikra Design Studio and one of the region’s most respected practitioners of bi-lingual typography and graphic design. Al Qassimi set up Fikra in 2006 as a place “where there was room for research, experimentation, and self-initiated projects,” all of which, he believes, are essential for the development of a more meaningful design culture in the UAE.

“Design is about trying to make the world a better place through ‘design thinking’. Just focusing on the aesthetics of something is not necessarily design. Our understanding of design in the UAE is now very limited to fashion design, furniture, interior design, and architecture but design is so much more than that.”

‘Design thinking’ – central to Al Qassimi’s practice – is a phrase coined by Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, an American innovation and design consultancy. It defines design as a holistic, human-centred approach to problem solving that encourages contextual thinking and enables innovation not only in products, but also in areas that would traditionally fall far outside the remit of design such as business services, work processes, and even corporate strategy. Using this approach, IDEO designers have worked with private medical providers in the USA to improve patient care and nursing efficiency by applying design thinking to patient care routines on hospital wards. As Brown explained to Harvard Business Review, another example of true ‘design thinking’ is Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb.

“The light bulb is often seen as his signature invention, but Edison understood that the bulb was little more than a parlour trick without a system of electric power generation and transmission … So he created that, too.”

Seen from this perspective, ‘design thinking’ is a form of creativity that not only solves problems, it creates completely new opportunities, new businesses, and whole industries. Where, for example, would the iPod be without iTunes?

ADAM, a collaborative project between Fikra and Pink Tank, is a tool to map the systems of collaboration between designers in the Arab world, was presented at Design Days Dubai 2012

Di Sabatino and Al Qassimi disagree over the depth and breadth of the design culture that currently exists in the UAE. Whereas Al Qassimi sees “a country and a culture that is completely unfamiliar with design,” Di Sabatino sees a strong tradition of making, creativity, and innovation that stems from the UAE’s traditional vernacular crafts. Both however, agree that some ‘heavy lifting’ is required before an explicit design culture develops that would enable local practitioners to make an impact on their environment at every scale from Philippe Garner’s ‘city to the spoon’. The region-wide absence of product designers is something that Di Sabatino hopes to address with the launch of a new undergraduate programme, while Al Qassimi bemoans the lack of Arabic design tutors, the absence of Arabic typography, art, and design from curricula, and the absence of courses that address the more theoretical aspects of design.

HH Sheikh Majid Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum viewing work by Mobius Design Studio at the Design House, SIKKA 2013

Al Qassimi is not alone in calling for more education that focuses on the breadth and the process of design rather than the finished product. Design House is an exhibition and a series of workshops organised by the Dubai-based Mobius Design Studio as part of Sikka 2013, an entirely commissioned programme of visual art projects from UAE-based artists in the Al Fahidi historic neighbourhood near Dubai Creek. Housed in a restored merchant’s house and featuring work by six local designers, the purpose of Design House is to act as “a catalyst for people to understand and explore design beyond the confines of the commercial.” As Mobius’s Hadeyeh Badri explains, “we want to show that you are able to explore things through design. There will also be workshops that will allow people to understand the processes behind the works exhibited; drawing, pattern-making, character design, moulding.”

‘Type Hybrid 1’ Mobius Design Studio

‘Type hybrid 2’, Mobius Design Studio

Mobius Studio was founded in 2010 by three friends and fellow graduates from AUS, Hadeyeh Badri, Hala Al-Ani and Riem Hassan and an alma mater is not the only thing they share with Salem Al Qassimi and Fikra. Both studios have worked on UAE pavilions at the Venice Biennale – Mobius produced the graphic material for ‘Second Time Around’ in 2011 while Fikra Design Studio have devised the latest the latest identity for 2013 – and both are dedicated to using design as a research tool for understanding the world and trying to improve it.

“For us, it’s about the process and how you work. When you eliminate this process, you downgrade it. It becomes an idea that has to be done and that’s it,” says Mobius Studio’s Badri. “When people produce ten marks for a client in a week, we don’t get that, we don’t work that way. Maybe the phrase ‘design integrity’ is overused, but you can’t minimise what design is just for the sake of producing more or faster. We really believe in it that much. We have made a lot of sacrifices along the way.”

Fikra’s bilingual identity creation for Tashkeel in Dubai — an independent resource for artists and designers in the UAE.

While Al Qassimi studied the UAE’s rapidly changing urban environment as part of his research into a newly emergent bilingual culture and identity of the UAE that he describes as ‘Arabish’, in Badri’s research Untitled-B, she has investigated the integration and the assimilation of Dubai’s built and natural environments. Both projects start a long way from the traditional sphere of design, both have a concern investigate the contemporary urban environment and the subtle influence of context, tradition, and identity.

IDEO’s Tim Brown describes this kind of sensitivity, the ability to notice things that others do not and to use this as a source of inspiration, as ‘empathy’ and defines it as one of the fundamental components of successful ‘design thinking’. Tellingly, Dr Taha Al-Douri, Assistant Dean of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology Abu Dhabi (NYIT), uses the same word to define what he considers authentic, culturally relevant design.

“There must be empathy between the designer and the environment and their surroundings. I don’t simply mean knowing about the temperature, the geography and the resources, but I also mean the history and the culture. Do you feel strongly enough about it to address that in a design or don’t you? Do you actually have a home grown crop of designers who can respond to what this place is?”

It would seem that in the work of Khalid Shafar, Fikra, Mobius Design Studio, and the designers exhibited at SalonSatellite and Design House, the answer is an overwhelming yes. It’s an assessment that Peter Di Sabatino agrees with.

“We’re now faced with the possibility of moving design to at least the level of national policy, or even an explicit national design policy. The country is naturally evolving to that. It sit’s well within economic diversification and the move toward a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy. There’s now talk about manufacturing and national policy, and Made in the UAE as a brand mark. The next logical step is ‘Designed and made in the UAE’ and I think the UAE is relatively close to ‘Designed in the UAE’, which is incredibly exciting.”