Does the Concept of Compromise Exist in the Arab Psyche? -

[Batman]

Does the Concept of Compromise Exist in the Arab Psyche? -

I suspect that the concept of compromise does not exist in the Arab culture. On the contrary, to compromise might even represent a dishonorable act. Though not an expert in linguistics, nor a sociologist, and not a speaker of Arabic, I would like to explain how I arrived at this observation.


Israel was able to make a peace with Jordan and Egypt because compromise was not necessary. Their demand for the return of every inch of land captured in a war initiated by the Arabs was fulfilled. With the Palestinians the situation is different. To
make any headway, there must be compromise. The offer made to Arafat by Barak was rejected out right by Arafat without a counter proposal.Arafat just could not compromise he wanted and still wants everything.


I then asked myself does the concept of compromise exist in the Arab culture? Is there a word for compromisein Arabic? I base my premise on the possibility that if a word does not exist in a peoples vocabulary, then most likely the concept does not exist in their culture or way of life. Bearing these questions in mind I began my own little research project. In Hebrew the word for compromise" is Pshara ask anyone who knows Hebrew and without any hesitation he or she will say Pshara. Put the word ompromisein an electronic dictionaryand you get P’shara. Put the Hebrew word in the same electronic dictionary and you get compromise.


I did the same with Arabic using an electronic dictionary (for examples: click here). The result showed that there is no
one word in Arabic for compromise. There are phrases attempting to depict compromise but no single word specificaly meaning compromise. In fact, one word when translated back to English also means shame/disgrace. I have asked Arabic
speakers and not one was able to blurt out a word. I heard President Mubarak giving a press conference in Arabic
(subtitles in Hebrew). The only word not spoken in Arabic was the word compromise (he said it in English).

Compromise is necessary for meaningful negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. What will happen if any future Palestinian leadership accepts the concept of compromise though it is foreign to them, while simultaneously various factions among the Palestinians do not?

I admit that this is not a scientific study. If anyone knows a single word in Arabic for compromise which translates both ways, it would be of interest to me.

http://www.geocities.com/d_elazar/Compromise/Compromise_Arab.html

[pouzzler]

Interesting point. I am quite the casual fan of that kind of linguistics myself.
Of course, people are *people*; not "Arabs" or "Jews" or "French" or "USAns"....

[Batman]

i am not sure I understand what you mean? this particular study requested any one who may know if the Arab language contains the word 'compromise' in it. As it appears that the word compromise in Arabic implies shame, not simply as the word compromise is understood in English, it would be interesting to understand the Arab culture from that perspective.

As you may well know, there are ideas that will not be realized in a culture if the words are not provided for them. The idea needs words to express it.

What was that you said about 'people'? I can't understand you or is this a language barrier?

[pouzzler]

No I understand that and there is no *linguistic* barrier at all (except, if maybe you ain't a native english speaker?)

What I meant is that Mahmoud and Khalef are Mahmoud and Khalef, not "Arabs".
Surely such a vast culture that spawned over one and a half millenia, that assimilated European trends for many centuries, being sole rulers of Spain and some of France, that the assimilated the Mameluks invaders and their culture, that let the other people of the Book live peacefully, even during the Crusades, provided they were not soldiers, on their land and towns, for a nominal religion fee...
Surely these people are not easily put down in words, and especially not in two of them? "Arabs" AND "uncompromising"?

In English, there is but one word for "free of charge" and "free of bond", the word "free". It does not mean that one equates money with slavery, does it?

[elke]

Originally posted by pouzzler
In English, there is but one word for "free of charge" and "free of bond", the word "free". It does not mean that one equates money with slavery, does it?

Nevertheless, the meaning of the word "free" is the same, in both instances: it means "does not have", or "without" - whether it's charge or bond. THAT's the point, not whether these concepts are equivalent.

[Batman]

Surely these people are not easily put down in words, and especially not in two of them? "Arabs" AND "uncompromising"?

What you are speaking of has nothing to do with the analysis of language and linguistics.

The implications in a launguage may have a lot to do with the mind set of the people who use that language.

We are speaking in general terms, for the sake of relevancy.
In Arabic which is the common language of Arabs there is shame connected to the meaning of the word 'compromise.'

The author of the research is asking if there is anyone out there who has any other information on this.

What you are speaking of is the idea of judging each individual for themselves. I think that's a good idea. But please, before you think of it here perhaps you should also check out some of the incredibly anti-semitic Arab world media whereby they group ALL Jews and ALL Israelis under one terrible hate-filled generality.
Not to mention the daily terrible anti-American sentiments in the Arab world, emanating from the media, the Mosque preachers who quote koranic phrases about 'infidels'.

Before you respond to this, please try to research about this incredible wave of hatered against Israel and the US. If these were the 1940s both John Wayne and Albert Einstein would be on the 'kill the infidel' list. (In the 1930s Albert Einstein did escape Nazi Germany and saved himself, they were only hating Jews in those day.) Today, it seems that any country which is truly free such as US and Israel is on the hate list of the dictatorships of the world. In the mideast there is only 1 democracy. It is Israel.
Free Israel. The Arabs of Israel are the only Arabs in the mideast who have the right to vote (in Israel, of course) etc,etc.

It would be unrealitic to assume that the language and the culture do not have something to do with the nature of understanding of its people.

Yes. the language is indicative of the culture of the people. That's why the word 'free' is so often used in the US.

[cerulean]

The idea that language controls the shape of the speaker's thoughts is known as the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis (short discussion of that here http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html). I think most linguists do not fully accept the S-W Hypothesis, but it does appear to have some validity in limited contexts.

I don't know what words Arabic has for compromise. But I'm leery of any attempts to determine anything by this.

For example, President Reagan once said the Russians had no word for "freedom," implying Russians therefore did not know what freedom was (in fact a word for "freedom" does exist in Russian). There's no single word in English for the German word "Schadenfreude," but that doesn't mean the concept doesn't exist in English.

There are relatively few science (or any) books translated into Arabic nowadays, as pointed out in a recent report that is discussed elsewhere on the forum. This fact alone might hinder the introduction of sophisticated vocabulary into Arabic.

[Batman]

what is "Schadenfreude"?

[Batman]

I believe this is the article you mention:

Fewer books have been translated into Arabic over the past millennium than Spain translates in an average year.
Wall Street Journal 7/8/02 i believe

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Arabs and Democracy

The Mideast fails the U.N. Development Program's freedom test.

The United Nations Development Program used to be the most useless of U.N. agencies, and its annual Human Development Report the laughingstock of serious development economists. But Mark Malloch Brown, who took over the program in 1999, has actually used his reform mandate from Secretary General Kofi Annan to clear out some dead wood, and it seems to be having some effect.
Last year's Development Report, for example, bravely took on the Luddites at groups like Greenpeace by trumpeting the potential of biotech foods to feed the Third World. More shockingly still, it acknowledged that any environmental or health risks of DDT might be well worth the cost in malaria-prone regions of the world.

The UNDP's Arab Human Development Report, released last week, continues the positive trend. The UNDP assembled a panel of distinguished Arab authors, including Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador to the U.N., to take a hard look at the state of their own society. And while they don't fail to mention the evils of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, they clearly realize the plight of 1% of the Arabs can't account for all the region's ills. Nor is this yet another plea for more aid from the rich countries. The report places blame squarely where it belongs--unaccountable and unrepresentative governments in the Arab countries themselves.

The "rich culture" whose "great historical achievements" President Bush spoke of in his historic Middle East speech last month continues its rapid relative decline. The 280 million citizens of the 22-nation Arab League produced a combined GDP of $531.2 billion in 1999--less than Spain's. The real income of the average Arab citizen was just 13.9% that of the average citizen of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. And if the average annual growth rate of just 0.5% over the past two decades continues, it will take Arabs 140 years to double their income, while other regions will achieve that in less than 10 years.


That's because the lack of political freedom stifles growth. With not one real democracy, Arab countries had the lowest UNDP "freedom score" of all the world's regions--even lower than that of sub-Saharan Africa, which also beat it on the number of Internet connections per capita. Fewer books have been translated into Arabic over the past millennium than Spain translates in an average year. Some 65 million Arabs (two of three of them women) are illiterate. It is little wonder that such an isolated culture became a breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism that spawned September 11 or that its perpetrators enjoy such a high level of public support there today.
That might not seem fertile ground in which to try to establish democracy. But the fact that roughly half of Arab adolescents interviewed say they want to emigrate suggests the human desire for freedom is universal. With President Bush making reform a major plank of America's new policy in the Middle East--and with Arab thinkers like these willing to speak frankly about the need for change--the day when bright and ambitious Arabs no longer need to take their talents abroad could come sooner than many think.


Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[cerulean]

Batman, yes, that refers to the study I was talking about, thanks.

Originally posted by Batman
what is "Schadenfreude"?

A malicious delight in the misfortunes of another. (For example, if you see someone who has been mean to you slip and fall on a banana peel.)

======

To cross-compare Arabic-English translations, you can use

http://english.ajeeb.com and

http://www.ectaco.com/online/diction.php3?refid=511&rfr_id=4&rqt_id=1731896&pagelang=23&sdiscountid5=DSC-s10-334373&lang=3

I found that this verse in the Koran has this translation into English:
"They wish that you should compromise (in religion out of courtesy) with them, so they (too) would compromise with you" (68:9)

(I think "they" refers to infidels in this context.)

If you are interested in this point, I would suggest either posting to the USENET newsgroup sci.lang or the email list LINGUIST. (Sci.lang has a lot of erudite posters who often give excellent responses.)

[Mediocrates]

Languages have lexicons and depending on the size of the lexicon, the degree of 'overloading' varies. Spanish has a fairly small lexicon so the degree of overloading is quite high which means that the true sense of something is derived contexturally (do you know all the words to La Bamba?). German has a larger lexicon but has the attribute of overloading certain words evenso (such as Mark Twain's discussion of the word Zug), or, they compound the heck out of words instead of developing new ones. So instead of having a word like 'submarine' you get a word like 'unterwasserchuggachugga' or something like that. English has a vast lexicon. My OED probably has 700,000 words so the degree of overloading is quite low. But the problem with overly large lexicons is that most of the words are completely unknown to most speakers so the meanings of those words are vague, out of use or inconsistent.

For example Biblical Hebrew has a lexicon the size of Good Old Anglo Saxon, about 2500-3000 words. The barest minimum to get along in the ancient world. Everything else has been developed in the last 100 years. So the questions you have to ask yourself are:

What is the size of the Arabic lexicon?
How frequently do new words make it in?
What is the degree of overloading?

Then you can say whether there is a 'word' or I guess you mean 'construct' or 'sense meaning' for this idea or that.