El-Said Badawi (El-Saʿīd Muḥammad Badawī) (السعيد محمد بدوي) was a scholar and linguist and author of many works, both in English and in Arabic, dealing with various aspects of the Arabic language.[1]

Having learned the Qur'an by the age of ten in his village, El-Nakhas, Sharqiyya Governorate, he attended Al-Azhar University for his secondary schooling. He received a B.A. in Arabic Language & Literature and Islamic Studies from Cairo University, 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.[2]

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,[3] and moved to the American University in Cairo in 1969, where he became the Curriculum Advisor for the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in 1970.[4]

Badawi's wide-ranging interests included colloquial Egyptian Arabic, classical Arabic 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.[5][6]

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