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Shafiq al-Hout in his book My Life in the PLO says in relation to Arafat's first speech at the UN:

He also asked Mahmoud Darwish and me to include all the vowel marks in the text clearly in bright red ink. We did so, but despite our best efforts, he still managed to ride roughshod over the complexities of Arabic grammar as he read out the speech.

What was the nature of Arafat's difficulties with Arabic? My guess is that he simply had poor command of Modern Standard Arabic, used for international communication, even if he fluently spoke a local dialect (he was born and raised in Egypt.) Is this correct, or were there other linguistic particularities? (E.g., king Abdullah II of Jordan is known to speak imperfect Arabic, due to his essentially British upbringing.)

Remark One could google up the records of the speech, e.g., this one. Perhaps these could help to settle the debate about grammar vs. pronunciation. IMHO, if Arafat was unsure about the sound of MSA, this probably was also the case with the grammar. On the other hand, al-Hout, clearly speaks somewhat in jest - another key addition to the speech, according to him, was asking Arafat to shave.

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    Upvoted, as I'm curious too. Best I could dig up quickly was that he had a much thicker Egyptian accent than was considered comfortable among Palestinians for a leader. So it might have been for the benefit of his fellow Palestinians, rather than Arabs in general.
    – T.E.D. ♦
    Commented Jun 5 at 18:52
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    I can find no source that addresses this in relation to Arafat's speech, but in general, vowel marking that shows Arabic grammar (e.g. noun case) would often fall under the category of ʾIʿrab
    – sumelic
    Commented Jun 6 at 9:46
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    "My Life in the PLO": I wonder if he enjoyed a NLHE sometimes...
    – OldPadawan
    Commented Jun 6 at 12:47

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It was indeed his Egyptian accent. According to biographers who interviewed Abas Zaki about this same episode:

When Arafat was practicing his speech beforehand, his colleagues urged him to reduce his Egyptian accent, which used a hard "g" sound rather than the soft "j" of Palestinian Arabic. He went too far, saying words like "Nicarajua" and "Anjola" (Rubin and Rubin 2003, p. 71).

It is likely that al-Hout intended his observation as a bit of a dig, given that Arafat's Egyptian accent was a detriment with certain Palestinian audiences. One of his biographers writes that "West Bankers did not like his Egyptian accent and ways and found them alien" (Aburish 1999). Another quotes Abu Ilyad's first impression upon meeting Arafat:

From a purely Palestinian point of view I did not like his Egyptian accent. I did not like it at all. That is the first thing I remember. (qtd. in Hart 1994, p.65)

This statement is especially notable given that al-Hout's background was so similar to Abu Ilyad's, both of them being senior PLO officials born in Jaffa in the early 1930s.

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  • Thanks. I wasn't aware that there's such a difference between Palestinian and Egyptian dialects (though I knew that Levantine Arabic is different from that in Gulf or northwest Africa.) I suppose, al-Hout, as a journalist, had good mastery of the literary Arabic, while the Arafat's background was in engineering - hence the talk about "grammar".
    – Roger V.
    Commented Jun 6 at 4:42
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    Accent is not grammar. The quote explicitly mentions grammar, so this cannot be the full answer.
    – reinierpost
    Commented Jun 6 at 8:28
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    @reinierrpost We'd have to ask al-Hout what he meant to resolve this or find another source, but I suspect you're interpreting a single word (presumably translated from Arabic) too literally.
    – Brian Z
    Commented Jun 6 at 11:04
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    Agree with @reinierpost. Hard g vs. soft j seems also quite unrelated to the vowel marks mentioned in OP's quote.
    – Jan
    Commented Jun 6 at 12:16

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