Languages of Lebanon
| Languages of Lebanon | |
|---|---|
Levantine Sign Language | |
| Keyboard layout | |
In Lebanon, most people communicate in the Lebanese variety of Levantine Arabic, but Lebanon's official language is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). French is recognized and used next to MSA on road signs and Lebanese banknotes. Lebanon's native sign language is the Lebanese dialect of Levantine Arabic Sign Language. English is the fourth language by number of users, after Levantine, MSA, and French. Most Armenians in Lebanon can speak Western Armenian, and some can speak Turkish.
Lebanon exists in a state of
Statistics
According to Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024),[1] these languages have the most users in Lebanon:
- Levantine Arabic – 5,230,000
- Modern Standard Arabic – 4,780,000
- French– 2,530,000
- English – 2,130,000
- Western Armenian – 261,000
- Turkish – 189,000
Diglossia and local varieties' classification
Lebanon—and the
Levantine speakers often call their language
Code-switching and loanwords
Code-switching (alternating between languages in a single conversation) between Levantine, MSA, French, and English is very common in Lebanon, often being done in both casual situations and formal situations like TV interviews.[26][27] This prevalence of code-switching has led to phrases that naturally embed multiple linguistic codes being used in daily sentence, like the typical greeting "hi, كيفك؟[b] Ça va ?", which combines English, Levantine and French.[28][29][30] Code-switching also happens in politics. For instance, not all politicians master MSA, so they rely on the Lebanese Levantine Arabic.[31]
Additionally, many words used in the Lebanese dialect of Levantine have been borrowed from French, such as telfizyōn ⓘ(French: télévision ⓘ, meaning 'television'), balkōn ⓘ(French: balcon ⓘ, meaning 'balcony') and doktōr ⓘ (French: docteur ⓘ, meaning 'doctor'),[32] and from English, such as CD, crispy, hot dog, and keyboard,[33] with some phrases and verbs being altered to follow the syntax of Levantine Arabic, instead of English. For example, shayyik comes from the English word 'check', and sayyiv comes from the English word 'save'.[33]
Minority languages
Some Kurds fled to Lebanon from violence and poverty in Turkey, but they are now dispersed in Lebanon and have largely abandoned
Syriac Aramaic is also spoken as a first language in some Lebanese communities such as Syriac Catholics, Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Lebanese.[citation needed] It is also used in liturgies in other communities such as Maronite Catholics.[citation needed]
Usage
Conversation
Lebanon's native language, Levantine Arabic,[1] is the main language used in conversations. MSA, despite being Lebanon's second language by number of users,[1] is almost never used in conversations,[5] while English[33] and French[40] are, even between some native speakers of Levantine. Levantine Arabic Sign Language is Lebanon's native sign language, and Lebanon's deaf population is estimated at 12,000.[41][1]
Oral media
Many public and formal speeches and most political
Typically, news bulletins are in MSA.[2] On the popular television network LBCI, Arab and international news bulletins are in MSA, while the Lebanese national news broadcast is in a mix of MSA and Lebanese Arabic.[2] Lebanese TV station OTV and some radio stations that cover news of the Armenian diaspora in Lebanon broadcast daily news bulletins in Armenian.[34]
Lebanon used to have two
Writing and scripts
Unlike Levantine,
In the 1960s, Lebanese poet
Education
Between 1994 and 1997, the Council of Ministers passed a new National Language Curriculum that required schools to use either English or French in natural sciences and mathematics.[33][66] In general, school students are exposed to two or three languages: MSA and either French, English or both.[27] Students' native language, Levantine, is not taught in schools, although MSA-medium lessons are often taught in a mix of MSA and Levantine with, for instance, the lesson read out in MSA and explained in Levantine.[26][3] Foreign language teachers, such as English and French teachers, also commonly code-switch to Levantine.[40]
Although all language teachers face difficulties, especially in low socio-economic schools, MSA teachers' teaching resources are inferior to those of English and French, focusing mostly on classical books, as other resources are rare.
The number of students learning in English is increasing, while those learning in French is decreasing: In 2019, 50% of school students studied in French, compared to 70% twenty years prior to that, and 55% of French-educated students chose to go to
Government and law
Following its independence in 1943, Lebanon's official language changed from French and MSA to just MSA. Today, MSA is the official language, while French is a recognized one.[51][1] Lebanon's national anthem[71] and all government-related announcements, documents, and publications are in MSA.[33] French is also used, alongside MSA, on road signs, the Lebanese lira and public buildings.
-
-
TheLebanese lirais in Modern Standard Arabic on one side and French on the other -
French-language inscription "Banque du Liban" on the headquarters of the Bank of Lebanon
Lebanese Arabic—the variety of Levantine Arabic—is used in courtrooms, but in order to record court proceedings, the judge restates in MSA what the suspect has said, and the court recorder handwrites the judge's translation.[33][72] This process, according to a report funded and led by the World Bank, "risks an edit or an omission in the restatement by the judge."[73][74]
Brands and businesses
Email communication and announcements in professional job settings are mostly through English.
History
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Starting in the
See also
Notes
- ^ Native speakers of Arabic generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Classical Arabic and refer to both as العربية الفصحى al-ʻArabīyah al-Fuṣḥā, lit. 'the eloquent Arabic'.[16]
- Transliteratedas kīfak (when asked to a male) or kīfik (when asked to a female)
- ^ According to Minority Rights Group,[36] Cilician Catholics seeking refuge from the Armenian Orthodox Church's persecution initially came to Lebanon in the 18th century. Subsequent and bigger immigration waves arrived due to massacres by the Turks in 1895–1896 and the Armenian genocide of 1915. More arrived when France's attempt to establish an Armenian entity in Cilicia failed in 1920–1921. The last influx resulted from France ceding Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939.
- Zazaki as it dialects, instead of separate languages.[39]
References
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- ^ Arabic, Standard, 24th Edition, Ethnologue
- ^ a b c "Campaign to save the Arabic language in Lebanon". BBC News. 16 June 2010. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
- ^ a b c d Al-Wer & Jong 2017, p. 525.
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- ^ Conference Proceedings, Arabic Dialect Identification in the Context of Bivalency and Code-Switching, El-Haj, Mahmoud, Rayson, Paul, Aboelezz, Mariam, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018), 2018, European Language Resources Association (ELRA), Miyazaki, Japan, el-haj-etal-2018-arabic, https://aclanthology.org/L18-1573
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- ^ "Disney to dub new film Encanto in Egyptian Arabic after 10-year hiatus – Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East". Al-Monitor. 4 April 2022. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
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- ^ "National anthem – The World Factbook". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
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