The Arabic Language Between Preservation and Development: Historical Balance and Contemporary Challenges اللغة العربية بين الحفاظ والتطوير: توازن تاريخي وتحديات معاصرة

Abstract

The topic chosen is "The Arabic Language Between Preservation and Development: Historical Balance and Contemporary Challenges." This is because Arabic represents the cornerstone of the cultural and civilizational identity of more than 422 million native speakers and serves as the language of the Holy Quran, which connects over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. In the age of globalization and artificial intelligence, the language faces existential challenges such as the dominance of English, the spread of colloquial dialects and Arabizi (Arabic written in Latin script), and the digital divide. Preserving Arabic is not merely a cultural luxury but a strategic necessity for national security and scientific progress. The research aims to highlight the historical balance between maintaining the authenticity of the Arabic language (particularly its standard form, Fus'ha) and developing it to keep pace with the modern era. It also seeks to analyze contemporary challenges and propose a new practical model called "Sustainable Development through Preservation." This model relies on integrating computational linguistics and artificial intelligence with the classical grammatical heritage, without compromising the integrity of Standard Arabic, in order to strengthen Arab identity and support sustainable development. The study adopts a descriptive, analytical, and historical methodology. The descriptive approach presents the current and historical reality; the analytical approach dissects the challenges and compares various efforts; and the historical approach traces the language’s evolution from the Abbasid era to modern language academies. Successful Historical Balance: Arabic has successfully preserved its grammatical and morphological structure while demonstrating flexibility in absorbing new concepts, especially during the Abbasid era through institutions like the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom). The Arabic Language Academy in Cairo (founded in 1932) established modern dictionaries (Al-Waseet and Al-Kabeer) and developed scientific terminology based on derivation (ishtiqaq) and Arabization (ta’rib). Contemporary Challenges: 1.External Dominance: The teaching of sciences in English in many universities (for example, up to 70% in some Gulf countries), which creates linguistic duality.2.. Internal Marginalization: The widespread use of "Arabizi" (reaching up to 60% on social media) and colloquial dialects.3. Digital Challenges: Arabic content on the internet does not exceed 3-5%, along with difficulties faced by artificial intelligence in processing Arabic diacritics (tashkeel) and morphology4. Opportunities for Development: The integration of preservation and development is possible through artificial intelligence tools such as Jais and AceGPT, which can generate consistent terminology while maintaining the role of human linguistic committees