The Demise of Arabic Is Greatly Exaggerated (Or Is It?)

Parents in some Arab countries now insist that their children be educated in English or French. Teachers fret about “Facebook Arabic” (i.e., using the Latin alphabet online). Yet “Arabic is, after all, the language of 300 million people, a language of literature and culture, politics and scholarship.” The problem is that, “[in] a very basic sense, there is no such thing as Arabic.”