Language to engage

In the next school year, California and other states are expected to see a flurry of initiatives to increase the study of Arabic, aided in part by President Bush8217;s recent pledge to obtain more money for so-called strategic languages.

And in a switch from five years ago, the demand for classes increasingly comes from students whose families have no ties to the Islamic world.

8220;The importance of Arabic as a language is not going to go away, no matter what happens in the Middle East. Even if things cool down there, it will be an important language,8221; said Zoe Griffith, a history and Middle East studies major from Berkeley in that advanced UCLA class. Griffith, 21, is considering a career in human rights law.

Classmate Sami Hasan, 21, of Lompoc, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan, said world events led him to want to learn more about his religion and to read the Quran in the original Arabic. Plus, fluency is 8220;probably going to be invaluable in any field I go into8221;, said Hasan, who is majoring in Arabic and international development studies. He plans to attend law school.

But students face many challenges in learning Arabic, which comprises a small fraction of the nation8217;s language study programs. There is a shortage of well-trained teachers and a lack of credentialing programs. Also, teachers and students say relatively high dropout rates reflect the difficulties of its right-to-left cursive script, the many dialects and pronunciation that is unfamiliar to Western ears.

Still, the rising level of interest is palpable at schools big and small. A survey by the Modern Language Association showed the number of students studying Arabic at US colleges climbed 92.3 percent 8212; to 10,584 8212; between 1998 and 2002. The number of undergraduate campuses teaching it jumped 48 percent, to 233.

That was the biggest growth of any language except American Sign Language, but the number of those studying Arabic remained dwarfed by students taking Spanish and French and ranked even below Chinese.

Since then, those Arabic numbers probably have doubled yet again, according to Gerald Lampe, president of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic. 8220;I think people see clearly that there could be a job for them waiting down the road if they master the language and culture,8221; said Lampe.

That enthusiasm was evident recently in UCLA associate professor Michael Cooperson8217;s advanced Arabic class. Greeting them with SabaaHa l-khayr good morning, he led the 15 students through an all-Arabic discussion of current events. After their assigned essays about favorite singers produced a Johnny Cash reference, Cooperson wrote the Arabic equivalent of 8220;Walk the Line8221; on the board and explained how a Quranic metaphor about 8220;clinging to the rope of God8221; was better than the word by word translation, iltazim l-khatt stick to the line. The two-hour, twice-a-week class then focused on the less entertaining accusative case.

Cooperson and most other US professors teach modern standard Arabic, a lingua franca written in newspapers and books and spoken by newscasters and diplomats. However, Arabic8217;s dialects differ from each other and from standard. 8220;It can be frustrating to spend a year studying and not understand what anyone is saying,8221; he said.

So, Cooperson and many other teachers also suggest a dialect class such as the Iraqi and Egyptian Arabic courses at UCLA and encourage students to study abroad for at least a summer. The Center for Arabic Study Abroad, at the American University in Cairo and financed mainly by the US Department of Education, has seen applications more than triple since 2000.

Of course, the military interest is enormous, as is shown by big increases in Arabic study at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California. 8220;Of course national security is important to all of us. But so is communication,8221; said Iman Hashem, who teaches introductory Arabic at California State, Long Beach.

8220;Some of these students might change the future of this country and the world by creating more understanding,8221; Hashem added. 8220;When you learn another language, you learn not just words but perspectives and culture.8221;

Responding to demand, she will start an intermediate-level class at Cal State Long Beach next year as well as a more advanced course designed for so-called heritage speakers.

Like other teachers, Hatem Bazian has seen a shift in his UC Berkeley classes8217; ethnic makeup. Since 2001, the percentage of students with Middle Eastern family ties has dropped from about 60 percent to 20 percent while overall enrollment has grown.

The UC system is unveiling a program of Internet-based Arabic classes in the fall, partnered with Brigham Young University and aided by a 453,000 federal grant. Including Arabic chat sessions online, the courses will accommodate UC students at campuses without classroom Arabic.

Other examples abound. For instance, the prestigious immersion camps for young people at the Concordia Language Village in Minnesota will add Arabic this summer as its 14th language, also with federal funds.

Efforts to get Arabic into public schools, however, have not had similar success.

Larry Gordon