Issue No. 601
Opinion
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29 August - 4 Sept. 2002 Issue No. 601 Opinion |
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Vernaculations
In the 1940s and 1950s there appeared, in the literary world, an inclination to use the vernacular instead of the classical, standard tongue. Communists tended to be the most eager proponents of colloquial Arabic; debates raged; as a writer you belonged to one or the other camp.
For my part it was not much of an issue when I started out because I began with the ancient Egyptian novels and nobody in his right mind could expect ancient Egyptians to speak in anything other than classical Arabic. When my realistic phase began, on the other hand, I was criticised by proponents of the vernacular because my thoroughly modern characters sounded as though they belonged to a bygone age. Other writers of the time had already adopted colloquial: Mohamed Afifi and Mustafa Musharrafa, for example.
The strange thing is that foreign critics joined the camp of the vernacular. I remember numerous conversations in which I would ask them what difference it could make to the foreign reader whether the novel was written in colloquial or standard. Eventually I was obliged to take sides, of course, and I insisted on classical Arabic even in dialogue.
When it is sufficiently vital as a conversational medium, that language does not appreciably differ from colloquial: it is invested with the spirit and has the rhythms of the latter; and it is often interspersed with colloquial words that have no equivalent in standard. In this sense, indeed, I consider such words part of the classical language.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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