Anglo-Arabian

Overview

In the Arab world, where people are major consumers of technology but not involved in any aspect of its production, most individuals equate progress with the acquisition of modern equipment. Technology is blindly consumed, and people compete to purchase the newest, most expensive devices.

The emergence of increasingly sophisticated technology and the Internet has created a new language in the Arabic-speaking world. Since many new technologies are designed with the Latin alphabet in mind, younger generations have developed a new way to communicate, replacing Arabic characters with Latin ones, with numbers often used for letters that have no close phonetic equivalent – for instance, the use of the number 7 in place of the Arabic letter ح. Likewise,certain English words and phrases have become a part of the Arabic vernacular, such as 'cancel' and 'message'. The intention of this new 'Anglo-Arabic' language was not to change the original, but people have become accustomed to it.

While this new language makes it easier to communicate digitally, its increasing hold on younger generations threatens their cultural identities and native language.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11