Arabic Classes

"Ay! This donkey! He is slower than the Crow of Noah!"

One particular insanity of this whole period of our history is the lack of classes in the Arabic language. While we flock like lemmings (!) to Chinese, we ignore Arabic...mainly because there are more Chinese speakers; i.e., there may be more Chinese consumers for whatever bric-a-brac the Corporate Mandarins of our ruling elite may choose to sell.
In Le Monde:  
La langue arabe chassée des classes
LE MONDE 08.09.09 14h02 • Mis à jour le 09.09.09 08h31  

L'arabe, une langue d'avenir ? Les Danois y croient. Copenhague vient d'introduire, à cette rentrée, l'arabe dans les collèges. Tout en accélérant l'intégration des 10 % des 31 000 collégiens d'origine palestinienne, libanaise et irakienne, la capitale danoise veut préparer les bataillons de commerciaux qui partiront demain, espère-t-elle, à l'assaut des pays du Golfe. Un discours simple et pragmatique qui n'a pas cours en France, où l'enseignement de l'arabe, pourtant centenaire, est laissé à l'abandon par l'éducation nationale, au profit des mosquées qui ont capté la demande...

If I remember my high school French, this article says that Denmark has just introduced the study of Arabic into its colleges. This will speed up the integration of the 31,000 college students of Arab lineage present in Danish colleges, and will prepare Danish business people of the future in their dealings with the Arab world...in France, the Colleges have pretty much abandoned this field of study to the Mosques.

The article has that nasty economic justification for everything, and there is a fear just barely remaining swept under the carpet about all those people of foreign extraction, but that is how we all think, and to expect Le Monde to express things differently is to expect too much. Learning language not only builds bridges; it opens the bridges and strange people flock across said bridges to flood one's culture with anomalies. Just look at me; having studied Arabic, I think I have all the answers, say what I want to say, and pepper my speech with obscure aphorisms ( "slower than Noah's crow!" ) like a supporting character in a picaresque novel.

Language is an instrument of Revolution, both in the Student of the language, and in the Society wherein the student will become a fluent speaker. A flood of new Arabic speakers - the serious, the crazed, the sober, and the bizarre - will do more than Democracy's bombs to change regimes.

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