Visual transliterations of oral combinations of languages in Lebanon

Abstract

Most Lebanese mix two or three languages in their daily life: Arabic, French and English. This fact became a characteristic of the Lebanese culture to a point that it became difficult to speak one language without mixing it with one of the two others. The purpose of the paper is to communicate this verbal situation visually: show the spoken mixture of languages through the mixture of their letters.

In opposite to Latin letters, Arabic is written from right to left. Accordingly, when combining the two scripts of the three languages, there are problems of readability. One problem is the direction of reading: when combined, should the reader start with Arabic or with Latin script? The second problem is the omission of a script: read one script (one language) and drop the other. Connecting the letters forces the reader to read the two scripts and imposes a direction of reading.

The visual solutions to the problems of connections presented in the paper are based on the works of 167 students who participated in ten workshops conducted by the author. Through a parallel between calligraphy and typography, between art and design, Arabic letters and Latin letters connections are a potential of a unique Lebanese visual communication. Latin and Arabic Typography in most of Arabic universities are taught in parallel in order to achieve the coexistence of the two lettering systems in Arabic design, which consist of bilingual communication in most of the time. In this paper, the proposed approach is the mixture of the scripts rather than their cohabitation: people already mix languages verbally; consequently, they would mix their scripts visually.

Though most of the study was based on the Lebanese model, many Arabic countries are bilingual/trilingual: North African mixing Arabic/French (e.g. Morocco, Tunisia); Golf countries mixing Arabic/English (e.g. Emirates, Qatar). Connecting letters gives the Arab Visual communication a new approach to use the calligraphy heritage in a globalized 21^st century communication design.

Key Words:

• combinations of languages
• visual conversion
• connections of scripts.