El-Said Muhammad Badawi (; 1929 – March 16, 2014) was a scholar and linguist and author of many works, both in English and in Arabic, dealing with various aspects of the Arabic language. Having learned the

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

by the age of ten in his village, El-Nakhas, Sharqiyya Governorate, he attended

Al-Azhar University The Al-Azhar University ( ; , , ) is a public university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypt's oldest degree-granting university and is known as one of the most prestigious universities for Islamic ...

for his secondary schooling. He received a B.A. in Arabic Language & Literature and Islamic Studies from

Cairo University Cairo University () is Egypt's premier public university. Its main campus is in Giza, immediately across the Nile from Cairo. It was founded on 21 December 1908;"Brief history and development of Cairo University." Cairo University Faculty of En ...

, an M.A. in General Linguistics and Phonetics from the University of London, and his Ph.D. in Experimental Phonetics from the University of London. After obtaining his Ph.D. Badawi briefly taught linguistics at the University of Cairo, then began teaching Arabic literature and linguistics at Omdurman University in

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

, and moved to the

American University in Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ) is a private research university in New Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs at undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels, along with a continuing education program. ...

in 1969, where he became the Curriculum Advisor for the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in 1970. Badawi's wide-ranging interests included colloquial

Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian, or simply as Masri, is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The esti ...

classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...

as found in the Qur'an, and the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language. In the field of sociolinguistics, perhaps Badawi's best known work is ''Mustawayāt al-ʻArabīyah al-muʻāṣirah fī Miṣr'' (''Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt'') wherein he challenges the traditional simplistic dichotomy of Classical and Colloquial Arabic, proposing instead a more subtle analysis involving several levels of usage.''see also'' Sayahi, Lotfi (2014
Diglossia and Language Contact: Language Variation and Change in North Africa
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Pages 59-60. ''and'' Paulson, Christina (1988
International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
New York: Greenwood Press. . Pages 52-53.

Works

English

*An intonational study of colloquial Riyadhi Arabic. 1965 (''Ph.D. thesis'') *A comprehensive study of Egyptian Arabic. 1978 (''coauthored with E.T. Abdel-Massih et al.'') *A reference grammar of Egyptian Arabic. 1979 (''coauthored with E.T. Abdel-Massih et al.'') *A comprehensive study of Egyptian Arabic 2. Proverbs and metaphoric expressions 1981 (''coauthored with E.T. Abdel-Massih et al.'') *A dictionary of Egyptian Arabic : Arabic-English. 1986 (''coauthored with M. Hinds'') *Sultan Qaboos encyclopedia of Arab names 2, Treasury of Arab Names, in four volumes. 1991 (''coauthored with M. Al-Zubair'') *Modern written Arabic : a comprehensive grammar. 2002 *Arabic-English dictionary of Qur'anic usage. 2007

Arabic

*Mustawayāt al-ʻArabīyah al-muʻāṣirah fī Miṣr : baḥth fī ʻalāqat al-lughah bi-al-ḥaḍārah. 1973 *Muʻjam asmāʼ al-ʻArab. 1991 *Dalīl aʻlām ʻUmān. 1991 *al-Kitāb al-asāsī fī taʻlīm al-lughah al-ʻArabīyah li-ghayr al-nāṭiqīn bi-hā. 2006 *Buḥūth lughawīyah wa-tarbawīyah fī qaḍāyā al-ʻArabīyah al-muʻāṣirah wa-mushkilātihā. 2015

External links

Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur'anic Usage
*
A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic - English

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Badawi, El-Said Linguists from Egypt Egyptian philologists Arab grammarians Sociolinguists Dialectologists 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists 1929 births 2014 deaths People from Zagazig Al-Azhar University alumni Cairo University alumni Alumni of the University of London