Trans Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 13. Nr. August 2002 The Arabophones in German-speaking Communities between Diglossia and Bilingualism Lexical Borrowings between Languages and Varieties Agata Skowron Nalborczyk (Warsaw) 1. Introduction As a consequence of socio-economically and politically determined processes, many industrialized European countries show evidence of a growing number of immigrant populations. Arabophones constitute an important although not the biggest one among minority groups. Appearance of a significant number of immigrants creates not only a social or political but also a linguistic problem. The necessary acculturation of the immigrants into a new language contributes to the increase of phenomena and problems linked to their linguistic background and language choice patterns. Sociolinguistic research concentrated on the problems of the immigrants, focusing mainly on their bilingualism (i.e. language shift, language contact, code-switching). Although the host country's language attracts most of the researchers' attention, it should not be the only or even the main subject of linguistic research. Development of the functional relations among parts of the immigrants' bilingual repertoire connected to the change or maintenance of the users' choice patterns or attitudes towards varieties of the host and home country languages has not yet been well researched. In the case of Arabophones, an additional element of importance for their language choice patterns has to be taken into account, i.e. diglossia common in the Arab world. In my paper I want to deal with one aspect of the sociolinguistic situation of Arabophones living in a German-speaking community, i.e. the borrowings they make from one language into another. As an example of such a German-speaking community I have chosen Austria, (1) because I had the possibility to study the linguistic behavior of Arabophones in this country. Three years ago I interviewed and studied a group of them in their sociolinguistic situation. My investigation dealt with their use of Arabic and German varieties, their attitudes towards the varieties of these languages, their borrowings from one language into another, etc. The majority of studies dealing with the language of Arab immigrants treat Arabic as one language, written and spoken. (2) In fact we have two languages: one of them is only written and very rarely spoken - it is called Modern Standard Arabic (High variety). The other is only spoken and very rarely written - it is called dialect (Low variety), although it constitutes a different language as far as a language structure and it's history is concerned. This linguistic situation which prevails in Arabic, where two language varieties exist side by side, and in which each variety has certain, complementary functions, was described by Charles A. Ferguson as diglossia: (3) DIGLOSSIA IS a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation. There is a similar situation in Austria with a High variety - Hochdeutsch, and a Low variety - Dialekt or Umgangssprache (colloquial language). Of course there are some differences between the use of High and Low varieties in Arab and German-speaking countries. The main difference is that Modern Standard Arabic does not have a single native speaker (4) and no one uses it as his/her exclusive language of communication, not even highly educated people. (5) This variety is vary rarely spoken, it is rather read on formal occasions from a prepared text. This is also the reason why in this variety there are almost no words describing matters ofdaily communication, so it is, for example, practically impossible and even ridiculous to do shopping using this language. Obviously, German Standard Language has it's native speakers (educated, higher social classes) and it can be spontaneously spoken. (6) Its vocabulary does contain words concerning daily matters. It is the High variety of German (Hochdeutsch) that most Arabophones learn when they come to Austria, because this language is taught in the language courses they attend. (7) Of course, some researchers describe the sociolinguistic situation in Austria using the term triglossia (Hochdeutsch-Dialekt-Umgangssprache). (8) From the point of view of an Arabophone, however, it is important that he know one language, which he has learned, even thoughhe is aware that some people speak in a different way that he sometimes finds difficult to understand. The Arabophones have a competence in more than one language, because they have learned German and are able to use it instead of Arabic (High and Low variety) in all linguistic situations. It means that they exist in a situation of bilingualism in addition to the diglossia of both languages. Let us turn our attention to the lexical influence that diglossia from one side and bilingualism from another exerts on the languages the Arabophones use. Borrowing between languages and their varieties is the evidence of such influence. Borrowing involves the transfer of lexical items from one language to another, (9) and the borrowed items can be either unchanged or inflected like words of the same grammatical category in the borrowing language. (10) We distinguish borrowing on the level of language or on the level of speech (11) - the last will be the focus of my study; Uriel Weinreich calls them 'nonce borrowings.' (12) As in the other studies dealing with this kind of borrowings, nouns were the most frequent also among my results, (13) but as Jeffrey Heath states, frequency of usage depends on different individuals. (14) 2. The Borrowings from Arabic 2.1. High Variety - Modern Standard Arabic The considerable majority of my informants have denied the use of Arabic words in the German language. Some of them even told me that it is forbidden to use them in a foreign language. However, there is one group of Arabophones that uses Arabic words and expressions when speaking German. These are Muslims who use Arabic expressions connected with Islam. These terms come from the Arabic High variety and are used mostly by men. Examples: ramad.aan, s.alaatu al- djum'a, h.adii t, suura, al-h.a djdj. Some of them talk about the wife wearing the veil muh.a djdjaba - although there is a German word verschleiert. Maybe the reason is that they want http://www.inst.at/trans/13Nr/skowron13.htm 1 z 4 2016-07-22 12:35