Standard Arabic ought to be protected, popularised, says seminar

Standard Arabic ought to be protected, popularised, says seminar

By Tawfik Lamari/Staff Reporter

Areas of complementarity and collision between the local dialects and the standard Arabic were discussed Sunday at the second event of the ongoing Seminar Series, organised by the Ministry of Culture in partnership with Qatar University (QU) and the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI).

Sunday's seminar was hosted in the Ibin Khaldoun Hall at QU, and titled "Do the local dialects complement the Standard Arabic?" The various dimensions of Arabic dialects and their connection to Standard Arabic were discussed.

The panellists were Dr Mohamed Khaled al-Rahawi, Professor in the Department of Arabic Language, College of Arts and Sciences - QU; Dr Elias Atallah, professor of linguistics and Arabic lexicography at the DI; Dr Ezz al-Din al-Bouchikhi, executive director of the Doha Historical Dictionary, and Dr Ahmed Hajji Safar, professor of Arabic at the College of Arts and Sciences, QU. Media specialist Hassan al-Saei, moderated the session, attended by a number of cultural and academic elites and scholars, who enriched the seminar with discussions, specifically with regard to ways to preserve the Arabic language.

The seminar started with a paper by Dr al-Rahawi about bilingualism, which