An unsigned e-mailer has sent me an article that appeared recently in the English-language edition of the daily Hebrew newspaper Haaretz. It’s about the use of Hebrew by Israeli Arabs, and since I had already noticed in it the Hebrew Haaretz myself and considered writing about it in these pages, the idea for this column can be said to be a joint one.
Basically, the Haaretz article commented on a phenomenon of which many Israelis have long been aware: the paradox, as it were, that, as Israel reaches its 60th birthday, the same Israeli Arab citizens who have become increasingly identified politically with their Palestinian brethren on the other side of the 1967 border, and less inclined to accept the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, have been incorporating more and more Hebrew into the Arabic they speak among themselves.
You don’t have to know Arabic to realize this. You simply have to keep your ears open the next time you listen in on an Arabic conversation between two passengers on the train, or to someone talking in Arabic on his cell phone. You’ll hear a string of Arabic words — and then, suddenly, a familiar word in Hebrew. More Arabic — and again, a bit of Hebrew. Sometimes the Hebrew will consist of a whole phrase and sometimes, even, of one or more complete sentences. And it’s all done entirely un-self-consciously. One has the impression that if one were to ask the speakers why and when they switched to Hebrew, they wouldn’t always be aware of having done so.
What are the Hebrew words that creep most commonly into the speech of Israeli Arabs? They seem to divide between everyday expressions of social intercourse on the one hand, and words for things or situations that are associated by Arabs with Israeli culture on the other. Haaretz lists some words that belong to the second category, such as ramzor (traffic light), mah.som (checkpoint), g’lidah (ice cream), lah.maniyah (bakery roll) and sulamit (the hash sign on telephone dials). Belonging to the first category are words like b’seder (all right, okay), b’vakasha (please) and me’anyen (interesting).
You might find it odd that a Hebrew word for “interesting” is used regularly in Israeli Arabic. I once asked an Arab friend of mine about this and was told, to my surprise: “That’s because we don’t have our own word for ‘interesting.’ The closest we can come is either ajib [‘strange’ or ‘unusual’] or else muhim [‘important’ or ‘noteworthy’], and neither really means what me’anyen does.” When I checked on this with other Arabic speakers, it was confirmed. Is this just a linguistic oddity, or is it indicative of a deeper feature of Arab culture — the absence, perhaps, of the very concept of “interesting” that is so basic to the Western mind, since what isn’t unusual enough or noteworthy enough to arouse curiosity is not considered worthy of attention?
Similarly, while visiting someone in the hospital not long ago, I happened to overhear two Arab doctors discussing a patient. They were speaking in Arabic interspersed with Hebrew medical terms when suddenly one of them said of the patient, “Hiya k’tir [Arabic for “She’s very”] neh.madah [Hebrew for “nice”].” Was the switch to Hebrew performed because the patient was Jewish and the doctor associated her with a Hebrew word? Because “nice” as a category applied to a woman isn’t part of Arab culture, in which one would generally used the word h.ilwa, “sweet,” for such a purpose? For some other reason?
“Code switching,” as linguists call the seemingly spontaneous movement back and forth between different speech levels, dialects or languages, is a complex phenomenon about which much has been written. It can perform many functions: the need for a term or a degree of precision that one’s own normal speech doesn’t have; the desire to invoke the context of another language, culture or subculture; the wish to demonstrate that one is at home in another language, culture or subculture, etc. Nearly everyone engages in it occasionally, but people living in environments in which two or more languages or dialects are spoken are especially prone to it.
For a sociolinguist there is another question here: Is increased code switching to Hebrew among Israeli Arabs a first harbinger of what may one day become their wholesale adoption of Hebrew as their native language? Although it may seem remote at the present moment, it is not inconceivable that, if Arabic-Hebrew code switching continues to grow, such a development could start to take place a generation or two from now — at first among the best-educated and most integrated Israeli Arabs, and subsequently, among the Israeli Arab population as a whole. This has happened over and over with minority groups in the course of history, and although there are strong forces working against it in this particular case (for example, Israeli-Arab enmity, the universality of Arabic in all the countries bordering on Israel, the special connection between Arabic and Islam, etc.), it is not something that can be totally ruled out. It will be very interesting — me’anyen k’tir — to see how things stand when Israel has its 120th birthday 60 years from now.
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I'd be interested to know what Arabic words have migrated to Hebrew since 1948
Yes, this is very true. I also hear words such as "mas hah.nasa" (income tax), knas (fine), tah.anah merkazit (central station) and endless others. Hebrew is full of Arabic as well. We say sakhbak (pal), mastul (out of it), yalla (come on), ya'ani (in other words), khanta reesh (literally "chicken feathers" but meaning nonsense), batikh (watermelon), akhla (great), walla (hey), balata (a floor tile or paving stone), ma'alesh (so be it), and endless other words. The two languages are intricately intertwined.
Jersey Dutch lasted until the middle of the 19th Century in New Jersey. Linguistic changes happen slowly.
Are there any examples of Israelis using Arabic words or expressions? Of course, English happily steals words from any language.
Consider the case of Arabic itself. The native languages of Palestine at the Arab conquests in the 7th century were, what, Greek and Aramaic, maybe? So how did the natives adapt to the Arabic-speaking elite if not by getting to speak Arabic themselves. How long might that have taken?
You are total idoit and ignorant to say the least, their are many synonms to "interesting" in Arabic, "Momta'" just read every Arabic text for the past 2000 or so year.
This is just B.S. in Arabic, there is a word for "nice" for females; it is "latifa" or "mneeha". You can also say interesting by saying "motheer lel ehtemam". I think the author of this article take a simple phenomenon, like the use of terms from a different language (any language) due to the heavy influence from the environment, and tries to come up with ridiculous conclusions about the deep structure of the Arab culture. I think this is a problem all Israelis suffer from; they want to convince themselves that all the problems with the Arabs are due to something being strange or exotic and strange about the Arabs. Sorry; this is non-sense =-).
Oh my god, I just sent this link to my family in Haifa for a laugh. bseder. I'm looking forward to the next installment of this racist nonsense. me’anyen indeed.
First of all, as others have pointed out, there are many ways to say "interesting" in arabic. But even if there were not, it would hardly warrant the racist conclusion that the concept of being interesting is unique to the "Western mind." One might as well conclude that, since Hebrew speakers took the word "yalla" from arabic, the concept of wanting to get going somewhere must be foreign to the "Hebrew mind".
"Is this just a linguistic oddity, or is it indicative of a deeper feature of Arab culture — the absence, perhaps, of the very concept of “interesting” that is so basic to the Western mind, since what isn’t unusual enough or noteworthy enough to arouse curiosity is not considered worthy of attention?" Your inference is false and your use of the term "the Western mind" disingenuous. Interesting is in fact one of the most vacuous, meaningless and overused words in English. It is the weakest of adjectives, and reflects an increasing laziness in "the Western mind." The lack of a word like "interesting" in the Arabic language and culture (btw also part of "the Western mind") forces one to use more precise adjectives when saying that something is worthy of attention, such as the reason behind this. Rather than simply stating it is noteworthy (and what is the value of that anyway? might as well just point), one gives a reason for this. The fact is there are synonyms for "interesting," but no useless catch-all word like it in Arabic. Your larger point is different, though, and more INTERESTING, but it is not served by specious and politically-driven reasoning on Arab culture.
This article is really rediculous. All of the Arabs in Israel are constantly exposed to Hebrew, educated in Hebrew, and work and sometimes live in a Hebrew-speaking environment. Thus, it would not seem at all unusualy for Hebrew words and phrases to creep into their Arabic language. There are many words for interesting in Arabic but if one hears them often enough in Hebrew, it might just seem more easy to use the Hebrew world which is often, by the way in the language in which they received their education, especially higher education.
With regard to Winter, if Winter thinks that interesting is overused in English, he should listen to its even extremer overuse in secular Israeli Hebrew. In follow up to my previous point, another issue should be addressed. They live in a Hebrew country and most dealings they have with the government are in Hebrew. That would mean that for all practical purposes, the Arabic terms for institutions like "Income Tax" would be, strictly speaking, theoretical words. Even if an Arab in Israel goes to an Arab accountant, he still has to fill out his tax forms in Hebrew and thus, he would be more familiar with the Hebrew terms that the Arabic ones. That has nothing to do with culture or a certain cultural mindset, it is only an expression of the practical reality in which they live.
I don't think it is anymore remarkable than what other bilingual linguistic minorities do when they live in a society where there is a dominant language to their family language. 2nd- and 3d-generation Puerto Ricans in the NY-metro area (or Mexican-Americans or Cuban-Americans in LA or Miami), for example, are much more likely to retain a lot more Spanish than non-Spanish speaking descendants of immigrants such as 2nd- and 3d-generation Italian-Americans, who are much less likely to be more assimilated or able to converse in Italian at all. Nevertheless, my US-born and bred Latino co-workers who use Spanish amongst themselves in the office never speak Spanish entirely but rather speak "Spanglish", often mixing up Spanish and English within the same sentence. Israeli-Arabs do the same thing, but they speak a kind "Arabrew" or "Herabic".
I can recall three Arabic words for interesting: "Mutheer", "Mushawiq", and "Mud-hish". In Arabic we certainly have more words for interesting. A language that has about 370 words for "lion", definitely has more than one word for interesting!!
Correction: I meant "Mumti'" instead of "Mud-hish" in my previous post.
The G-D of all that is speaks to mankind in silence. The silence in the hidden part, the true foundation of the temple of G-D were truth lets us know wisdom. In the silence, we praise our G-D of All That Is. Mankind can teach us nothing G-D is all knowing. It is written......Jeremiah 31 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, form the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Psalms 51 it is written.......Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts (heart and mind) and in the hidden part (the foundation of the true temple that G-D is building that sin can not enter in and male and female can not defile.) ......and the hidden part thou shalt make me know wisdom. Here G-D lets us know him.
Here we can only inter in when we turn and become that mirror inage of our G-D----the full MAN.
Arabic, being one of the richest and most flexible languages in the world, cannot but have at least one word for "me'an'yen." And it sure does. In fact, it is Israeli modern Hebrew that has absorbed literally hundreds of Arabic words with little or no hebrewising.The idea was that Arabic is a sister language and creators of modern Hebrew had no other reference (except the Tanach). Even if there was no Arabic equivalent for me'an'yen, isn't it silly saying that it is a symptom of inherent absence of "fun" in Arabic culture? If Jews are somehow able to find things interesting, how can Arabs not?