Nationalism and the Arabic language: An historical overview

n his preface to Jaroslav Stetkevych’s book The Modern Arabic Literary Language (1970) William Polk writes (xviii):

“It is easy for speakers of English, secure in the imperialism or even colonialism of their language- conquering and settling, as it were, whole vocabularies of German, French … and Arabic- to scorn what appears to be puerile or at least pedantic defensive linguistics. Secure in the far-flung domain of our language, we cannot really understand the desperate defensiveness of those who stand against us. Is not language, after all, merely a means of communication, and, as such, to be judged merely in pragmatic terms? If a better means is available, should it not be adopted? Can there be any real virtue in maintaining inefficient, … or … obsolete languages? To the defenders of other languages, the case appears quite differently … [They] have found in those languages not merely a means of communication but the genius of their nationhood.”