Transliteration of Arabic words in Latin characters has become familiar in Jordan through the use of the Internet and mobile phone SMS, but linguists claim this practice threatens the Arabic language.

Using Latin letters in Arabic is not a new phenomenon, they remarked. The idea was championed at the turn of the 20th century, with some scholars calling for the adoption of a modified version of the Latin alphabet, taking modern Turkey as an example.

With the rise of the Internet and mobile phone text message services, several youths have adopted the Latin alphabet to transliterate their written conversations. Do the introduction of the Internet and the newest technologies affect Arabic positively, or do they pose a threat to the language?

Noor Lattouf, a 22-year-old student at the University of Jordan (UJ), told The Jordan Times that she uses transliteration daily while chatting with her friends

"I write Arabic using English letters and numbers because it is easier; I am not used to typing Arabic letters over the Internet, as it takes more time," she said, explaining that she prefers using Latin characters as English “is now the language of modernisation".

Lattouf, who graduated from the Rosary School, noted that the type of school a young Jordanian attends influences his or her choice whether to use Arabic or Latin script.

"I think the type of school a student joins can be a major factor. The more Western-oriented the school is, the more its students use Latin letters as they are more exposed to English," she said.

She noted, however: "We write in Arabic letters in schools, universities and at work because it’s the language of the country and it’s the language of textbooks in schools. If we were given a choice of writing in Arabic or using transliteration, we would definitely choose Arabic letters."

Wassim Hammori, a telecom company employee, is worried. He warned that the trend is “destroying the Arabic language”.

“If you ask anyone who uses [transliteration] to write a well-formed paragraph in standard Arabic, they would fail,” he said, adding that in his opinion, people use transliteration merely “to show off and to pretend they are modern”.

Nonetheless, although he wants to see an end to transliteration, Hammori acknowledged that he is usually forced to use it as the cost per character of sending SMS text messages is lower in English than in Arabic.

“When you write an SMS in Arabic, each 69 letters are considered one SMS. However, if you write in English, each SMS equals 169 letters,” He pointed out. Writing in Latin letters therefore saves him phone credit and allows him to send more messages.

While citizens differed on the issue, Arab linguists were united in their view that transliteration poses a serious threat to the Arabic language.

Mohammad El Salman, an associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Balqa Applied University, told The Jordan Times over the phone that there should be awareness campaigns to familiarise young people with the dangers of this practice.

“We should rescue Arabic and launch awareness campaigns as the threat has moved from the Internet to mobile phones and even to satellite TV channels,” Salman said.

The professor linked the phenomenon to young Jordanians having more opportunities to meet foreigners, explaining that in today’s increasingly interconnected world, English has become a lingua franca in which people who do not share a mother tongue communicate.

Salman added that in so-called “chat language”, it is easy to substitute Latin characters for Arabic letters that lack English equivalents, such as the letter ‘ain, which looks like an inverted number three and is commonly transliterated as “3”.

Helmi Sari, a professor of sociology and mass communication at UJ, also drew a link between the spread of this phenomenon and its ease of use in text messages and on the Internet.

“It is easier and faster in writing over the phone and Internet,” Sari said.

Associate professor of Arabic at UJ, Ibrahim Khalil, urged young people to stop using transliteration before it does irreversible damage to their native language.

“It is not a healthy practice and it might weaken the users’ Arabic grammar in the long term if it continues at this rate,” Khalil said.

As the argument over transliteration rages on, Lattouf said she has no plans to stop using it.

“I don’t think that it harms Arabic, and it saves me time,” she said. “Why quit it?”