Egyptians asserted cultural dominance by mocking foreign accents in Arabic

Evidence

The subtlety of this humor emerges in the fact that this is an Egyptian peasant imitating the accent of the Sudanese. In this instance, as so frequently happens in Sanüa’s plays, the fallahïn represents one of the true voices of Egypt, albeit a humorous one, replete with a great deal of ignorance about the surrounding world. Faraj’s words here perform two important functions: the first a reformist function illustrating how social change in Egypt had not been extended to the fallahïn, the second a corrective function, putting the Nubian in his appropriate social place by means of a verbal agreement between the character Faraj and his audience.The imitation of the Nubian accent cements that agreement. As Jacob Landau and others note in their analyses of early Egyptian drama, the strangeness of an accent, in Arabic, delineated the degree of foreignness of the speaking character. — <cite>Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 359</cite> (#exemplifies`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Egyptian plays marked Sudanese as inferior by teaching them proper Arabic pronunciation; Egyptian plays reenacted Egypt’s civilizing domination over Sudan linguistically; In Egyptian drama accents mapped each class’s social position — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 359 (+2 more)

Related

• In Egyptian drama accents mapped each class’s social position (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptians asserted cultural authority over Sudanese through language instruction in plays (similarity 0.86)
• Arabic accents delineated ethnic and class distance in Egyptian social hierarchies (similarity 0.85)
• Egyptian satirists claimed cultural authority by mocking rulers’ Arabic accents (similarity 0.83)
• Sudanese depiction as mispronouncing Arabic letters reinforced Egyptian tutelage over Sudan (similarity 0.83)
• Egyptians wielded linguistic dominance to offset foreign political and economic power (similarity 0.82)
• Distinct linguistic hierarchies separated the Egyptian satire of Sudanese from that of Ottoman masters (similarity 0.81)
• Sounding Sudanese in Egyptian dialect marked a dialogic strategy about their humanity (similarity 0.80)
• Egyptian playwrights let Nubian characters speak only in mangled dialect, never their own (similarity 0.80)
• Al-Nadïm’s choice to neutralize Sudanese accent contrasted sharply with Sanü`a’s mocking portrayals (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian writers mocked Sudanese as mere servants while demanding realism about themselves. (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian national self-exploration still stereotyped Nubians and Sudanese as blank buffoons (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian theater stereotyped Sudanese as undisciplined and libidinous (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptians produced their own Orientalist discourse about the Sudan and Africa (similarity 0.79)
• The Nubian stage character taught audiences to see Sudan as part of Egypt (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Egyptian plays reenacted Egypt’s civilizing domination over Sudan linguistically #exemplifies (0.80)
• In Egyptian drama accents mapped each class’s social position #exemplifies (0.75) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 359
• Language marked the division between slaves and free Egyptians #corroborates (0.55)