The first time a student in Egypt explained to me that Arabic contained every phonic sound from every language on earth, i was a little taken aback.
After all, Arabic contains no V, P, or CH sound, nor a grouping of 3 or more consecutive consonants (like in
spring).
And this is only the
English sounds that Arabic lacks.
But in the Middle East, Arabic is more than just a language. It is first a signifier of purity - the Koran was revealed in poetic Arabic, and unlike the Old or New Testament, it cannot be sacredly translated.
It is also a symbol of unity.
Though the Egyptian and Moroccan dialects are as different as Spanish and French, their definitional sameness acts to represent (maintain/produce?) an analogous unity among Arab countries. When you speak the same language, you implicitly share values and responsibility - and as differences in culture, politics, and economy have decimated any notion of pan-Arabism, Language has remained the one true bond. The exclusion of Shi'a Islam in Iran and 'secular' Islam in Turkey from the broader Middle Eastern concern is no coincidence - they speak a different language.
While living in Egypt, I saw this linguistic myth as nothing more than the language component to a host of myths meant to reify Arabic/Islamic superiority through 'empirical' examples.
And then I came to Korea.
And sure enough, identical story. Only here the claim is expanded to include Hangul, the writing system, which can supposedly reproduce any 'foreign' sound.
While no language can make the claim to umbrella all others, at least Arabic was sort of close. I mean, Egyptians are shockingly fast language learners, and they actually don't have strong accents.
But Korea? Aside from lacking
phonemically differentiated L/R, B/P or G/K, there is no F, Z, V, or
voiced dental fricative TH (as in '
the'), nor many short vowels. Also, any consonant sound must be followed by a vowel, even if it at the end of the word. (thus
max becomes
maxuh.) Koreans are shockingly bad language reproducers.
But the 'fact' of Korean lingual superiority is so ingrained (mythified) that it goes completely unchallenged. The adult students i have confronted about this obvious untruth have either laughed in realization, or frozen up, like being told God didn't exist.
But their is more to this bizarre convergence of mythified Linguistic Exceptionalism.
The direction towards which this myth is used varies greatly between the two countries. In Egypt the linguistic superiority myth served to unify a diversified Arabic culture and reify Islamic superiority. Although it was to an extent used as an in-group creating example, (demonstrating superiority over the European out-group) this "in-group" included many countries, and in a sense expanded and defined the group beyond an equally plausible "Egyptian exceptionalism."
But in Korea, the Linguistic Superiority Myth serves an almost opposite purpose. Korea doesn't share its language with a broader region, and so the bolstering effect of the myth does not expand the group. Rather it exclusively serves Korean Nationalism, which unapologetically accepts Korea as the Best Country on Earth.
Of course, there are a billion examples of how this myth is hypocritical. Just as Koreans claim their language is superior, they also rely on English catch phrases as an economy of 'cool' more than anywhere else I've ever been. Korean advertisements regularly use nonsensical English phrases to bolster their images.
(the usage of 'story' in store names will be the subject of another post)
Furthermore, a large portion of the
Namdaemun disaster coverage here has focused on Foreign coverage of the incident, to the point where it feels like The Korean Media is over-emphasizing foreign concern as a way to demonstrate the true importance of the disaster. Like the news is saying - "If the New York Times and CNN are covering this, than you know it is important."
As always, i'm not sure what the point of these observations are. In English, I feel like we're more proud of the words we absorb than anything else - knowing the definition of schadenfreude, or that the word for 'tariff' is of Arabic origin, is a sign of sophistication, and any notion of linguistic 'purity' only comes up when confronted with the idea of Ebonics as a legitimate linguistic whole.
But if we weren't so confident about our economic/political/moral superiority, would things like linguistic nationalism start becoming more important?
