JEDDAH: The office of the Cultural Attache at the Saudi Embassy in Rome is set to celebrate World Arabic Language Day on Tuesday in partnership with King Abdullah Center for Serving Arabic Language.
The office will organize a number of workshops for the youth, especially on literal translation from Arabic into Italian and Arabic calligraphy.
A roundtable conference of academics and experts is also scheduled. A panel discussion will be held on the mechanism and proposed programs to increase the outreach of the Arabic Language Coordinating Council in non-Arab countries.
Several events are organized on this day to acknowledge the Arabic language’s immense contribution to science and culture, including philosophy and the arts. With more than 290 million native speakers, and millions of others gaining some level of fluency, it is one of the five most spoken languages in the world.
The event was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010 with a view to promoting cultural diversity and the equal use of its six official working languages throughout the organization.
December 18 was chosen as the date for the annual celebration of Arabic Language as it was “the day in 1973 when the General Assembly approved Arabic as an official UN Language”. The day is also called World Arabic Language Day (WALD). Other official languages of the UN General Assembly are English, French, Russian, Spanish and Chinese.
As a popular practice in this part of the world, most UNESCO-related days of the UN are marked by schools and organizations with literary and cultural activities including seminars, plays, short stories or poetry competitions.
Such activities are equally expected in observing WALD in order to showcase the history and richness of Arabic Language. (You can remove these 2 paragraphs if you want)
Arabic is a language with rich history that is spoken by 422 million native speakers and used by about 1.5 billion Muslims around the world including UNESCO’s 22-member states. Although not many people and nations associate the Arabic language or Arab scholars with the early beginnings of science, probably due to arabophobia or Islamophobia; the contribution of Arab philosophers made mainly through the Arabic language to the development of science, medicine, mathematics and literature through ages cannot be disowned.
