Lama Bergstrand Othman- University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, United States
Arabic diglossia is a linguistic scenario in which Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Spoken Arabic (SpA) coexist within the same community, creating a unique context for literacy development. Research on the phonological and lexical distances between these varieties reveals significant effects on performance during reading and phonological awareness (PA) tasks, which are critical components of literacy development. Researchers have indicated that the phonemic and lexical distances between MSA and SpA can complicate PA, affecting reading skills, particularly among younger students. Initially intended as a systematic review, the limited number of studies fitting the criteria of this critical review led to the adoption of a narrative review approach, allowing for s a critical review of the research on the effect of phonological and lexical distance on reading processes. Although these studies show differences in performance in PA and reading tasks due to lexical distances between SpA and MSA, the authors of this article suggest that diglossia should be regarded as an inherent element in its native linguistic context and thus advocates against using a deficit model to interpret the results.
Introduction
Ferguson used the concept of “diglossia” in 1959 to describe a scenario where two language varieties, high (H) and low (L), coexist and serve different purposes (Ferguson, 1959). Fishman (1971), expanded the concept of diglossia to include multilingual societies and distinguished it from bilingualism by its social implications. Ferguson revisited his theory in 1996, recognizing its limited applicability to creole and dialect-standard continua and called for a more refined understanding of diglossia (Ferguson, 1996). Hudson expanded on Ferguson's criteria in 2002, emphasizing functional and acquisitional differences between H and L varieties over structural relatedness to distinguish diglossia from societal bilingualism (Hudson, 2002).
In Arabic-speaking countries Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Spoken Arabic (SpA) coexist within the same community, creating a unique context for literacy development (Waked et al., 2024). Modern Standard Arabic is mostly used in formal settings like education and writing, while SpA is naturally acquired and used for daily verbal interactions (Abu Kwaik et al., 2018; Shahbari-Kassem et al., 2024). The number of Arabic speakers worldwide ranges from 290 million to 313 million (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, n.d.). Abu Kwaik et al. (2018) found that not all regional dialects are equally distant from MSA; nor are all regional dialects equally divergent from each other. Most of the metrics that researchers have used implies that the Levantine dialects are generally closest to MSA, whereas North African dialects are the most distant. Researchers have also found convergence among the dialects of the Levant, with great linguistic overlap. Therefore, the differences within SpA and between SpA and MSA highlight the need to contextualize research within specific linguistic and cultural contexts in Arabic-speaking regions (Abu Kwaik et al., 2018; Shahbari-Kassem et al., 2024).
Synthesizing research on the impact of diglossia on Arabic-speaking children and literacy development shows the complex relationship between linguistic structure, cognitive development, and educational outcomes. It raises important questions about diglossic conditions and how MSA-SpA linguistic distances affect literacy development. Researchers found significant semantic, syntactic, morphological, and phonological differences between MSA and SpA, affecting language acquisition and cognitive processing.
Amayreh and Dyson (1998) studied phonological development in 180 Jordanian children. Results highlighted that children acquired certain consonants (/k/, /ħ/, and /l/) earlier due to their higher frequency in Arabic compared to English. This suggests familiarity with dialect-specific sounds facilitated earlier acquisition, indicating better performance with dialect elements over MSA. Dyson and Amayreh (2000) analyzed consonant production errors in 50 Jordanian children, focusing on dialectal variations. The findings indicated significant variations across dialects, suggesting that children's phonological errors are influenced more by their native dialect than MSA, with better performance typically noted on dialectal sounds.
Other studies assessed phonemic awareness and decoding abilities in Palestinian children. These studies found that children performed poorly on tasks involving phonemes and syllabic structures unique to MSA compared to those shared with their dialect, illustrating better performance with dialectal elements due to greater familiarity. The results of phoneme isolation in MSA and Palestinian dialect words among children revealed that children found it more difficult to isolate MSA phonemes than those of the dialect, again indicating better performance with dialect elements, which are more closely aligned with their everyday linguistic environment (Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004).
The study of morphosyntactic development in Arabic has been a focal point of research across various dialects, with significant emphasis on how children acquire complex linguistic structures such as plural formation, negation, interrogatives, and word order. An examination of how vernacular Arabic influences the learning of MSA reviled that oral production of negation across tenses, among different groups of learners in the U.S., showed that native dialect influences the acquisition of MSA's morphosyntactic properties (Albirini, 2014). Other studies explored the development of morphosyntactic competence in children exposed to both MSA and Palestinian vernacular, finding that vernacular interference affects MSA acquisition, particularly in negation, with performance disparities diminishing as children aged, depending on the structural complexity (Khamis-Dakwar et al., 2012).
Previous research on Lexico-semantics development in Arabic language acquisition indicates a great need for more thorough and systematic studies. It emphasizes the importance of considering how typical language exposure evolves during a child's development and the shifting dynamics between MS and vernacular usage as children grow (Khamis-Dakwar and Froud, 2019). Maamouri (1998) study focused on the importance of improving vocabulary teaching in MSA to enhance academic success among school-age children. Maamouri proposed strategies to augment vocabulary acquisition, notably through increased exposure to MSA. Research on lexical development in bilingual Arabic speakers, employing comparative analyses to explore vocabulary acquisition complexities in bilingual contexts, highlight the intricate process of vocabulary development among bilingual individuals who speak Arabic and another language (Holmström et al., 2016).
Khwaileh et al. (2014) developed the first normative database for spoken Arabic, focusing particularly on Levantine Arabic. This initiative aimed to create a frequency corpus for spoken Arabic to complement existing corpora predominantly based on written MSA. The study highlights the need for such resources to understand the lexical norms of spoken Arabic better. Khamis-Dakwar and Makhoul (2012) developed the Arabic Diglossic Knowledge and Awareness Test (ADAT), a tool designed to assess language-based emergent literacy skills, including receptive vocabulary in Arabic-speaking children. The study involved testing children's comprehension of MSA words, categorized by their phonological overlap with the vernacular, through a picture selection task. Preliminary results with Palestinian Arabic-speaking children showed that first graders performed better with fully overlapping or non-overlapping words compared to partially overlapping words.
These studies emphasize the impact of diglossia across various domains of language development. However, Khamis-Dakwar and Froud (2019) noted the previous scarcity of studies in the dynamic role of language development across educational environments and other influencing factors. They recommended considering the intricate interplay between native dialects and MSA, particularly adopting a non-binary approach to language acquisition. Viewing the two language varieties as separate leads to an incomplete understanding of language development in Arabic. For example, the use of optional short vowels or diacritical marks in Arabic, which distinguishes between deep and shallow orthography, has been consistently studied in a binary manner (Abu-Rabia, 1998, 1999, 2001; Abu-Rabia and Taha, 2004; Asadi and Khateb, 2017; Seraye, 2004), where participants' performance in reading lists of vowelized and unvowelized words was compared. Although this experimental approach effectively isolates the effects of vowelization, it does not correspond directly to binary approaches in Eurocentric studies, such as those involving the reading of lists of non-words vs. exception words in English. In other words, reading non-words and exception words reveals unique cognitive processes in the readers of that language, whereas the binary approach in Arabic studies, focusing primarily on unvowelized isolated word, may inadvertently pathologize the language rather than reveal the learner's cognitive processes. It is also important to note that readers are rarely asked to read an unvowelized words that can be articulated in multiple ways to mean different things (homographic heterophones) without any context or minimal level of vowelization to disambiguate the pronunciation and meaning.
Another important example of binary examination in language studies is the investigation of phonological elements and lexical differences between MSA and SpA to infer their impact on reading acquisition. This research suggests that differences in phonology between MSA and SpA negatively affect phonological awareness (PA), which is positively correlated with reading acquisition (Vellutino et al., 2004); thus, researchers argue that these phonological and lexical differences could be key factors in explaining delays or failures in reading acquisition in Arabic (Asaad and Eviatar, 2013; Taha, 2017). It is, therefore, particularly important to deepen our understanding of how researchers have examined the phonological and lexical differences between MSA and SpA, as well as the contexts in which these studies have been conducted. This critical review aims to evaluate these studies, exploring the methodologies used and assessing the broader applicability of their findings. The following questions are addressed in this review:
• How have studies assessed diglossic conditions, particularly those demonstrating the phonological and lexical distances between speakers of MSA and SpA?
• How have previous studies interpreted the impact of linguistic distance between MSA and SpA on literacy development in Arabic-speaking children?
Method
To investigate the effects of phonological and lexical distances in Arabic diglossia on reading performance, a search was conducted across several databases, including Academic Search Complete, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, Education Research Complete, ERIC, Arabic EBSCOhost, Shamaa, and Al-Manhal. The Keywords “Arabic” and “diglossi*” brought up 303 articles at first. The pool was reduced to 115 articles after applying peer-review and relevance filters that excluded fields such as “labor productivity” and “surveys.” These articles were thoroughly reviewed in accordance with three criteria: (1) studies must examine the impact of phonological/lexical distance on reading performance, (2) describe the nature of the tasks used, (3) focus on native Arabic speakers who have been educated in Arabic. Applying the three criteria resulted in the exclusion of 55 papers that did not meet the first criterion and 47 papers for working with Arabic as a second language or bilingual/multilingual contexts. The final selection comprised 12 studies that met all of the specified criteria (Figure 1). Table 1 shows the details of the retained studies, which were analyzed based on their purpose, method, and results. For analysis, an inter-rater negotiated agreement method was used, with the author reviewing data individually before working with a native Arabic speaker research assistant to resolve discrepancies and refine interpretations.
Figure 1. Identifying papers that explored the impact of phonological and lexical distance among native Arabic speakers. *Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Spoken Arabic (SpA), EBSCO Information Services online research platform (EBSCOhost), American Psychological Association's database of scholarly journal articles (APA PsycArticles).
Table 1. Analysis of studies based on demographic information, research design, and dependent variables.
This review sought to conduct a systematic evaluation of studies that investigate the effects of phonological and lexical distances on reading tasks. Despite the wide geographic coverage and diverse range of inquiries into diglossia, identifying studies with comparable methodological approaches proved difficult. Despite extensive database searches, only 12 studies met the review criteria, necessitating a combination of systematic and narrative review techniques to improve understanding of the relevant literature.
Results
In Table 1, all studies included participants who were native Arabic speakers, primarily using Northern Palestinian dialects, and were consistently recruited from schools of middle socioeconomic status (SES) affiliated with the Israeli Ministry of Education. The research context across all studies focused on linguistic variation between MSA and SpA, specifically targeting phonological and/or lexical distances between these varieties. Furthermore, the studies examined foundational reading skills, including phonemic awareness, phonological processing, decoding accuracy, reading fluency, and comprehension. Methodologically, two studies employed longitudinal designs (Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2021; Asadi and Asli-Badarneh, 2023), tracking students from kindergarten to first grade and from first to second grade, respectively. The remaining studies utilized cross-sectional designs, examining multiple grades simultaneously. Participant age ranges and grade levels varied: some studies involved younger participants primarily from kindergarten and early elementary grades (e.g., Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004, 2005; Saiegh-Haddad and Ghawi-Dakwar, 2017), while others spanned broader age ranges, including older students from grades 6 to 12 (e.g., Asadi and Ibrahim, 2014; Saiegh-Haddad and Schiff, 2016; Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018). Variation was also evident in the dependent variables and tasks. Some studies explicitly investigated phonemic isolation and phonological awareness tasks in relation to lexical distance (e.g., Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad, 2004), whereas others explored broader linguistic domains such as morphological awareness (Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018), reading comprehension (Abu-Liel et al., 2021), and word recognition (Saiegh-Haddad and Haj, 2018). Additionally, certain studies uniquely included specific populations, such as children with Speech and Language Impairments (SLI) (Saiegh-Haddad and Ghawi-Dakwar, 2017).
According to Table 2, the reviewed studies consistently show that the phonological and lexical distance between SpA and MSA significantly affects reading-related tasks, though the degree and nature of this impact vary by age, task type, and linguistic condition. Most studies agree that children perform better with SpA elements compared to MSA elements, especially in early grades. For example, researchers found that tasks involving SpA phonemes or shared SpA-MSA words led to higher phonological awareness and reading accuracy (Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019, 2021; Asadi and Asli-Badarneh, 2023; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004, 2005; Saiegh-Haddad and Schiff, 2016; Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018). However, some studies found specific conditions where MSA components can be beneficial or at least equally challenging. For instance, Asadi and Ibrahim (2014) reported that participants performed better with MSA words in deletion tasks, and Saiegh-Haddad (2005) noted MSA phoneme isolation moderately predicted reading fluency.
Table 2. Analysis of studies based on their purpose, domains, tasks, and outcomes.
Equally important, from a developmental perspective and in relation to the distance between SpA and MSA, several studies (e.g., Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad and Haj, 2018; Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018), found that the impact of PA and lexical distance between MSA and SpA lessens, and in some cases disappears, by late elementary school. However, a notable difference in morphological awareness between younger and older readers remains, impacting reading proficiency. This suggests possible advantages from focused morphological awareness interventions for SpA speakers (Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018).
Researchers investigated the effects of diglossia on students with SLI. Saiegh-Haddad and Ghawi-Dakwar (2017) examined the word reading abilities of students with SLI in comparison to their typically developing counterparts, uncovering increased difficulties in phonological memory attributed to diglossia. This highlights the importance of customizing assessment and intervention for Arabic-speaking children with SLI.
The function of a Latin alphabet-based orthography for Arabic (Arabizi) has been examined in relation to diglossia and its impact on reading proficiency. Abu-Liel et al. (2021) found that reading performance significantly differs based on the orthography employed; reading unvoweled MSA texts produced the quickest and most precise reading outcomes, whereas reading voweled MSA texts demonstrated the least efficiency, with Arabizi in between. Nonetheless, comprehension was greatest with reading voweled MSA texts. The findings demonstrate the collective impact of text type, phonological encoding, and orthographic complexity on reading proficiency.
The following are some conclusions that researchers have drawn from their studies. Saiegh-Haddad (2003) stated, “Do linguistic differences between the two varieties of the language, the local vernacular and the written standard, obstruct the development of basic reading processes? The present study is an attempt to address these questions” (p. 432). Saiegh-Haddad (2003) and Saiegh-Haddad (2005) suggested, “The orthography encodes MSA phonological structures that are not within the oral language experience of children. Thus, reading may suffer because of unfamiliar phonological structures not present in the child's SAV” (p. 564). Asadi and Abu-Rabia (2021) remarked: “As for the pedagogical implications, the gap found between the different clusters and especially between [SpA] and [MSA] may explain some of the difficulties in the Arabic reading process” (p. 696). Asadi and Asli-Badarneh (2023) indicated, “In recent decades, reading in the Arabic language has been a core interest of researchers, primarily due to the challenges facing [Arabic-speaking] children [when learning to read] (Saiegh-Haddad and Joshi, 2014) and their low performance on international reading tests (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), 2003)” (p. 1919).
Discussion
While some research has focused on the impact of phonological and lexical distance between MSA and SpA over time, from early to later grade levels, other studies have examined this impact using a cross-sectional design. Several studies encompass a wide spectrum of age cohorts, ranging from kindergarten and first-grade students (e.g., Saiegh-Haddad, 2003) to students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels (e.g., Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018).
Moving beyond the deficit model in explaining diglossia
To assess the impact of phonemic distance on PA, researchers have created lists of spoken words containing sounds (initial, middle, or final positions) that belong to MSA or SpA or are shared by both (Table 2). Researchers have concluded that participants who were more familiar with SpA faced significant challenges when introduced to MSA phonemes. In most of these studies, researchers have highlighted the need for educational strategies that are sensitive to the linguistic realities of Arabic diglossia, advocating for approaches that facilitate bridging the gap between SpA and MSA to support effective language development and literacy acquisition.
As highlighted in the results section, researchers expressed that research findings consistently demonstrate the negative impact of infrequently encountered MSA phonemes and words on psycholinguistic tasks. While the current understanding, as detailed by Vellutino et al. (2004), suggests that the PA deficit that influences reading skills is a psycholinguistic condition independent of a person's familiarity with the sounds of a language, the conclusions drawn in the reviewed studies prompt further investigation. It is important to consider whether PA deficits are truly reflected by diagnostics that are based on lower performance in tasks involving a limited number of less frequent sounds. Moreover, the connection between PA deficits and future reading challenges, particularly when based on limited exposure to infrequent sounds, requires rigorous examination to validate or challenge existing theories.
Studies on the impact of phonological and lexical distances have not included comparable research that extends across different areas within Arabic-speaking regions (Table 2). The lexical and phonological distances between MSA and SpA in one region may not be the same in another region (Abu Kwaik et al., 2018). For instance, the corresponding sound of the letter “ق, q”—which is pronounced farther back in the throat compared to /k/—was regarded as part of MSA-only phonology in the reviewed research (Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2021; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004, 2005). Nonetheless, in many parts of Syria, Iraq, and North Africa, this sound is naturally included in words during informal daily conversations. Additionally, the emphatic and pharyngealized ðʕ (which has no equivalent in English) was regarded as a phonological variation in MSA only. However, this sound is present in the southern parts of Jordan and many areas of the Arab Peninsula as part of informal SpA. It is important to emphasize that the studies under review primarily based their phonological distance tasks on 2–3 sounds. The investigation of variations in dialects and MSA has been the focus of numerous related studies (Abd-El-Jawad, 1987; Al Ani, 1970; Davis, 1995; Kirchhoff and Vergyri, 2005; Zaidan and Callison-Burch, 2014). Given the phonetic variations in MSA and SpA, future research should prioritize samples that reflect these differences to better understand phonological and lexical distances across different Arabic-speaking communities. Moreover, it is important to examine PA across different diglossic situations, emphasizing that these variations should not be viewed merely as deficits but as complexities with varied levels of challenges.
Moreover, some researchers argue that the concept of a dialect is contingent upon the existence of a standard form. This implies that dialects are fundamentally linked to and evolve from a standard version, which allows for a more fluid interchange between these variants. Boussofara-Omar (2003) suggested that the concept of diaglossia, where MSA and SpA are fluid, especially in educated spoken Arabic (ESA), which combines MSA and dialectal patterns. This linguistic fluidity may affect vocabulary, morphemic, and syntactic development in young Arabic speakers, most likely through education and ESA. These perspectives suggest a dynamic interaction between MSA and SpA that affects literacy development and requires diverse theoretical approaches to fully understand Arabic diglossia.
It is also important to incorporate studies on speech and language development that investigate the age of sound acquisition in Arabic-speaking children. For example, Amayreh (2003) found that children aged 7.8 to 8.4 years, compared to those aged 6.6 to 7.4, demonstrated full mastery of all consonants in their acceptable forms. Consonants such as /d/, /z/, and /ʔ/ were acquired earlier, while others, such as /tʕ/, /dʕ/, and /ðʕ/—were acquired later. Integrating these findings into broader discussions of phonological development can deepen our understanding of delayed acquisition by emphasizing the role of articulatory complexity in sound mastery (Amayreh, 2003). Finally, it is important to note that the linguistic landscape of a language is not always consistent in its level of complexity. For example, while English is often considered to have a relatively regular orthography, it retains original spellings of many borrowed words or roots, resulting in numerous exceptions. This, along with inconsistencies in sound patterns, contributes to challenges at early reading stages, but manageable with appropriate instruction. Similarly, the Arabic language presents different type of difficulty for emerging readers. However, as many of the reviewed studies have shown, the effects of phonological and lexical distance tend to diminish, and in some cases disappear, by late elementary school (Asadi and Abu-Rabia, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad and Haj, 2018; Schiff and Saiegh-Haddad, 2018), suggesting that these challenges can be addressed over time with continued exposure and practice.
Differences within and between diglossic contexts and sociopolitical considerations
It is important to identify the factors that unequivocally influence literacy development. The Institute for Statistics (UIS) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provides essential educational, scientific, cultural, and communication data that informed this analysis. This collaboration ensures that data from different countries are comparable and that global indicators, such as those for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are reliable. One indicator that the UIS tracks is the percentage of students below minimum reading proficiency at the end of primary school (a low Global Alliance to Monitor Learning [GAML] threshold). This denotes the share of students who, at the end of their primary education, fail to meet the GAML minimum reading proficiency standards. The suggestion that diglossia has a negative impact on reading proficiency levels conflicts with some of the data provided by the UIS. A comparison of minimum reading proficiency rates at the end of primary school between non-diglossic and diglossic countries suggests that diglossia in some countries is not a definitive factor in reading success. According to Table 3, Brazil, a non-diglossic upper-middle-income country, had a minimum reading proficiency rate of 43.5% in 2019, which is comparable to Egypt's 44.57% in 2021 and Jordan's 46.64% in 2021, despite both countries' diglossic status (UNESCO-UIS Institute for Statistics, n.d.). Similarly, Mexico, which is also non-diglossic, had a percentage of 41.7% in 2019, which is lower than that of diglossic Egypt (46.64%) in 2021 (UNESCO-UIS Institute for Statistics, n.d.).
Table 3. Percentage of students at the end of primary education achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in reading, both sexes (%).
Table 3 shows that within the subset of diglossic regions, there are substantial differences in reading proficiency. For example, according to the UNESCO-UIS Institute for Statistics (n.d.), while Egypt, a lower-middle-income diglossic country, had a minimum reading proficiency rate of 44.57% in 2021, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, high-income diglossic countries, had much higher minimum rates of 80.39 and 80.94%, respectively. Additionally, Jordan, with an income classification similar to that of Egypt, had a minimal reading proficiency rate of 46.64% in 2021 (Table 3). The disparities within diglossic nations imply that socioeconomic factors, educational policies, and investment in education (among other variables) play critical roles in determining reading proficiency outcomes. These data show that the minimum reading proficiency in some non-diglossic nations is comparable to that of their diglossic counterparts. Nonetheless, a factor they share is the socioeconomic status of their populations.
Although many studies and opinion papers have addressed the claimed negative impact of diglossia, this paper critically evaluates only those studies whose conclusions were specifically supported by correlational or experimental analyses investigating the effects of diglossia on reading skills and reading development. As illustrated in Figure 1, the primary inclusion criterion used during the manual review was the selection of studies examining the impact of phonological and/or lexical distance on reading. The resulting studies inadvertently focused primarily on certain varieties of the Palestinian vernacular used by students in schools affiliated with the Israeli Ministry of Education. No geographical filter was explicitly applied to isolate studies from these particular dialects or geopolitical regions. However, the emergence of this regional concentration can be understood through the lens of institutional research ecosystems, which highlight how geographic proximity and institutional affiliations foster interconnected research communities (Collins, 2009). According to Table 1, all of these studies were conducted in a context that, while extremely important, does not represent the broader geopolitical regions where diglossia exists. Palestinians in Israel attend separate schools overseen by Israeli authorities, where segregation is paired with unequal access to resources such as school infrastructure, funding, and curriculum (Abu-Saad, 2004; Halabi, 2025). These disparities are often designed to weaken students' ties to their cultural identity. Since the 19th century, Arabic has been associated with various political and social aims, including promoting pan-Arab unity, supporting colonization, and advancing national independence (Columbu, 2022), highlighting how language can be politicized (Aboelezz, 2018). In higher education, the dominance of Hebrew creates significant linguistic barriers that hinder Arab students' sense of belonging (Ali and Da'as, 2019; Mizel, 2021). Moreover, the wider backdrop of discrimination and exclusion, shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, further complicates equitable integration in academic settings (Mizel, 2021). The findings highlight the need to examine language across diverse geopolitical, economic, educational, and sociopolitical contexts.
Conclusion
The author of this review advocates for recognizing linguistic variations as integral components of the linguistic landscape, enriching—rather than detracting from—our understanding. This highlights the importance of maintaining a dynamic equilibrium between top-down and bottom-up research methods: by constantly cross-verifying them, a deeper appreciation of the phonological and lexical distances between MSA and SpA can be gained. This balanced approach not only fosters more robust academic inquiry but also supports the development of educational strategies attuned to the unique realities of Arabic diglossia, ultimately improving literacy outcomes for learners within this linguistic context.
Author contributions
LB: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Keywords: Arabic, diglossia, reading skills, phonological distance, lexical distance
Citation: Bergstrand Othman L (2025) Arabic diglossia: advocating for a non-deficit model in comparative analysis of reading and language acquisition. Front. Educ. 10:1518728. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1518728
Received: 28 October 2024; Accepted: 23 April 2025;
Published: 19 May 2025.
Edited by:
Çise Çavuşoğlu, Atatürk Teacher Training Academy, CyprusReviewed by:
Hanada Thomure, Zayed University, United Arab EmiratesCopyright © 2025 Bergstrand Othman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Lama Bergstrand Othman, YmVyZ3N0cmxAdXd3LmVkdQ==