1. May 10, 2012
Faculty of Arts, Cairo University
Department of English Language and Literature
MA, Arabic Culture & Language Course
Term Paper
"The Evolution of Modern Standard Arabic and the Development of
Naguib Mahfouz's Language" (On Translating Arabic 32)

2. "The Evolution of Modern Standard Arabic and the Development of
Naguib Mahfouz's Language"
(On Translating Arabic 32)
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a recent variety of Arabic that emerged
generally through the interaction with European languages by Arabization,
translation, development of archaic Arabic, translations of Egyptian vernacular, and
the emergence of the press. MSA has become the language of all branches of learning
and the media all over the Arab world (On Translating Arabic 9). Literarily, MSA was
re-introduced and influenced by the evolution and the development of a new Arabic
rhetoric in the first half of the twentieth century. This paper is to briefly trace the
emergence and development of MSA as a fit language of literature in the three books
of Dr. M. M. Enani documented in the attached works cited list (Naguib Mahfouz
Nobel 1988 143). The paper also dedicates a paragraph to provide an overall idea,
given by Dr. Enani's oral lectures, about the evolution and development of MSA
through fields or disciplines other than literature before elaborating on the literary
realm.
Modern Standard Arabic is said to be evolved concurrently with the evolution of
the press in the last fifteen decades. It was formulated mainly by Al-Jawa'eb Journal
established in Astana by The Lebanese intellect Ahmad Fares Al-Shediaq.
Afterwards, it was further developed by Al-Ahram Journal established in Cairo in the
eighties after the fall of Astana. Through the press, the cultural interaction between
the Arab world and Europe was enhanced. Journalists started to coin or rather derive
new Arabic terms to apply to the imported European concepts and inventions. They
also tended to borrow and arabize some of the European words such as ٍ‫أكسجي‬
(oxygen) and ٌ‫تهفشيى‬ (television). The interest in translation was growing and
encouraging the employment of MSA (On Translating Arabic 10). Moreover, MSA
invented new terms and structures to form new complete jargons like the legal one
formulated by a genius group led by Dr. Abdul-Razzaq Al-Sanhoury. Actually,
modern linguistic innovations were mostly derivations that mainly depended on
archaic Arabic words, structures, and key abstract concepts (On Translating Arabic
17). Nonetheless, MSA differs from the parent tongue lexically, semantically, and

3. phonologically (The Comparative Tone 68). It also relies heavily on the Egyptian
vernacular as the former was formulated partially through renderings of the latter.
Due to these facts, the European linguists tended to neglect MSA as an
independent variety of Arabic language and equated, for instance, English as a living
language with Egyptian Arabic as the living form of Arabic. It was a fault which
stemmed from considering our vernacular a common version of classical Arabic
despite the fact that Egyptian Arabic developed in directions totally different from
those of MSA (The Comparative Tone 77). Accurately, MSA, as used in the media
and literature, has been often a translation of our Egyptian dialogue and its idioms
have been precise translations of their dialectical equivalents (The Comparative Tone
80).
The mid-way variety of Arabic language suffered from scholars neglect except
some of them like Dr. Hilmi Khalil who paid good attention to lexical innovations in
the Abbasid age. Traditionalists insisted on regarding only coinage and disregarding
the development of other linguistic aspects such as the syntactic one. Nevertheless,
MSA grammar was changed with the introduction of numerous syntactic innovations
(The Comparative Tone 81). The obvious neglect of inflexions in public speeches, the
language of advertisements and the press and in many non-literary books has proved
the growing use of syntax instead (The Comparative Tone 82). For instance, to
distinguish non-inflected subject from non-inflected object, writers have tended to
split the verb in two parts — a neutral verb + a noun:
‫أدًد‬ ‫تًهاجًح‬ ‫يذًد‬ ‫قاو‬
Mohammad attacked Ahmad
instead of:
‫أدًد‬ ‫يذًد‬ ‫هاجى‬
that can mean: either Mohammad attacked Ahmad; or
Ahmad attacked Mohammad!
(The Comparative Tone 82-83).
The neutral verb has been also employed as a modal auxiliary in the press especially
to connect a long subject to its object. Another syntactic change has been the
deliberate avoidance of the passive voice and the introduction of an alternative
structure of a neutral verb like: (‫جزي‬ ،‫)تى‬ + a noun. Such a structure has ensured the
averting of misreading and confusing subjects and objects for lack of short vowel
markings. Therefore, the structure has been mainly used in the transmission of news.

4. For instance, Dr. Enani quoted this structure from a newspaper issued on 13-11-1988:
‫انشعة‬ ‫يجهس‬ ‫نزئاسح‬ ‫انًذجىب‬ ‫تزشيخ‬
(The nomination of Al-Mahgoub …)
that is used instead of
‫انشعة‬ ‫يجهس‬ ‫نزئاسح‬ ‫انًذجىب‬ ‫رشخ‬.
...((Al-Mahgoub is nominated
The verb here is ambiguous since it can be read, without inflexions, as either
active or passive (The Comparative Tone 84-85).
The influence of English and French languages along with Egyptian Arabic
introduced structures like relative pronouns that were new in Arabic. Dr. Enani quoted
from an evening news-bulletin:
‫يقىل‬ ‫انتي‬ ‫انفهسطيُيح‬ ‫اندونح‬ ‫إَشاء‬ ‫شاييز‬ ‫يعارض‬‫سعًه‬ ‫في‬‫اسزائيم‬ ٍ‫أي‬ ‫تهدد‬ ‫إَها‬.
Shamir objects to the creation of the Palestinian state
which he says threatens Israel's security.
‘Which he says’ here is the relative pronoun structure that does the function of (‫)ألَها‬
‘because’ and (‫سعًه‬ ‫)في‬ ‘as he claims’ (The Comparative Tone 85).
Tewfik Al-Hakeem distinctively contributed to the evolution of MSA through his
attempts to advocate a ‘third language’ by which he meant a mid-way language
between classical and Egyptian Arabic. Such mid-language could be accepted as a fit
vehicle for literature and could be, simultaneously, as close as possible to the spoken
language of daily life. "It was an MSA version of the vernacular literally translated
almost in the same way as Chaucer is translated into modern English nowadays" (The
Comparative Tone 89).
That ‘third version’ is still rejected by the traditionalists and the ‘realists.’ Naguib
Mahfouz's language was saved from this fate as he employed solid accurate
expressions of classical Arabic making use of dialectal ‘tone’ in dialogue to maintain
his living language. The resulted language was impressive enough to elaborate on
(The Comparative Tone 91).
After the end of the French Expedition to Egypt credited with establishing Arab-
Europe cultural links, two major trends were evolved regarding the language of

5. Arabic literature. In inception, a nationalist revival tendency of the traditionalists,
which corresponded to the neo-classical ideal of Pope or Johnson, emerged to restore
the glories of the past adopting artificial archaic styles such as tautology. An opposing
trend developed to emulate the capacity of European languages, especially English,
for clarity and economy of expression. Normally, the English-educated intellectuals
such as Taha Hussein, Mohammad Haykal along with Al-Aqqad and Al-Mazini were
the major supporters of such trend (The Comparative Tone 99-106).
Naguib Mahfouz was a special case. He developed over the years from a
traditionalist to a modernist experimenting with language and eventually succeeding
in adapting it to suit his own purposes. For almost a decade, the language of his
writings showed signs of oscillating between two extremes. By the thirties, Modern
Standard Arabic he could develop in his writings established itself as the language of
the intelligentsia along with the publication of his first novels marking the change of
his initial traditionalist position (The Comparative Tone 109).
The second thirty-year stage in the development of his language started with the
serialization in Al-Risalah Al-Jadidah (The New Message), edited by Youssef Al-
Siba'i. As his great novel, which was the first in the famous trilogy, Bayn Al-Qasrayn
(Between the Two Palaces), was realistic-naturalistic emulating Zola's, Balzac's,
Dickens's, Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's, focusing on the life of the lower order of the
society, he had to reflect such a society employing its very language that was standard
Arabic which marked a new stage in Mahfouz's language development (The
Comparative Tone 110).
The last stage was hardly consistent as Mahfouz absorbed the European
techniques and occasionally advanced beyond them. Dr. Enani prefers to call this
stage ‘experimental’ as it allowed Mahfouz to produce different styles of different
effects (The Comparative Tone 110).
In the mid-forties, Mahfouz, perhaps as a result of contact with European writers
of the modern novel, occasionally started to abandon the historical novel and its old
language. Since the publication of Al-Qahira Al-Jadidah (The New Cairo) in 1945
masterpieces, he began to introduce ‘nimble’ dialogue rendering the Egyptian dialect.

6. He made his dialogue to echo that of the Egyptian vernacular. In this way, Mahfouz
adopted what Tewfik Al-Hakeem has done before (The Comparative Tone 120-123).
That stage extended over the years (1945-1974) within which sixteen novels and
seven collections of short stories were published. With the production of Al-Karnak
(1974), a new change, which is to be elaborated on later in this summary, occurred
marking a different stage in his development that continued in the same vein of
‘experimentation’ until the nineties (The Comparative Tone 116).
Dr. Enani describes Mahfouz's innovations as "impressionistic." He draws
examples from different novels to expose the ‘experimental’ language. For instance,
in Zuqaq Al-Midaq (Al-Midaq Alley), Mahfouz offered some solutions to the problem
of writing about modern life in classical Arabic. Lexically, he borrowed words from
European languages such as (El-Rob) taken from French. Moreover, he accepted
recently coined words as translations of foreign words for lack of equivalents in
ancient Arabic such as (tube) ‫أَثىتح‬ (The Comparative Tone 118). Syntactically, for
instance, he slightly departed from archaic structures and relied heavily on a European
pattern of conjunctions that suggest subordination rather than classical Arabic
coordination. (‫)ف‬ and (‫)ثى‬ are examples of such type of conjunctions (The
Comparative Tone 118-119). Mahfouz also introduced the use of the European
adverbial structure ‘preposition + noun’ instead of the old ‘adverb’ ‫انذال‬ like ‫دهشح‬ ‫في‬
‫وارتياح‬ (in amazement and with delight). All those innovations or borrowings from
European languages contributed to the development of MSA.
MSA got further developed in the 1960s with The Thief and the Dogs
(‫وانكالب‬ ‫)انهص‬ in which the stream-of-conscious technique required more language
variations. Mahfouz divorced the rhetoric of ‘internal time’ and grew a little bolder in
his employment of ‘current’ written Arabic (The Comparative Tone 124).
The language of Mahfouz's short stories was developed; however, not along the
same lines of realism–naturalism but in the direction of symbolism (The Comparative
Tone 125). In "Za'blawi" story, he introduced a symbolic language that was
unparalleled and unknown in Arabic. In other short stories, he employed the language
of the press boldly (The Comparative Tone 127).

7. In Al-Karnak (1974), Mahfouz achieved coherence by making use of short
sentences linked together only by inner logic, either of sequence or causality, and he
abandoned the conjunctions commonly used in Arabic (The Comparative Tone 128).
As for the language, he enhanced its suggestiveness by the "word-play" which is "a
reversed feature of the ‘grand style’ (cf. C. Ricks's Milton's Grand Style)." For
instance, in the excerpt quoted by Dr. Enani from the opening lines of the first page of
Al-Karnak, the initial verb ‘guided’ in
‫يصادفح‬ ‫انكزَك‬ ‫يقهي‬ ‫اني‬ ‫اهتديت‬
I was guided to Al-Karnak café by chance
is deliberately paradoxical. The verb is connected in the Arabic heritage with finding
the way back to God or, generally, the right way. Nonetheless, it is functioned here to
imply the opposite (The Comparative Tone 129-131).
The Day the Leader was Killed (‫انشعيى‬ ‫قتم‬ ‫)يىو‬ further developed the change of the
syntactic patterns of MSA as Mahfouz attempted a new innovation. He employed the
present tense to relate events in order to create a sense of immediacy (The
Comparative Tone 133). His purpose was to transform the action from temporal to
spatial performance so as to make it more akin to a painting than to a musical tone. He
also made use of another linguistic trick that was of the substitution of weak-mood
verbs for the expected verbs in the indicative mood (The Comparative Tone 135). As
for the tones of the wording and the structure of key sentences, they formed a mixture
of the ancient sermons and religious musings along with tones directly taken from the
Egyptian vernacular. The mixing was so clever in order to suit the modern reader. The
coupling of ‘Quran and songs’ and the verb (‫)أتًشي‬ ‘I walk about’ are examples of that
mixture found in the excerpt the author quoted from the end of chapter IV of The Day
the Leader was Killed:
‫ت‬ ‫تعد‬ ‫انشقح‬ ‫في‬ ‫أتًشي‬ .‫انىددج‬ ‫وتعىد‬‫ع‬ٌ‫انقزآ‬ .‫انشارع‬ ‫في‬ ‫انًشي‬ ‫ذر‬
‫واألغاَي‬.ٌ‫وانتهيفشيى‬ ‫انزاديى‬ ‫اختزعتى‬ ٍ‫ي‬ ‫يا‬ ‫نكى‬ ً‫طىت‬.
(22)
Loneliness returns. I walk about in the flat now that I
can no longer walk in the street. Qur'an (chanting) and
songs, blessed you be who invented radio and television.
(The Comparative Tone 136-138).

8. Dr. Enani suggests at the end of his article dealing with the
development of Mahfouz's language that:
the development of Mahfouz has not been linear: he will
be found to use some of his earliest ‘stylistic’ devices
side by side with his most ‘modernist.’ However, the
fact that he has developed cannot be called in question:
indeed, the history of his development can be seen as a
living document of the evolution of Modern Standard
Arabic as a fit language of literature
(Naguib Mahfouz Nobel 1988 143).
Works Cited:
Enani, M. M. Naguib Mahfouz Nobel 1988: Egyptian Perspectives. Cairo: General
Egyptian Book Organization, 1989. Print.
-----------------. On Translating Arabic: A Cultural Approach. Cairo: General Egyptian
Book Organization, 2000. Print.
-----------------. The Comparative Tone: Essays in Comparative Literature. Cairo:
General Egyptian Book Organization, 1995. Print.