Section 3.5: Kelme: standardization of language and creation of a collective memory

Even though Talhouk’s talk has garnered wide success, kindling among its viewers' feelings of sympathy with the Arab world, on the other side of the spectrum, it was perceived as a humiliation for those speakers of Lebanese who do not feel such sympathy. They deem it made them feel as if their day-to-day language – which includes the use of foreign terms (not with the purpose of “straying away from Arabic”, but because they have simply become a part of the language and are more natural for speakers) – is corrupt and “wrong” to use. This sense of humiliation leads the Lebanese to feel inferior to and judged by those who think that this is just their way of distancing themselves from the Arab world and drawing closer to the Western world, in a bid to keep up with the times. For the purpose of this thesis, on 11 January 2023, I contacted Kelme, an independent team dedicated to offering tools to allow the Lebanese community around the world to express themselves in a simple and streamlined way. In the conversation I had with two members of Kelme’s team – Marcelle Nassif and Elias Bou-Issa – another perspective emerged allowing me to consider a different point of view on the issue of Lebanese linguistic identity. Kelme, launched in February 2021, is the name of the project and it means “Word”; the name is also based on the sequence of letters ‘KLM’, a sequence of alphabetical letters found in both the Eastern and Western world alphabets. According to Marcelle Nassif – translator and reviser of Modern Standard Arabic for international organizations and publicly certified translator in Lebanon – Talhouk’s speech misses the point. Although it is true that “we should use our dialect more, this dialect is by no means the same as Modern Standard Arabic, which is not the living language. MSA is no one’s native tongue, because one does not speak it at home, and one must be schooled in it and be exposed to it to master it.” While Talhouk condemns the use of French loans related to certain commodities and items, Nassif's vision diverges from such opinion, arguing that the use of loanwords is natural and it has always existed, even before the French mandate in Lebanon; foreign words are now well integrated into the country, and their usage is not at all a question of wanting to sound more modern or “cool”.

Elias Bou-Issa, an engineer and author, asserts that Talhouk’s speech is frustrating, especially from an author’s standpoint. “All my life I have been told that Lebanese was a bad version of Arabic. A corrupted version” says Bou-Issa, explaining that Talhouk’s ideas are most likely related to a nationalistic view that regards Lebanese only as an inferior version of the Arabic language, creating contradictions in people’s minds. Her speech belittles the way Lebanese speak, dictates the way they should speak their mother tongue, and negatively judges those who do not speak Arabic. “Unfortunately, we, the Lebanese feel inferior to our culture: Because of the Arabic fuṣḥā (which literally means “the most eloquent form”) we are also expected to be eloquent to live up to it.” What Talhouk’s speech conveys is “a sense of shame, a feeling of not being good enough and of speaking incorrectly. Certain words in Lebanon are borrowings from other languages and are used, even by those who were never schooled in foreign languages, such as French and/or English.” Elias recounts that when he started writing in French, people always questioned why he wrote in French and not in his “native language”, i.e., Modern Standard Arabic. He argues that this form of Arabic “does not resemble in any way my life, my thoughts, and my history. When I started writing in Lebanese, things flowed naturally because the formulation and elasticity of Lebanese correctly reflected my train of thought.” To date, there are still no means to write Lebanese in a standardized way. There is only one alternative way using the Latin alphabet, or Arabizi, which is considered closest to spoken Lebanese. The Kelme project stems precisely from this need to write one’s own spoken language because standard Arabic does not keep up with the technological realm and modernism, requiring borrowings from other languages, which are not always accepted on the other hand, because Arabic is the language of the Quran, and any modification thereof is frowned upon. The goal of the team was to build a Lebanese alphabet that reflected the spoken language from a phonetic point of view and that would be standardizable in the future. However, this idea of standardizing the Lebanese language is not well understood by everyone, because the Arabic script is linked to religion, and “whenever one writes with Latin letters, it is thought that they want to bring Lebanon closer to the West. But our goal is merely to use the most recognizable alphabet in the world, especially for those who have never been schooled in Arabic letters but can speak Lebanese and are used to Latin letters. It's about building a bridge and not isolating ourselves," Nassif says. The project for the creation of a new alphabet for the Lebanese language was based on two conditions: 1- The Lebanese language must reflect all the Lebanese people and all the sounds of the language. 2- The Lebanese point of view must be taken into account. So, we need to analyze how the Lebanese write, but also consider the opinion of the speakers in creating the new alphabet, that is, whether people can associate the right sound with the new letters. For the first part, 35 letters were considered. For the form, both the Arabic and Latin alphabets were taken into account because the purpose was to create a keyboard with letters that were easy to recognize, both for Lebanese in Lebanon and for those living outside the country. Despite ending up choosing a modified Latin alphabet, the Arabic alphabet is still present in a way: For example, the letter representing ع recalls its appearance. Arabic emphatic letters such as غ ض ظ are also evoked in appearance, thanks to the use of dots placed above the Latin letters; similarly, the letter ش is matched by a c (not used in Lebanese) with the addition of a graphic sign reminiscent of the three dots of the Arabic letter. The choice of a modified Latin script also falls on the fact that it better reflects phonetics, as it includes letters and sounds such as ‘O’ or ‘É’ that are not present in Arabic, and it is also easier to write when using borrowings, slang expressions of French or English within the same sentence, because it would not be necessary anymore to switch from one keyboard to another. In addition, it also reflects the accent of the given speaker: Depending on how a word is written, one can understand where the writer comes from; something that is not possible with Arabic letters. To finalize this project, surveys, research, and brainstorming sessions were conducted on an anonymous sample of 60 participants: “We did a phonetic and technical evaluation and then came up with several options and submitted them to people who were not aware of our project. The respondents gave us feedback about their perception of the letters (which letters they grasped and which ones they didn’t). And based on that, we proceeded to modify the letters again and again until we got to the final product,” Elias says. The intention is that people become able to recognize the letters and understand them easily so that the product becomes widely used by people. 

After reaching the final product, the team began to work on developing a keyboard that would be available on electronic devices and be compatible with different operating systems. In June 2022, the keyboard was released for use on Apple devices. The next step was to release the app on Android devices by next February. The app was also tested by friends and relatives who did not grow up in Lebanon and never learned the Arabic letters: For example, Nassif tells of her daughter, born in Lebanon but raised in Italy, who was able to read a paragraph written using the keyboard created by Kelme because she was accustomed to the Latin alphabet and associated the sounds of the Lebanese words with it. The initiative, however, is not limited to the alphabet but also includes showcasing proverbs, texts, poems, morphology, and grammar, in an attempt to serve as a reference for locals and, above all, expatriates. Social media serves as a bridge to promote the language and be close to people. There are several goals Kelme has for the future. Among these is creating a course to teach the Lebanese language to Lebanese abroad or anyone who needs to learn it to live in Lebanon. One of the possible ideas is to build on the Dictionary of Lebanese Vocables of Anis Freiha, published in 1947 eliminating terms that have become obsolete and adding others in use today. Another potential project is to create audiobooks for those struggling with reading the alphabet but also to translate books for those who want to learn the language without knowing the Arabic script, especially for Lebanese not born in Lebanon. In this regard, Nassif mentions that she had experimented with this idea on her daughter and her circle of Lebanese friends and mothers living abroad: She began translating children’s books into Lebanese, using both Arabic letters and her own version of a modified Latin alphabet. The goal was to make the language understood, regardless of the type of alphabet used, and the idea was particularly appreciated. Moreover, among the objectives is to allow the publication of more books in the Lebanese language. At the moment, an inventory of up to 60 books written in Lebanese with different scripts (Arabic, Arabizi, etc.) can be found on Kelme's website. Among them is also the book written by Bou-Issa using the alphabet devised by Kelme. The book, titled “l kelLmét”, is written in Lebanese with French and English translations; it is composed of 44 poems divided into 4 cycles, each depicting human attempts to influence and control the course of one's life, one's desires, and sorrows. Those poems travel in ancient and modern worlds, from antiquity to Covid times, from Lebanon to the entire planet. It is a journey between collective and individual realms, between traditions, myths, wars, love, and transcendence (Kelme, 2022). Bou-Issa points out that the title of the book is composed of two words that can mean both, ‘The words’ (from l kelmét) and ‘All dead’ (where “kell” means “all” and the verb “mét” means “to die”). “I wrote about the birth of thoughts and the death of mankind. It would have been impossible to convey the title with the Arabic letters because you would lose the phonetics and meaning; the same idea is expressed in the English title “deadly WorLds” and the French “moRts”.

Kelme’s ultimate goal is to standardize the current language in internationally recognized writing. “We would like this to allow all those who want to write in their own language not to feel forced to use another language unless they wish to. We do not want to impose anything; we just want to write our language in the most comprehensible way to everyone.” In her article. “Our National spoken vernacular deserves to become the official written language”, Nassif (2023) points out that: Lebanese is our mother tongue. […] A language that aptly expresses what we feel and think, naturally without any affectation. […] Lebanese is a modern language even if it does not enjoy official or popular recognition. For thousands of years, the native Canaanite basis saw the addition of Aramaic and Arabic strata with continuous lexical borrowings from the myriad of sources and civilizations that have trodden Lebanese soil. With each passing day, our language evolves, acquiring new verbs, words, and expressions while dropping many elements that have gone obsolete. Therefore, to be able to master your own language you need to use it as much as possible in writing, learn its grammar from an early age, and write books perhaps with a specially developed script that reflects both Eastern and Western sounds. Lebanese is the product of contact between three of the largest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Arabic, and Canaanite) that have shaped Lebanon: This is its most important feature, but it is often underestimated. Increasing the spread of the Lebanese language does not mean avoiding the use of Arabic or other foreign languages, since the strength of the country lies in its multilingualism; Rather, converting the spoken vernacular into a standardized written form would allow immortalizing the original literature and poetry and would strengthen the identity of the Lebanese people (Nassif, 2023)

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I would like to thank the Kelme team for their kind availability and for agreeing to meet with me and to tell me about their vision of the Lebanese language, which was of fundamental importance as far as having an overview of the situation in the country. Thank you also for sharing with me the future projects of the organization.