The UAE is drafting its first Arabic language law, which will require hotels and other customer-facing businesses to have Arabic speakers on staff, with incentives for organizations that comply and penalties for those that don’t. The new rules will also mandate translations at public conferences, and raise standards for how the language is taught in schools.
It is a significant move for a country where Emiratis make up less than 12% of the population. The cosmopolitan nature of UAE society means Arabic has ceded ground in daily life, to the point where even some Arab children don’t speak it fluently. The language push comes amid signs of a shift in some other Gulf countries, where younger locals are no longer looking so much to the West for validation and are increasingly comfortable asserting their identity in their own language.