The President of Ain Shams University stressed the importance of the Arabic language and preserving it to preserve our cultural and historical identity, in addition to working to spread it, pointing to the importance of learning languages in general, explaining that teaching Arabic to non-native speakers makes them ambassadors for us and the Arabic language as well, indicating that there is an international interest in the Arabic language and learning it, and perhaps the best proof of this is that international institutions allocate a day to celebrate the Arabic language.

This came during the opening of the activities of the intellectual forum launched by the Cultural Relations Committee of the Graduate Studies and Research Sector at Faculty of Al-Alsun to celebrate the International Day of the Arabic Language, in the presence of Prof. Dr. Ashraf Attia, Vice Dean for Graduate Studies, Prof. Dr. Nagwa Omar, Head of the Arabic Language Department, Prof. Majid Al-Saeedi, Professor of Arabic Language, Prof. Dr. Youmna Azmy, Rapporteur of the Cultural Committee, and a group of faculty members, the assisting body, and students.

Prof. Mahmoud Al-Matini, President of the University, added that mentioning the name of Faculty of Al-Alsun is not associated with teaching foreign languages ​​only, but the reality is that Arabic is one of the most important departments that Faculty of Al-Alsun at Ain Shams University, stressing the importance of developing the Arabic Language Division for non-native speakers. With the aim of exporting our Arab culture to various countries of the world, in addition to enriching the principles and origins of the sound Arabic language for speakers across the world.

He stressed that the celebration of the Arabic Language Day today from Ain Shams University comes to culminate in the achievements of the university, which has become the first at the level of Egyptian universities in literacy eradication, as the number of citizens whose illiteracy was eradicated by students of Ain Shams University reached eight thousand citizens at the level of the governorates of the Republic.

He continued his speech, stressing the importance of supporting the university's efforts in literacy for citizens. As there is no room to talk about any development without literacy, stressing that any development efforts will erode their fruits and fade away quickly in the presence of illiteracy, and stressed that the national role that Ain Shams University children play in eradicating citizens' illiteracy is one of the most important pillars of sustainable development that will be felt. With students in the future, he pointed out that the university administration has set unlimited rewards for students participating in the Presidential Literacy Initiative.

For his part, Prof. Dr. Abdel Fattah Saud, Vice President for Education and Student Affairs, pointed out that Arabic is the mother tongue, and one of the oldest languages ​​in the world that UNESCO and the United Nations have designated a global day to celebrate, and he continued, stressing that the main goal of language education is that the graduate is able to Moving between the Arabic language and the foreign language smoothly, indicating that the combination of the Arabic language and a foreign language offered by Faculty of Al-Alsun; It makes the graduate more powerful in the fields of the labor market, and learning languages ​​does not stop at language only; Rather, it extends to the study of Western culture and civilization and its transmission to the Egyptians, which is the main goal of the great scholar Rifa'a Al-Tahtawi founding the Al-Alsun school in the past and continuing it until it was annexed to Ain Shams University under the name of Faculty of Al-Alsun.

On her part, Prof. Dr. Salwa Rashad, Dean of Faculty of Al-Alsun, it is worth noting in this celebration that I point out that it was decided to celebrate the Arabic language on December 18 of each year because it is the day on which the United Nations General Assembly issued its Resolution No. 3190 in December 1973 to adopt the Arabic language among the official languages and languages Work for the United Nations.

She indicated that this decision was preceded by great efforts made by Egyptian and Arab diplomacy to obtain this right.

In October 2012, at the convening of the 190th session of the UNESCO Executive Council, it was decided to adopt December 18 as the International Day of the Arabic Language, and UNESCO celebrated that day for the first time in that year.

According to international reports, the Arabic language is a global language that ranks fourth among living languages, after Chinese, English and Spanish, and it ranks second after the English language in the large number of its speakers. The importance of the Arabic language is due to the number of countries that it speaks. The member states of the Arab League are 22 countries, which occupy a privileged position among the continents of the world, and have great commercial and economic importance: they have the largest oil markets, and they are among the largest importers of goods and goods from the East, such as China. And Japan and Korea and from the West as the countries of Europe and America.

In the context of this, the need to learn the Arabic language became a necessity, and the demand for learning Arabic from non-native speakers increased, especially as foreign communities increased in the diplomatic, trade, business and services sectors, and a large number of them appeared willing to study the Arabic language, this prompted academic institutions in Egypt and the Arab world to expand the teaching of the Arabic language.

She pointed out that a ministerial decision was issued to establish the Department of Arabic Language, the Division of Speakers, at Faculty of Al-Alsun, No. 896, in 1975, and the Department of Arabic Language, since its inception until today, has been granted 135 degrees for a master’s degree, and more than 120 degrees for a doctorate in Arabic in linguistic and literary studies.

The Non-Speaking Division of the Arabic Language Department at Faculty of Al-Alsun was established in 1994 with three students in the first year only, until they reached nearly 70 students in 2019.

The nationalities of the students coming from: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Soviet republics, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea and African countries: such as Kenya, Guinea, Somalia, and so on. According to the student records at Faculty of Al-Alsun.

During her speech, she thanked the late Prof. Dr. Abdullah Khurshid al-Bari, may God have mercy on him, the professor at the Department of Arabic Language at the Faculty of Al-Alsun, who was the reason for adopting the Arabic language as an official language in the United Nations, pointing to the efforts of the Department of Arabic Language at Faculty of Al-Alsun for the role he played in Supporting and teaching the Arabic language at the local, regional and international levels, and his interest in holding the World Arabic Language Day annually, in the presence of senior specialists and thinkers.

After the end of the opening ceremony, the first session was held, moderated by Prof. Maged Al-Saeedi, Professor of Literature and Criticism at the Faculty, a speech by: Prof. Dr. Magdy Youssef, President of the International Association for Studies of Interculturalism, Prof. Mohamed Raouf Hamed, Professor of Pharmacology at the Drug Control Authority in Cairo, Prof. Hamed Al-Mousaly, Professor of Production Engineering at the College of Engineering, Prof. Ali Al-Ghitait is Professor of International and Comparative Law at Ain Shams University.

The second session entitled "Arab Contributions Between Yesterday and Today", moderated by Prof. Dr. Nagwa Omar, Head of the Department of Arabic Language at the College, a speech by: Suha Mahmoud Mahmoud: The Efforts of Arab Scholars and Linguists in Computerizing the Arabic Language Dr. Naveen Muhammad Al-Biruni, Philosopher of Civilizations.