This study investigates the effect of Facebook on Arabic language attrition, i.e., decrease in language proficiency, as exhibited in the use of Colloquial instead of Standard Arabic, use of foreign words although Arabic equivalents exist, and committing spelling errors. A sample of Facebook posts and a corpus of spelling errors on Facebook were…

This paper investigates code-switching and script-switching in medieval documents from the Cairo Geniza, written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew script), Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. Legal documents regularly show a macaronic style of Judaeo-Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew, while in letters code-switching from Judaeo-Arabic to Hebrew is tied in with…

The author wrote a piece called "What Our Children Should Learn about 9/11." In that piece, the author made just four simple points. These include: (1) children should know the facts; (2) once they had a grounding in the facts, the children should not abjure moral judgment; (3) children should learn to make both analytical and moral…

This study of Arabic culture, language, history, and nationalism provides an inside view of key issues in understanding the Arab world. It combines detailed readings of Arabic nationalist literature, the scholarly literature on nationalism, and sociolinguistics work on language and national identity. Seven chapters focus on the following issues:…

This collection of papers explores language socialization from very early childhood through adulthood. After "Introduction: Toward a Dynamic Model of Language Socialization" (Robert Bayley and Sandra R. Schecter), there are 16 papers in 4 parts. Part 1, "Language Socialization at Home," includes: (1) "Transforming…