Arabic language in Zanzibar: past, present, and future

ABSTRACT

The debate on the status and the role of Standard/Classical Arabic versus Dialectal Arabic in the Arab World has a long history. In parallel to this, voices calling for giving Dialectal Arabic the status of the official state language and cancelling Standard Arabic altogether are becoming louder. This debate is being fuelled by the rapidly developing theory of superdiversity which claims that, due to the rapid changes that happened to the world after 1991, and increasing globalization associated with worldwide migration, easy access throughout the world to internet and social networks, video hosting services and satellite television, societies all over the world have become extremely diverse linguistically. This theory also draws on language ideologies, the concept that suggests that the traditional idea of a “language” is an ideological artefact. Is this approach valid for understanding what is happening in the Arabic language? I will attempt to answer this question by examining the status of the Arabic language on the margins of the Arab world – in Zanzibar. For centuries, the Arabic language has been one of the key languages spoken in Zanzibar, but it has now been practically replaced by Swahili.

KEYWORDS:

• Arabic language
• multilingualism
• language minorization
• East Africa
• superdiversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Phonetic markers are omitted due to the age and character of data (Reinhardt) and data limitation (Nakano).

2. The results of these interviews will be presented in detail at 13th Conference of the International Association of Arabic Dialectology (10–13 June 2019, Kutaisi).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarali Gintsburg

Sarali Gintsburg is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society (University of Navarra). Her current project focuses on formulaic creativity in oral and transitional poetry and cognitive oral poetics. She received her PhD in Humanities from the University of Tilburg, Lic. Phil. Arabic Language and Islamic Studies from the University of Helsinki, and MA & BA Arabic Language and Islamic Studies from the State University of Saint Petersburg. Sarali Gintsburg has taught Arabic language and literature at the Russian Christian Academy for Humanities and cultural anthropology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.