Speaking the Same Language

Gulf News has a feature on a linguistics professor at the American University of Sharjah who thinks that the top five languages used throughout the UAE are English, Arabic, Urdu, Malayalam and Hindi (http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/02/20/10105942.html). Dr Fatima Badri, English and Linguistics professor at the American University of Sharjah, says that the empahais on learning English could endanger "mother languages".

The most striking part of her thesis is that, while there is waning interest in Arabic in the Arab world, there are increasing numbers of non-Arabic speakers learning the language. Pointing to Arabic’s decline, the 2003 UN Arab Human Development Report said that only 10,000 books were translated into Arabic in the last millennium - equivalent to the number translated into Spanish every year.

In the “2015 Dubai Strategic Plan” HH Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, stressed the importance of the language in the preservation of the UAE's national identity.
Unesco reckons that over 50 per cent of the world's 6,000 languages are endangered. 96 per cent of the world's 6,000 languages are spoken by 4 per cent of the world's population, and 90 per cent of the world's languages are not represented on the internet. Most shockingly, one language disappears every two weeks.