Can Arabic Survive in America ?

Detroit has the largest Arabic speaking population in the US.
Is Arabic maintained among Arab Americans in Detroit? Can it survive the contact with English the dominant language?

The above questions were partially discussed in an article, I have written, entitled Language Conflict and Identity: Arabic in the American Diaspora in an edited volume "Language Contact and Language Conflict in Arabic."

Should Arabic as a heritage language be maintained?
For a good discussion I would like to add the following quotation.
"One's native language is so much a part of one's identity that to denigrate it is to effectively deny one's human ability to communicate" by Nessa Wolfson and Joan Manes in Language of Inequality.
The discussion should deal with identity, ethnicity, bilingualism, and the teaching of foreign languages in schools.

Copyright © 2009 Aleya Rouchdy, All Rights Reserved

Should Arabic be Taught in Schools ?

"By undermining the importance of learning other languages, we are losing an opportunity to educate our students to be better citizen of the world......."learning a language exercises the mind and enriches the spirit." Mario F. Guillen, Chronicle of Higher Education on July 27, 2009.

Arabic is spoken by over 300 million in the world today. The importance of the Arabic language propelled me to begin a discussion about the Arabic language in general and the Arabic language in the US.

Arabic is taught in many American universities and a number of government sponsored language schools. Actually, Arabic was taught in the US before the signing of the Declaration of Independence ( see Ernest McCarus in The Arabic Language in America edited by Aleya Rouchdy).

The question now is: should Arabic be taught in elementary, middle and high schools in the US?
For the sake of discussion,I would like to add that Chinese is taught in some middle and high schools.

Copyright © 2009 Aleya Rouchdy, All Rights Reserved