Mixing French and Arabic(s)

I'm fascinated by on-the-fly language hybrids: Spanglish, Sheng (Kiswahili-English), the "HUGME" (Hindu-Urdu-Gujarati-Marathi-English) of Salman Rushdie's many-tongued Bombay. The other day I was emailing a friend about mixing French and Arabic in Tunisia, and hours later came across (via Language Log via Langauge Hat) some anecdotes on the real-world usefulness of Fusha (aka standard written Arabic) vs. French vs. local dialects.

From the Language Log post:

This situation makes the task of foreign learners more difficult, since they need to learn to deal appropriately with a very broad range of mixtures of "high" and "low" languages. This is true to some extent in any language, but the range of diglossia in "Arabic" appears to be significantly greater than in most other modern situations. You need to imagine a situation in which "Latin" is used to refer not only to classical and patristic Latin, but also to the spoken versions French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (with none of them having any standard written form).

And the longer usage anecdotes, quoted in Language Log but from a World Bank-hosted pdf:

Hela is a sixth-grade primary school student living in Tunis. She spends her summers in Nabeul with her grandmother. Her two best friends there are Hiba and Meriem. Hiba lives in Nabeul all year round and is the same age as Hela. Meriem is a year older and lives in La Marsa during the school year. Hela goes to a private school where she started French and Arabic at the same time. She has more than 20 hours of classes in Arabic and about 10 hours in French a week. All the subjects other than French, such as Math and Biology, are taught in Fusha. Sometimes the teacher explains things in Arbi, but the students often have to speak in Fusha. Hela does not like Fusha as much as Arbi, it feels too alien to her. She even likes French better than Fusha. Meriem’s classes are a lot like Hela’s. She prefers French and often uses French words when she’s speaking Arbi. She thinks it makes her sound cool, like an adult. Hiba, on the other hand, didn’t start French until the third grade. Even though she now has the same number of hours of each language as Hela does, she prefers Arabic (both fusha and Arbi) to French and reads more Arabic books.

The three girls play together and watch television. Their favorite shows are Saoussen, which is in Fusha, and Les Schtroumfs, which is in French. Sometimes, when they play, they pretend to be the cartoon characters and try to sound like them. Hiba likes playing Saoussen best, because she doesn’t play well when they speak in French. Meriem prefers Les Schtroumfs because her Fusha is poor. They usually just speak Arbi together. After the summers over, Hela and Meriem go back to their homes. They decide to write each other letters over the school year. After the first day of school, Hela runs home to write letters to her friends. She starts to write a letter to Hiba, in Fusha, but feels that this is not a friendly letter. It feels more like homework. She thinks in Arbi, but cannot write what she means, and has to translate. Frustrated, she decides to write to Meriem first. She quickly realizes that her best bet is to write in French, but still struggles with finding the right words to say what she means. Finally, she settles on using Arbi words that she approximates phonetically and finishes one letter. For Hibas letter, though, its harder for her to do this with Fusha, so she just writes a very short letter and writes some words in French. These solutions work, but leave her feeling unsatisfied. She feels closer to Meriem because she can communicate with her better. She rapidly loses interest in writing to Hiba, though.

Hela's cousin, Farah, grew up in Saudi Arabia. She is the same age as Hela and is in the fourth grade. Farah only speaks Saudi Arabic, Fusha, and English, which she studies at school. She feels that Fusha is strange and silly. Nobody really speaks it there either. When Farah and Hela get together, they can only speak a mixture of their dialect with Fusha. It is very strange for both of them. They hardly ever write each other letters, because they’d have to do it in Fusha, which neither feels comfortable with. Farah feels resentment towards Fusha and reads even less. She doesn’t like music in Arabic as much as English or French music and only reads in Arabic if it is mandatory. Her French continues to improve and her Fusha remains poor. This does not bother her though, because she knows that once she gets to secondary school, Fusha would be much less important and if she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, she will only need French.