Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Recycling waste soaps from hotels : bachelor thesis

Sapuni su kemijski spojevi, produkti neutralizacije masnih kiselina alkalijama. Upotreba sapuna kao sredstva za pranje, emulgiranje i geliranje je posljedica detergentnih svojstava sapuna (površinska napetost, pjenjenje, ubrzanje kvašenja površine i emulgiranja) te nastanka gel-struktura. Detergenti, čiji je dobar predstavnik sapun, su skupina površinski aktivnih tvari, koje zbog toga mogu obavljati funkciju čišćenja. U današnje vrijeme, u različitim smještajnim turističkim objektima postoje veće količine upotrijebljenih, a neiskorištenih sapuna. Kao i za ostali otpad, nastoji se pronaći održivi način oporabe. Proizvodnja sapuna regulirana je i strogo kontrolirana zakonima i pravilnicima te je vrlo teško uspostaviti ekonomičan postupak njegovog recikliranja. Zadatak ovog završnog rada bio je recikliranje otpadnog sapuna iz hotela uz dodatak vode, bojila i mirisa, u svrhu dobivanja proizvoda prihvatljivih svojstava. Kombinacijom tri otpadna sapuna dobiven je reciklirani sapun koji se može upotrijebiti.Soaps are chemical compounds, fatty acid neutralization products. The use of soap as a washing, emulsifying and gelling agent is a consequence of detergent properties of soap (surface tension, foaming, surface dampening and emulsification) and the formation of a gel structure. Detergents, which a typical represent at ives are soaps, are a group of surfactants, which can be used for cleaning purposes. Today, there are large quantities of used and unused soaps in different tourist accommodation facilities. Like other waste, it tries to find a viable way of recovery. The production of soap is regulated and strictly controlled by laws and regulations, and it is very difficult to establish an economical procedure for its recycling. The task of this final work was to recycle waste soaps from the hotel with the addition of water, dyes and odors, in order to obtain products of acceptable properties. Combining of three waste soaps, a recycled soap, which can be used, is obtained

The Beginnings of Wikipedia Masry

Having been officially launched in 2008 by a group of young Egyptian internet users, Wikipedia Masry became the first Wikipedia to be collaboratively written in one of the colloquial varieties of Arabic - Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA). This has caused a lot of controversy and criticism in numerous forums, blogs, and Facebook groups, both in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. In this article, I discuss the ideological background of this project which is grounded in territorial Egyptian nationalism and articulated around the claim that, rather than a dialect, ECA is a separate language, completely different and independent from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). My analysis of several lexical, morpho-syntactic and orthographic characteristics found in Wikipedia Masry articles demonstrates that a lot of what active contributors to Wikipedia Masry write is, in fact, an admixture of ECA and MSA. Despite the contributors' insistence on linguo-ideological claims that they write in the 'Egyptian language', many linguistic features of their language production reveal that the resultant written discourse of Wikipedia Masry still relies on MSA.Published versio

Specific features of jihadist terrorism

The political phenomenon known as “terrorism” is lately omnipresent in everyday life, with an ever higher tendency to develop and attract more attention. Islamism is a term denoting all political ideologies which believe that Islam is not only a religion but that it represents also a political system that is supposed to be a legislative basis as well as the source of principles for the country’s social and governmental structure. Human blood shedding entails the punishment both on earth and in heaven, but the Muslim community can wage wars under clearly defined conditions. According to the Koran, the Muslims have to fight on the Path of God and their ideal have to be the Prophet with his war comrades. Jihad is a constant effort of the man to be exemplary and good during life; the fight against internal evil; the fight for moral living; the effort of doing good deeds; and the participation in the reconstruction of society, for the common welfare. Believers’ life circumstances determine the meaning, and thus Jihad can mean the fight against oppression and injustice, but also the fight for defense and spreading of the Islamic religion, through preaching and teaching, and if necessary even through armed struggle, namely the “holy war”. The radical followers of Islam, supporters of the ideology of Islamism, believe in and aspire to apply the assertions of the Koran in public life, and aim to impose their ideological views on others as well. Detailed analysis brings a conclusion that the United States have had the highest direct influence on the global spread of Islamic terrorism. Due to their political errors, American politicians have directly contributed to drawing the attention of radical Islam on themselves. Suicide bomber actions are characteristic for jihadist terrorism. However, none of the world religions, Islam included, advises or supports illegal violence, and therefore Islam is misused for terrorist purposes

‘You don't have enough letters to make this noise’ : Arabic speakers' creative engagements with the Roman script

Drawing on data collected primarily among young Egyptians, in this paper I discuss script-fusing – a literacy and semiotic practice of combining letters from two scripts, in this case Arabic and Roman, within a single word. I focus on its employment in digital environments, particularly Twitter, where some Arabic speakers adopt it to stylize their screen names. As a springboard for an analysis of the metalinguistic commentary on this practice, provided by several Twitter users and one Egyptian graphic designer, I offer a historicized interpretive framework for thinking through its creative potential and social semiotics by discussing it against the backdrop of Franco, an alternative way of writing Arabic using the Roman script supplemented by digits. Franco practices emerged as a response to technological constraints in the early days of the internet when Arabic script was not supported. This is no longer the case, but Franco has nevertheless not disappeared: not only is it still occasionally used for digital writing, it has also become a literacy resource used in a variety of offline domains. I argue that, instead of becoming redundant for writing Arabic, the Roman script is being further appropriated, resemiotized and aestheticized through acts of fusion with the Arabic script. Its cultural biography in Egypt (and arguably the Arab world) thus shows itself as a trajectory from a practically oriented, often contested, creative working around the technologically-induced lack of script choice, to an aesthetically, and at times ideologically, motivated engagement with the current profusion of linguistic and semiotic resources that are creatively blended together in acts of indexing and, indeed, iconicizing modern Egyptian and Arab cosmopolitanisms

Writing practices in contemporary Egypt

This thesis is an ethnographically grounded description and interpretation of a variety of writing practices observable in an Arabic speaking community, primarily on the Internet. Working with, or in reaction to, the concept of diglossia, of which Arabic sociolinguistic setting is often cited as a textbook example, the majority of scholars have focused their attention on speech as a major site of language variation and mixing. Writing has been largely neglected. This thesis is a contribution to what I hope will become a growing number of works aimed at filling that lacuna.I examine linguistic features of a number of, mostly non-literary, texts in contemporary Egypt where Modern Standard Arabic (Fuṣḥa) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ˤAmmiyya) constitute the theoretical poles of the diglossic continuum. The Egyptian sociolinguistic setting, however, is here understood as being defined and reconfigured by the increasing socio‑economic importance of yet another linguistic variety – English.The analysis of linguistic details is conducted with reference to a broader socio‑cultural context and local language ideologies surrounding the production and reception of a rapidly growing number of texts that employ a variety of features and draw on different linguistic resources, thus often defying, in the outcome, the hegemonic ideological projection that writing is the domain of Fuṣḥa.In order to offer an account of a dynamic, changing and diversified character of writing practices in present‑day Egypt, illustrative examples are drawn from a number of different texts and domains of writing, including Wikipedia Masry, Twitter, Facebook, advertisements, online campaigns for political and social causes, as well as books. The inventory of linguistic resources variously employed by various writers in various circumstances is identified to contain re-combinations across three linguistic varieties, Fuṣḥa, ˤAmmiyya and English, and two scripts, Arabic and Latin.</p

Working with Written Discourse

Addressing the practicalities of research, and embracing the complexity and variety of written forms of language, this book grounds readers in a broad range of concepts, debates and relevant methods focuses on both theoretical questions and the ‘how to’ of analysis; is loaded with practical activities and advice on the design and execution of research; highlights computer-mediated communication and new media discourse, from text messages and tweets to mobile phone novels and online encyclopedias; draws on data from international and multilingual communities. The perfect companion to Deborah Cameron's best-selling Working with Spoken Discourse, this book equips readers with practical and conceptual tools to ask questions about written discourse, and to analyse the huge variety of texts that make up our linguistic landscape. It is the essential guide for students of discourse analysis in linguistics, media and communication studies, and for social researchers across the social sciences

Accessing Egypt: making myths and producing web sites in cyber-Cairo

From an anthropological viewpoint, “accessibility” is not so much a technological and design project as it is a cultural construction, a cognitive schema through which graphic designers and technologists imagine audiences and create appropriate graphic designs that will be “accessible” to that audience. The ethnographer's task is the specification of key actors, institutions and discourses active in the making and remaking of accessibility in a given context. In this article, we examine how Egyptian Web producers at the turn of millennium (1999–2001) sought to design Web portals that would allow the “typical” Egyptian to easily access the World Wide Web. We argue, first, that Egyptian Web producers are deeply influenced by national and international discourses that frame IT as a national mission for socioeconomic development. Second, we found that in the absence of clear definitions of the Web audience, Web producers imagined a “typical” Egyptian that contradicted their own experiences of users of the Web. Finally, we found that Egyptian Web producers largely borrowed pre-existing models, using design elements to “inflect” their sites with an Egyptian motif. However, the conceptual models of access and related design strategies created by Egyptian Web producers were out of touch with Egyptian social realities, contributing to a collapse of most Web portal projects

Writing practices in contemporary Egypt : an ethnographic approach

This thesis is an ethnographically grounded description and interpretation of a variety of writing practices observable in an Arabic speaking community, primarily on the Internet. Working with, or in reaction to, the concept of diglossia, of which Arabic sociolinguistic setting is often cited as a textbook example, the majority of scholars have focused their attention on speech as a major site of language variation and mixing. Writing has been largely neglected. This thesis is a contribution to what I hope will become a growing number of works aimed at filling that lacuna. I examine linguistic features of a number of, mostly non-literary, texts in contemporary Egypt where Modern Standard Arabic (Fuṣḥa) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ˤAmmiyya) constitute the theoretical poles of the diglossic continuum. The Egyptian sociolinguistic setting, however, is here understood as being defined and reconfigured by the increasing socio‑economic importance of yet another linguistic variety – English. The analysis of linguistic details is conducted with reference to a broader socio‑cultural context and local language ideologies surrounding the production and reception of a rapidly growing number of texts that employ a variety of features and draw on different linguistic resources, thus often defying, in the outcome, the hegemonic ideological projection that writing is the domain of Fuṣḥa. In order to offer an account of a dynamic, changing and diversified character of writing practices in present‑day Egypt, illustrative examples are drawn from a number of different texts and domains of writing, including Wikipedia Masry, Twitter, Facebook, advertisements, online campaigns for political and social causes, as well as books. The inventory of linguistic resources variously employed by various writers in various circumstances is identified to contain re-combinations across three linguistic varieties, Fuṣḥa, ˤAmmiyya and English, and two scripts, Arabic and Latin.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Multilingualism among the elderly Chinese in Singapore : an oral account

This study aims to qualitatively document the histories of Singapore's Chinese multilingual elderly. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven Chinese Singaporeans aged 75 years and above on how and why they acquired the languages they speak and their attitudes towards these linguistic varieties, of which many are declining in usage. Five participants were multilingual and spoke three or more languages fluently; two spoke only two languages and were included for a balanced and holistic perspective. Common themes from the interviews were identified and discussed. One key finding was that communicative necessity and practicality naturally fuelled language learning. Outside of the home, multilingual individuals acquired varieties from conversing with friends, relatives and customers, or as an educational requirement. Language was tied to ethnic belonging, but, generally, pride to speak a linguistic variety was linked to its functional value, not its associated ethnic identity. Unhappiness was expressed at the waning of the Chinese vernaculars and Baba Malay in Singapore today. Such language loss was seen as a sombre, but unavoidable consequence of Singapore's globalisation and modernisation.Nanyang Technological UniversityPublished versionThe researchers wish to acknowledge the funding support for this project from Nanyang Technological University under the Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme