Letter to the Editor | More Arabic speakers in Africa

I want to draw your attention to the error contained in the Opinions piece, "Administration must re-organize Chinese and Japanese Studies: Majors are being shortchanged by conflation of Asian cultures" (4.23.09) by Rob Woodward '09. Woodward's statement that "[Arabic] is being offered through the Africana Studies Program, despite being mainly spoken on the Asian continent and in the Pacific region," is misleading and wrong. While I appreciate Woodward's call for greater commitment by Vassar to the development of Japanese, Chinese and Arabic languages and cultures, such a call cannot be premised on erroneous information.

The largest number of Arabic speakers in the world live in Africa, not in Asia and the Pacific region. The majority of countries—Algeria, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia—that have Arabic as their official language are in Africa. Arabic is also spoken in several other African countries including Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Somalia and Tanzania. Furthermore, the linguistic classification of Arabic put it within the principal language family known as Afro-Asiatic, which contains sub-families spanning Africa and West Asia. I hope that this clarifies that Arabic was not thoughtlessly "lumped" into Africana Studies.
 

—Ismail Rashid, Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies.