Upon encountering the Kelme project, people wonder why we are writing “Arabic” with “European” letters. The language in question is not precisely Arabic, and the keyboard’s notes are not strictly European. Our Lebanese vernacular is commonly classified among the Neo-Arabic dialects. In truth, it is a pidgin born out of long-term bilingualism between Aramaic and Arabic, grounded in Canaanite linguistic heritage, acquiring many loans from French to Turkish throughout history. It is characterized by syntactic and phonological features that differ in many respects from those of MSA (Modern Standard Arabic).

A national mother tongue rather than an official language, Lebanese is not recognized by the state and, therefore, not taught in schools. With the advent of social media, writing Lebanese became widespread, but mainly using either “Arabizi” (Latin letters with numbers in place of the guttural sounds) or the Arabic script. Arabizi does not conform to the global contemporary aesthetics of literary writing, and Arabic letters do not faithfully represent the phonetics of the language (namely the Imala). Arabizi and Arabic letters fail to adapt to digital practices that rely upon advanced software, fonts, and coding. Thus, Kelme found it best to devise a modified Latin script that covers all issues.

The very first alphabet was set out from our shores. Therefore we hold the “Qadmús Copyright,” whereby we can freely adapt any contemporary/modern phonetic alphabet since they all descend from our native Canaanite alphabet. Kelme’s ultimate aim is to standardize our actual language in an internationally recognized script.