“Broken Arabic” between mockery and commercialization

***
By Rizwan Ahmad, Salma Dhailia, and Mahla Almeraikhi
***

Es fi: ‘Broken’ Arabic in the Gulf

Screenshot from a Omar-Jamsheid TikTok video

When you walk through the streets of any Gulf country, you may hear a language that is neither Arabic nor English but a mix of Arabic, English, and words from migrant languages. This is a grammatically simplified form of Arabic that emerged as a contact language to solve the problem of communication between the Arabic-speaking locals and the migrant workers. Arabs refer to the language as arabi mukassar, ‘broken Arabic’. This language is also used among non-Arabs who do not share a common language, for example between a Malayalam-speaking Indian and his Bangladeshi co-worker.

Pidgin as a contact language

In linguistic studies, this form of communication is called pidgin. Historically pidgins have emerged during the colonial expansions between the colonizers speaking English, French, and Spanish and the native people. For example, Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, Petit Nègre in West Africa, and Butler English in South Asia. An important characteristic of a pidgin is that it is not spoken natively by anyone. Key linguistic features of a pidgin are its reduced grammar, for example, lack of distinction between the present and past tense, masculine and feminine gender, etc. and a limited vocabulary.

Gulf Pidgin Arabic: Evolution and Transformation

Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) is widely spoken in the oil rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, KSA, and Oman. It emerged as a contact language between Arabic-speaking Gulf nationals and the large numbers of migrant workers from South and Southeast Asia, who came to the GCC speaking a plethora of languages unrelated to Arabic. According to a statistic, the number of non-Arabs in the GCC exceeds 50%. Given the large numbers of non-Arabs in the GCC, it is not surprising to hear GPA spoken widely.

GPA shows several simplified linguistic features typical of a pidgin. Andrei Avram, among other scholars, notes that many sounds of Arabic spoken in the GCC are either substituted or lost in GPA. For example, the ‘emphatic’ voiceless stop /ṭ/ <ط>, ‘emphatic’ voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ṣ/ <ص>, and the voiceless velar fricative / <ح>are replaced with /t/, /s/, and /h/ respectively. Avram further notes that in GPA, articles, prepositions, tense markers, and subordinate clauses are frequently omitted.

GPA has been present in the traditional media long before the rise of social media during the last decade. From the early 1990s through 2000s, GPA appeared in Kuwaiti theatres, Saudi television comedy programs, often in the portrayals of South Asian blue-collar workers. In the Saudi TV series Tash Ma Tash (1998), a Saudi actor plays a character of an Indian driver who speaks this form of pidgin. One recurrent utterance in the series is es fī, “what’s wrong?”. The ‘sh’ in the Arabic word ‘esh’ ‘what’ is replaced with /s/ in the GPA. This utterance is stylized and exaggerated as part of a parodic performance of a migrant language, where linguistic limitation itself becomes the object of humor.

GPA as a Tool in Entertainment and Commercialization

Screenshot from a Saifuldin Instagram video

GPA in recent years has now gone beyond communication. Many Arabic-speaking content creators on social media use features of GPA, often in exaggerated or stylized ways, to produce comedy videos for an Arab audience. Similarly, small businesses have now started to use GPA in marketing to make their advertisements catchier and more appealing. We show these new functions through an analysis of videos of Omar Al-Muraisi, a Yemeni Arab content creator based in the UAE and those of Saifuldin a Bangladeshi worker living in Qatar. Omar Al-Muraisi, with over 2.2 million followers on TikTok, produces funny videos using GPA, in which he plays the dual characters of Jamsheid, a Pakistani worker, and an Arab living in the Gulf. He (through Jamsheid) speaks an exaggerated form of GPA often showing exaggerated negative behaviors and personality traits associated with fictionalized GPA speakers from South Asia.

In a TikTok video, Omar, the Arab, is sitting on a chair sipping tea when he sees Jamsheid, wearing a Pakistani outfit, getting ready to pray. He asks ‘are you going to pray?’ to which Jamsheid in an angry tone replies that of course he is going to pray; he is not Aladdin getting ready to fly. Jamshed continues his outburst with questions like where do you want me to fly? This direction or that direction? Omar, the Arab, is portrayed as calm and respectful in his tone and demeanor. Omar through Jamsheid, pronounces yitīr, ‘he flies’ substituting the sound /ṭ/ <ط> with /t/ <ت>. Omar, also uses syntactic features typical of GPA, for example, he says ana yisīr dākhil ḥammām ‘I go inside bathroom’ omitting the definite article, preposition, and tense marker.

Jamsheid is presented as a man who is always angry and ready to pick a fight. Regardless of what he is told or asked, the character consistently responds in an angry voice, raised pitch, and emphatic gestures, creating the impression of an unnecessarily angry man. Anger becomes a key performative strategy through which comedy is created, reinforcing GPA as a stylized register associated with heightened affect rather than a resource for communication in a situation where the interactants do not share a language. In other videos, Jamsheid is portrayed as ‘dumb’, ‘aggressive’, ‘illogical’, and ‘ignorant’. While many Arabs find these portrayals funny, they may contribute to the creation and reinforcements of stereotypes in the popular media about speakers of GPA and lead to their further marginalization.

By contrast, Saifuldin, a Bangladeshi working in Qatar, uses GPA, which is how he is likely to speak, for commercials. His videos typically feature him advertising for restaurants, gyms, and other service-related products. What is interesting is that his videos promote relatively expensive products targeting upper middle class rich clients, mostly Arabic-speaking Qataris and other Arabs. Clearly, the use of GPA is not for communication but for attracting clients, who see GPA as funny making it catchy and attractive. An example of this is a video in which he promotes a perfume brand called eighty-eight, which is described as “a luxurious fragrance blending elegance and sophistication” available in high-end malls such as Al-Hazm and West Walk. He uses the GPA incorporating Gulf proverbs and culturally resonant expressions to connect with his audience. His speech in this video moves beyond basic transactional language, drawing on locally understood phrases to describe the perfume and appeal of the products while situating himself within the host community.

GPA between mockery and commercialization

This pragmatic use of GPA demonstrates how migrant speakers can leverage linguistic resources to participate in local cultural practices and communicative routines, illustrating a functional dimension of GPA that contrasts with stylized performances found in comedic skits.

Figure 3: Saifuldin using GPA in a promotional video for a perfume shop

In contrast with the “funny” videos, advertisements tend to present GPA as engaging, relatable, and effective in connecting with Arab audiences. It shows that GPA, which was once seen as a broken language used for communication between people who do not share Arabic or English is now used across diverse contexts such as humor and marketing.

The use of GPA for comedy with undertones of negative stereotypes of GPA speakers, such as low status and aggressiveness may become normalized hiding the elements of inequality and marginalization of the GPA speakers. Several research on mock language show the role of humour in shaping public attitudes, and sentiments toward marginalized groups (Calhan, 2010; Santa Ana, 2009).

When combined, these examples demonstrate the variety of ways in which Gulf Pidgin Arabic is used in Gulf media, ranging from stylized, performative representations in humorous content to practical, communicative use in everyday situations. While use of GPA by creators like Omar Al-Muraisi shows how it is used for humor with undertones of negative stereotypes Saifuldin’s videos show how the stigmatized GPA can be simultaneously used for commercial purposes in marketing products.  The variety of functions of GPA shows its complexity in the sociolinguistic landscape of the GCC, and more studies are needed to uncover the multifaceted social and cultural meanings of the ‘broken’ Arabic.