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The self-humiliating Eritreans through the Arabic connection

The self-humiliating Eritreans through the Arabic connection Quote of the moment: “You cannot get tired of love but you get tired of fear”; Carlos Santana. Confession: I don’t know about you but I am a universal human being

The self-humiliating Eritreans through the Arabic connection
Quote of the moment: “You cannot get tired of love but you get tired of fear”; Carlos Santana.
Confession: I don’t know about you but I am a universal human being made in Eritrea from the Tigrigna speaking Christian background, though I have no religion to worship, only spirituality!
I am a materialist that adopted Buddhism later on in life as my spiritual way of life (not religion) and I respect any religion in this world equally. I have chosen to exit from this imposed identity in seeing the Eritrean situation neutrally, thus to write whatever I have to write without fear and inhibition. I am neither a politician with personal interest in the country nor am I a person that shies away from saying my mind to satisfy a group or an individual: that is what you get from me. What is amazing is that people keep quiet when I say what I think of the Tigrigna speaking people which I consider one of the main problems of unity and cry loud when I do it on other similar ethnic groups. Seriously, I don’t care about this because I know I am neutral in this experience. I let you deal with your bias on your own psychological turf! I will equally condemn the elements of division from the Christians, the Jeberties and the Moslems and I have been consistent on this. You can cry loud when it comes to your ethnic or religious group but I will continue moving on without a problem. Once again, I challenge issues with evidence not with prejudice and I condemn the Kebessian elites not the people (Christians and Jeberties) and some destructive and backward individuals from other ethnic groups that use religion for their personal interest without a second thought.
Don’t expect anything from me except my truth, a subjective truth that may not have anything to do with the objective reality. I have no time to entertain anything for personal reasons but to fearlessly tell my mind free of bias. Few people may accuse me of being prejudiced against the Jeberties but can they accuse me of bashing the Tigrigna Christians as well based on my frank opinion on that ethnic group? This is hypocrisy if they don’t and I tell them to live with it if they want but I don’t care. I am telling you that I will say anything I have to say without being afraid of your opinion of me. Enjoy what you think of me but it would not affect my spirituality in any way nor would it pressurize me to distort my reality for the sake of your positive opinion. END
I had an article on the confusing Eritreans that conduct meetings with two Languages Arabic and Tigrigna for no other reason than pretension, ego and unnecessary attachment to Arabic. They do it thinking they were practicing democracy without knowing what they practice was a unique radical democracy never experienced in history.
Now, from that forum:
Hagherawi: ”The issue of languages has to do with “Official languages” policy of those in power, rather than ordinary Eritreans. One possible solution will be to have one official language: English. While Tigrigna and Arabic can be used in unofficial situations and in mass media. Nowadays, many Eritrean families (Christians and Muslims) prefer to send their kids to English medium schools. A few generation down the road there won’t be any language issue in Eritrea.
Comment: A lot better than our current primitive situation. I don’t see anything wrong with this suggestion and I agree that this may solve the problem, while simultaneously strengthening the Eritrean unity. I rather see the communities do their meetings in English rather than swinging us between Tigrigna and Arabic for no purpose other than insecurity.
MightyEmbasoyra: Even though I don’t speak Tigre, I would support it to be the one and only one national language of Eritrea. I think that would help unite us. Besides, how hard can it be?
Comment: This idea is even better than having English to solve the problem though we can use both if we want. Tigre is the solution in my opinion for this crisis. None of our languages can emasculate Tigre because it is as old if not older than Tigrigna, a direct child of Geez in the region. Tigre directly connects the Christian and Moslem highlanders to Geez, the foundation of their original language to be considered as equally prestigious as Tigrigna. In the flip, Tigre is spoken by majority Eritrean Moslems thus strongly represents our Moslem population as well. Therefore, as Mighty said, it can unite us better needless to say that it will stop the stagnation of Eritrean life because of the impossible to understand Tigrigna/Arabic feud, something that is in the way of the Eritrean society’s development and harmony. Anything even Amharic is better than talking two languages in every meeting; this has to stop one way or another and immediately!!!!
Tes: “I have to admit how frustrated I get in Eritrean meeting when I sat to listen an alien language Arabic as my official languages. I don’t know how and why we are strangling ourselves by this inconvenience to say the least. It is completely foreign, no region or ethnic speak that language in Eritrea. It make it worse the Arab treat us and to the black people as whole as subhuman or equal to dogs. So why do we need to associate ourselves with them in anyway … you go far away from them and their language.
Response: I hear you brother! I feel down when they do that and it sometimes looks like they were reading scripts for a movie; unfortunately this is real. How long can we go like this and for what? What a problem and how may the few foreigners that attend our meetings think of us? How may the Arabs that discriminate us further undermine us as a society? This is like begging to slave for someone that considers you inferior. It is embarrassing for a society to do this in 21st century. I Agree with Tes that Arabic was foreign to Eritreans and that Arabs racially discriminate and undermine all Eritreans irrespective of religion with reservation, though it is one of our languages via the Rashaida ethnic group. We, however, did not dignify Arabic for our Rashaidas or any Eritrean ethnic group’s sake but for something strange I cannot understand.
Further, it is true that Arabs racially discriminate black Africans like us and no Eritrean is an Arab by origin except the Rashaidas, therefore we have no reason to respect Arabic more than our own languages to satisfy the weird desire of few Eritrean elites that don’t represent their communities. I cannot imagine our Moslems respecting Arabic more than their native languages and I believe this convoluted misuse is imposed on us all by the few elites that want to relate themselves with the Arabs just because the Holy Koran was written in Arabic. This is not Arab-bashing but a valid argument that must be taken seriously by the elites responsible for this disaster.
To me the only justification for Arabic to be our national language may be because of our Rashaidas and not because of the Holly Koran. I don’t see any good reason for the rest of our people to infatuate with the Arabs to the point of having their language dominating our native languages. I cannot respect Arabic more than Tigre and all other Eritrean languages nor can I disrespect my people by imposing a foreign language over theirs. Arabic in our country should stop at the Holy Koran paradigm of our society because it is foreign to us Eritreans.….Period>
Tes: “I respect and love Islam as a religion when it is not associated with Arab. When I was a child I had many Moslem uncles/aunts and AMOY Halima was my favorite. We were so close big family, good time. Lot of respect to each other faiths. Never heard them speaking Arabic but saho and tigrigna. My family [] also speaks both languages saho and tigrigna. This was inherited for years down to generation after generation. Then now Arab was a central issue of discontent especial by the diaspora Moslem brothers. Why? I didn’t know. Do they want to be Arabs? I don’t even want them. Why then? To conclude it, what I think is that in Eritrea the two official language should be Tigrigna and Tigre and allowing the other minorities to use their language in their region in a way they see fit i mean those Kunama, Afar , saho and so forth. Otherwise using Arab is lack of self respect. It gets us nowhere.”
Comment: Our people in general respect their languages, the reason AMOY Halima had no problem using them to communicate with others in her community. I cannot imagine her respecting Arabic more than her languages because there is no reason for that, needless to state that she might not even understand it. Who decides this for our people more than themselves any way and what is the justification to impose this on our people without referendum? We need to get out of this self-humiliating practice as soon as we can even through referendum if necessary! Let the individuals with this fascination practice it in their privacy but we need to reject it as much as we can because we are not Arabs.
Selamawit2: “I think the language of the majority should be the official language of a country.
If the origin (!) Tigre speakers are really the majority in Eritrea; then of course it should be Tigre. But the statistics should be valid!”
Abraham Haile: “Language = Communication=Communication=Communication, Period.
Language is neither religion nor tribe. All religion of different communities can access a sole Language. In Egypt, Moslems and Christians, use one Language regardless to their ethnic origin. Why could be different in Eritrea? All we need is Education, we shouldn’t relate the language with our religion. I believe that we are solely responsible to educate ourselves and start to see things openly and honestly. This is not like a person of my faith is the only close person, brother or sister to me, let us grow up and think collectively and fairly. Let us leave religion in our house. Religion is a private matter. First, let us fight for liberty and then people will settle the language and flag problems. “
ማሊሻ: ‘ኣብ ታሪኽ ዓለምን ፣ ኣብ ነዊሕ ዛንታ ሰብን ብጭብጢ እተረጋገጸ ሓቂ እንተሎ እዚ እዩ። ዝኾነ ይኹንሕብረተሰብ ወይ ህዝቢ ፣ ንሕሉፍ ናይ ዘመናት ታሪኹ ዝጸልእ ፣ ውርሻኡ ዝንዕቕ ፣ መረበቱ ወይ ትውልዲ ዓዱዝኽሕድ ፣ ቋንቋታቱ ብባርዕ ዘልምስ ፣ ቅርስታቱ ዘፍርስ ፣ ባህልታቱ ስርዓቱ ዘድፍር ፣ ደቂ ሩባኡን ጎዶቦታቱንዘየኽብር ፣ ይትረፍ መሪሕነት ክጭብጥን ሃገር ክኣልን ፣ ናይ ገዛእ ርእሱ ሉኣላዊት ሃገርን መሬትን ውን ከቶኣይግበኦን እዩ።”
Keren: “There are 22 Arab nations to worry about Arabic language. It is not Eritrea’s responsibility to protect Arabic language by law and to denigrate a truly indigenous Eritrean languages such as Tigre. Eritrea has only a legal responsibility to protect Eritrean languages. If one wants to study in alien languages such as Italian, Arabic, Chinese or Amharic, it is not Eritrea’s legal responsibility. It becomes your own personal responsibility.”
Arabic and the Moslem community of the world VS National language
In discussing this topic, I found the following comment important to start with:
Tes: Yes there were/are thousands of Eritrea migrants in Arab states including Sudan so do other people from Asia. Does that make the Bangladesh or Philippine to change their official language to Arab? I don’t think so.”
 
There are about 22 Arabic countries around (Keren’s information) and 48 Muslim majority countries overall. Many countries in the world have Moslems that relate to the Koran, which is written in Arabic. The question is how they relate to Arabic based on this reality. In the Arabic countries, the native language is Arabic and they genuinely and appropriately use it for national language irrespective of the Koran’s linguistic format. The fact remains that majority Moslem societies only relate to Arabic through the Koran, nothing for otherwise. We will see this down the line in the process and I will concretely substantiate my argument that we artificially relate to Arabic more than any other Moslem societies in the world. Please challenge me on the merit not on your emotion!
Check this out:
Pakistan (97% Moslems) uses Urdu and English as its national language.
Bangladesh (89% Moslems) uses Bengali and English as its national language.
Nigeria (50% Moslems) uses English as its national language.
Turkey (99.8% Moslems) uses Turkish as its national language.
Iran (98%// Moslems) uses Persian as its national language.
Afghanistan (99% Moslems) uses Pashto and Dari Urdu as its national language.
Malaysia (61%// Moslems) uses Malay as its national language.
Uzbekistan (88%// Moslems) uses Uzbek as its national language.
Kazxakistan (57%// Moslems) uses Kazakh and Russian as its national language.
Niger (90%// Moslems) uses French as its national language.
Burkinafasso (52%// Moslems) uses French as its national language.
Mali (90%// Moslems) uses French as its national language.
Senegal (94% Moslems) uses French as its national language.
Guinea (89%// Moslems) uses French as its national language.
Sieraleone (60%// Moslems) uses English as its national language.
Gambia (90%// Moslems) uses English as its national language.
Sudan (97%//Moslems) uses Arabic and English as its national languages.
Somalia (99%// Moslems) uses Arabic and Somali as its national languages.
Djibouti (94%// Moslems) uses Arabic and French as its national languages.
Libya (96.6 Moslems) use Arabic because they are native Arabs. So does Tunisia.
Morocco: Morocco is an Arab-Islamic country located in North Africa. The two official languages are Modern Standard Arabic and BerberMoroccan Arabic (known as Darija) is the spoken native vernacular. The languages ofprestige in Morocco are Arabic in its Classical and Modern Standard Forms and the French language, the latter of which serves as a second languagefor many Moroccans. There is a general agreement that Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber are the national languages.”
Yet, we know that a democratically elected MORSI of Egypt was overthrown when he tried to dictate the society with diehard Islamic tendencies. The Moslem majority rejected him because they understood the problem of mixing religion with politics. This dictatorship did not work in many Moslem dominated countries, thus the Egyptians quickly stopped it from messing up their society.
Comment: Eritrea is not registered in the list of countries with majority Moslem population but they say that it is divided equally between Moslems and Christians (roughly 50% each). Looking at the list of all countries with majority Moslem population, one cannot help noticing that they all use their own or colonial languages for national language with the exception of our neighbors Djibouti and Somalia.
Why Arabic in Djibouti and Somalia?
Considering Arabic language as native in Sudan, I tend to exclude the Sudanese from this discussion because it is logical for them to use it as a national language.
Djibouti and Somalia are the only exceptions in the list that use Arabic as their national language.
Djibouti is a multilingual country. According to Ethnologue, the majority of the population speaks Somali (297,200 speakers) or Afar(99,200 speakers) as a first language, which are the mother tonguesof the Somali and Afar ethnic groups, respectively. Both languages belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic family.“ Further, “The languages ofDjibouti include Arabic and French (official), and Somali and Afar (primary)”. While they stay consistent with other societies in using a colonial language (French), they sideline their native languages for the sake of Arabic in so far as the national language is concerned. This is unique compared to the rest of the Moslem world. This country is at least 94% Moslem and the people may not mind using Arabic because of the common religion for all, though I still consider this situation as the only one that respects a foreign language more than the native languages. Djibouti respects a colonial language like many other colonized Moslems in the world and the Arabic more than its indigenous Somali and Afar languages. Let them figure it out, it is none of my business! I, however, believe that the people of this country may be in harmony on the usage of Arabic as a national language because the society is more or less religiously homogeneous (almost all are Moslems).
Somalia (99%// Moslems) uses Arabic and Somali for its national languages. This society speaks only one language and it is almost fully Moslem in region. Their choice of Arabic for a national language along their native Somali appears okay to me. They have their language as a national language at the same importance level of Arabic. They chose to go with Arabic instead of with Italian or English (colonial languages) and I kind of justify the choice as something logically defendable. They only have one language any way and they use it as a national language appropriately. I don’t think this society has a problem with this as it so seems to be.The difference of the Somalian approach and other Moslems’ is that Somalians did not consider their colonial languages as important as either their native Somali or the Arabic. Somalia may then be one of the few societies that rejects colonial languages and that uses Arabic instead, for a national language at equal level of significance with Somali. In their situation, no native language is undermined and adding Arabic in the list of their national languages does not contradict the dignity of the people at all.
Eritrea’s unique connection with Arabic
Research says that none of the non-Arab Moslem dominated countries in the world use ARABIC for a national language except Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti. Yet the Somalians only speak Somali and are all Moslems and also have their native language for a national language along with Arabic. One more time, they have no other languages to consider for a national language except Somali and they chose Arabic as well because of their religiously homogeneous society (all Moslems).There is no conflict of interest here in my opinion and you can not accuse the society for choosing Arabic instead of the colonial languages for Italian, English and Arabic were all foreign to them that picking one does not undermine their native Somali.
Djibouti is so far the only society that sidelines its native languages (Somali and Afar) in favor of a colonial language (French) and the foreign Arabic.
Eritrea, however, rejects the colonial languages Amharic and Italian acknowledging a foreign language ARABIC as important as Tigrigna but more important than the rest of our languages including the popular TIGRE. There is a serious contradiction here unlike elsewhere in the world. This is a unique phenomenon only practiced in Eritrea.
Our country therefore stands alone with Djibouti (94% Moslem) for undermining its native languages in favor of Arabic yet with about 50% or less Moslem population. We are the only country that accepted Arabic for no justifiable reason because of dictatorship from our few Moslem elites that do not represent their communities. It is self-degrading without valid excuses. All this given, I do believe we are the only people that complicate our relationship and kill the society’s life by alternating between Tigrigna and Arabic in meetings. No other society practices this nonsense! We should therefore replace Arabic with Tigre, the Eritrean native to get out of this self-imposed entrapment! I declare that the Holy Koran was misused in Eritrea for the first time in history where Arabic became a national language suppressing most of our languages for no convincing reason in complete opposite to how the majority Moslem countries relate with the Holy Koran.Something is wrong here that needs a serious attention of the Eritrean people to rectify.  Eritrean languages in general Tigre included are discriminated in their motherland in favor of the foreigner Arabic in the name of the Holy Koran unlike elsewhere on this planetArabic did not stop being a national language in a place where it is not indigenous but also allowed to complicate our life by interfering in our communication unnecessarily and illegally stealing half of our society’s essentialism. We need to debate on this and save our society from the imposed contradiction that cannot help us in any way. Let us fight for Tigre, the legitimate Eritrean language that deserves equal status as Tigrigna: let us fight to replace the Arabic by our Tigre and save the society from degrading itself and dragging its life without any justification. We need to respect the right of any Eritrean to associate with any society in the world but Arabic is not more important than any of our languages and specially Tigre to us Eritreans. It is irrelevant to our society and therefore we have no reason to respect it more than ours. We should relate to the Holy Koran like how the entire Moslem societies of the world relate to it because it does not make sense for us to invent a special relationship with Arabic at the expense of self-disrespect and our own languages and specially Tigre (popularity wise only not because it was better than our other languages from the minority ethnic groups).
To finalize this, I have a question that must be answered by individuals in the other side of the fence: Why should I respect Arabic more than Tigre, Kunama, and Saho etc. and why should it be our national language? Please convince us through debate not through sentiment, anger and silence! Should we have a problem here, let a referendum decide between Tigre and Arabic in our country and resolve this debacle once and for all.
Dawit (Geez) Vs. Koran (Arabic) as a matter of consistency.
If Arabic has to be a national language because of the Holy Koran should we then make Geez a national language because the DAWIT was written in Geez? My answer is YES! You better justify this if you want to be consistent. Eritreans cannot be double standard here. Our Moslem population must allow the Geez for a national language should they accept Arabic for one in order to be coherent and the Christians must consider this to secure their equality in the country. Should religion dictate the validity of our national languages, we should make Arabic and Geez the national languages of Eritrea because of the Arabic connection to the Holy Koran and the Geez connection to the Holy Dawit.
This is a genuine question because Geez is the mother of our most popular languages where as Arabic is irrelevant and foreign. The compromise here must land us accepting Arabic and Geez for our national languages should we decide to accept Arabic as one. Instead though, we will be better off making Tigrigna and Tigre our national languages but if few elites have the right to impose Arabic on us, I fight back for my freedom to impose Geez on the society. Let us mess it up by changing everything the hard way should we stay committed to Arabic (making Geez a national language as well). The advocates of Arabic should zip their mouth in the process of Eritreans making Geez their national language and should in fact support this proposal because they cannot have the cake and eat it too. Yet, we would be the first society on earth doing this inconvenient nonsense.
In conclusion; there is no doubt that some Eritreans have been isolated by few spoilers of unity to search for another identity in response. But they should fight back with the good majority to stop the few dictators from affecting us as a unit rather than identifying with societies that discriminate Africans through the ARABIC language. They should glorify and defend their original values rather than detaching from in favor of an alien society and language. Once again, I feel sorry for the people suffering from the cause of this problem but I cannot justify their desperate approach that only exasperates the problem. We can build the confidence of our minorities together through genuine approach and let us start doing it right now.
Down with linguistic dictatorship in Eritrea. Down with artificial identification imposed on Eritreans by few elites that don’t represent their ethnic groups.Down with individuals that pollute politics with religion and ethnicity. Down with the self degrading mentality through irrational attachment to societies that have the history of enslaving colored people including us, the East Africans. Long live the indigenous Eritrean languages and democracy!!

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132 COMMENTS
  • Banaadiri March 2, 2018

    This man is ignorant and writes like a scholar who knows it all. Sudan, Somalia, and Djibouti are all Arab countries in all aspects cultural historical or ancestral. You are ignorant of somalia, it’s history and ways so dont make ridiculous comments.

  • Banaadiri March 2, 2018

    This man wants to deny and destroy his Arab origions, take a DNA test of any Eritrean or Amhara person and ypu wil see you are more Arab than anything else. what a fool, He wants to deny somali ancestral history from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and iraq too. He is so uneducated that he thinks Sudan too is not Arab.

    • Jiqna May 9, 2018

      Man shut up man does DNA test are false. If you think your an Arab then you are a fool. All of Africans i know here in Europe prase the Eritreans because we are proud to be African and they despise the Somalis because some call them self arb. Keep that bullshit out of our Countrie.

      Proud Eritrean, Proud Tigrinya and proud African. We will die for our identity.

      You must be scrazy loool

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