背景介绍：
阿拉伯语是阿拉伯民族的生活用语，在中世纪的数百年期间，阿拉伯语曾是整个文明世界学术文化所使用的语言之一。曾经的阿拉伯语是多么辉煌，如今阿拉伯地区越来越多的年轻人却只会说一口流利的英语。究竟是什么原因导致阿拉伯语日渐衰落？Losing the language of the Koran消逝的古兰经语言
Arabic is being swamped by
English阿拉伯语正淹没在英语的浪潮中
It might have been a party just for
Westerners. Young men snogged in the corridor. Girls downed tumblers of wine.
The real shock, though, was the hubbub of voices. Though this was a gathering
of young Emiratis, almost everyone was chatting in English. Nowadays it is becoming
the dominant tongue of the Gulf.这可能只是一场西方人的聚会。年轻的男孩们在走廊里拥吻。女孩们大口大口地喝着酒。然而，然而，真正令人震惊的是吵闹声。虽然这是一场阿联酋年轻人的聚会，但几乎每个人都在用英语聊天。如今，英语正成为海湾地区的主要语言。
On paper Arabic is one of the world’s most
successful languages. Over 400m people speak it. But Arabs speak a plethora of
dialects. Poor education in Arabic is eroding its purity, as English spreads.
Many primary-school children chatter in a hybrid of English and Arabic. “Within
a century it may be a dead language,” laments a British former diplomat who is
expert in Arabic.理论上，阿拉伯语是世界上最成功的语言之一。超过4亿人说着英语。但阿拉伯语的方言太多了。随着英语的普及，水平低下的阿拉伯语教育正在侵蚀其纯洁性。许多小学生用英语和阿拉伯语的混合语聊天。一位精通阿拉伯语的英国前外交官哀叹道:“不出一个世纪，阿拉伯语可能就会消亡。”
The language’s decline reflects recent
history. Civil wars have forced millions out of education. Baghdad and Damascus,
once citadels of Arab nationalism and culture, have been ravaged by violence. 这种语言的衰落反映了阿拉伯的近代历史。内战使得数百万人无法接受教育。巴格达和大马士革曾是阿拉伯民族主义和文化的堡垒，如今已被暴力蹂躏。
“Language reflects how powerful you are,” says Ebtesam al-Ketbi, an Emirati scholar. “The Chinese, Japanese and Koreans have all kept their languages. We haven’t.” “People running our countries often don’t speak good Arabic any more,” laments a Bahraini.阿联酋学者埃布特萨姆·凯特比说:“语言反映了你有多强大，中国人、日本人和韩国人都保留了自己的语言，而我们却没做到。” 一位巴林人哀叹道:“管理我们国家的人不再会说流利的阿拉伯语了。”
English is the gravest threat. In 2017 the
Arab Youth Survey, taken by a pollster in Dubai, found that Gulf Arabs already
use it more than Arabic. Saudi Arabia has become the most recent Gulf state to
teach schoolchildren English from the bottom class up. 最大的威胁来自于英语。2017年，迪拜一家民调机构进行的一项阿拉伯青年调查发现，海湾阿拉伯人更多是在说英语而不是阿拉伯语。沙特阿拉伯已成为最新一个从最底层教育开始教英语的海湾国家了。
A large minority of Gulf citizens’ children go to private schools where English is the main language of tuition. Ms Kebti says “no one can stop” the spread of English. A World Bank study reported last year that even by the time they are in their fourth year at school, many Arab children struggle to write a coherent sentence in Arabic.很大一部分海湾公民的孩子上的是以英语为主要教学语言的私立学校。埃布特萨姆·凯特比说，“没人能阻止”英语的传播。世界银行去年的一项研究报告称，许多阿拉伯儿童即使到了四年级都很难用阿拉伯语写出连贯的句子。
The fragmentation of Arabic is a feature
of Arab disunity. An array of dialects with their different vocabularies,
syntax and accents has infiltrated such bastions of standard Arabic as
parliaments, television shows and publishing houses. To bolster circulation,
publishers are printing more books in dialect. 阿拉伯语的碎片化是阿拉伯不团结的一个特征。一系列有着不同词汇、句法和口音的方言已经渗透到议会、电视节目和出版社等标准阿拉伯语的堡垒中。为了促进发行量，出版商印刷了更多方言书籍。
In 2019 Nadia Kamel won a top literary prize in Egypt for a novel in dialect. Television news channels still broadcast in standard Arabic, so many Arabs prefer to get their news from social media, often in dialects written in Latin characters. Disney now dubs its films in Egyptian dialect. Expressions of love are said to sound stilted in the official lingo.2019年，纳迪亚·卡梅尔凭借一部方言小说获得埃及最高文学奖。电视新闻频道仍然用标准的阿拉伯语播报，所以许多阿拉伯人更喜欢从社交媒体上获取新闻，通常是用拉丁文字写成的方言。迪士尼现在用埃及方言为电影配音。据说用标准阿拉伯语表达爱意听起来很生硬。
Champions of Arabic are trying to fight
back. Arabic will, of course, remain the language of the Koran. “We think
Arabic is more living than Latin because of its presence in the media, sermons
and speeches,” says Hossam Abouzahr, founder of The Living Arabic Project, an
online platform that strives to revive the language. “Latin survived in the
churches for centuries despite having no native speakers,” he notes hopefully.阿拉伯语的拥护者们正试图反击。当然，阿拉伯语仍将是《古兰经》的语言。致力于复兴阿拉伯语的在线平台“让阿拉伯语充满生命力”
的创始人胡萨姆·阿布扎尔说：“我们认为阿拉伯语比拉丁语更具生命力，因为它出现在媒体、布道和演讲中。”他满怀希望地指出：“尽管没有人以拉丁语为母语，但拉丁语在教堂里流传了几个世纪。”
(红色标注词为重难点词汇)
重难点词汇：
plethora [ˈpleθərə] n. 太多；过多；泛滥
erode [ɪˈroʊd] v. 腐蚀；侵蚀
infiltrate [ˈɪnfɪltreɪt] v. 渗透；渗入；浸润
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苏格拉底有一句名言：我知我无知。说的是，当你认识到的东西越多就越发现自己无知。同样地，我们在求学之路上也要报以我知我不知的心态，才能走得更远。最后，祝愿莘莘学子都能终有所成！