The Linguistics of Kifaya
William Safire on the word Kifaya in his On Language column in the NY Times Magazine:
The word means ”enough.” The Arabic verbal root is kafa, ”to be satisfied.” In Hans Wehr’s Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, it has the senses of ‘’sufficient amount” and ”that which suffices for performing a duty.” Munther Younes, coordinator of the Arabic program at Cornell, says that verbs derived from the same root are in the Koran, as in the sense of ”it is enough for you to have God as a companion or protector.”
David S. Powers, professor of Islamic history and law at Cornell, says he thinks that the word as used today is in the nature of what linguists call a calque, a borrowing from another language in literal translation (much as English borrowed Ãœbermensch from the German and translated it as superman). ”In politics, in modern culture,” Powers says, ”we say, ‘Enough!’ Kifaya is the Arabic equivalent of that. It’s a standard word in Arabic now being used in a political context, probably a modern phenomenon. It suggests there may be some creative linguistic development.”
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In English, enough grew out of enow to become an adjective synonymous with ‘’sufficient.” It can also be used as an adverb to disparage, as in Shakespeare’s ”An honest fellow enough . . . but he has not so much brain as ear-wax.” In politics, when Theodore Roosevelt declined nomination for a third term in 1908, The New York Times reported that he’d ”had enough.” (Teddy later changed his mind.) And the G.O.P. used the slogan ”Had Enough?” against Harry Truman in the midterm election of 1946 and elected the first Republican Congress since Hoover.
The most powerful use of the word in oratory was delivered in English by a man from the Middle East. At a signing ceremony on the White House lawn in 1993, after a reluctant handshake with the P.L.O.’s Yasir Arafat, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel said: ”We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes . . . we who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough!”
That’s the new, emphatic sense that Arabs have given their Arabic kifaya.
Categories: General.
The Arabic root is KFY. “kifÄya[h]” is an infinitive, from which the verb “kafÄ” can be dervied.
The use of the word as it is attested today in the political arena is not a new usage, nor it is adapted from another language. A person who is rising for his right after having submitted to abuse (verbal, or otherwise) would shout “Kefaya ba’a”.
Nothing new here. David S. Powers is over-analysing.
I second Alif. This post is about the linguistics of Enough, not Kifaya.
David Powers has obviously never been to an Ahly and Zamalek football game, “Kefaya, Haram”. And football is pretty political.
If that’s not political enough, didn’t Nasser say in one of his speeches, “kafana zollan wa hawannan”.
Safire must have short of materal this week. Sometimes a word is just a word. A calque — that’s absurb. Egyptians who have had enough abuse or mistreatment have been saying ‘kefaya’ for hundreds of years. They didn’t need to consult some foreign political textbook. Totally silly!
Apparently, 21st century revolutions are permitted just one slogan: Belgrade (Otpor::Resistance), Tbilisi (Kmara::Enough) and Kiev (Pora::Now) The marketing experts are testing “Kifaya” for resonance among the consumers. I’ve collected some photos of the Beirut opposition protests waving sheets of paper with ENOUGH in English printed on them.
In this soundbite era, the 2 seconds necessary to say something profoundly meaningful like, Liberté, Egalité Fraternité, (and oooh, brotherhood, we can’t say that now, can we?) consume too much time and do not meet the standards for a snappy slogan.
And who the hell is Safire anyway to wander into Arabic, anyway of which he has no knowledge?
I would have thought that “khalas” would be a more emphatic word to use in the context “kifaya” is being used now, but then I’m not a native speaker. “Kifaya ba’a” always seemed to be said in exasperation, rather than as a statement of power.
The meaning Joe [6] sensed from “Kifaya ba’a”, i.e. exasperation, is exactly what demonstrators mean. It’s not a statement of power in the non-tolerant sense, but rather expressing that “our power of self-control and assuming goodwill is nearing its upper threshold”, you see. “khalas, kifaya” would have relayed the same meaning. The active word here is still “kifaya”.
This reminds me of the twisted interpretations of the last words of Captain Battuty of EgyptAir before his plane was shot down in US aerospace.
What an extraordinarily patronizing column. Safire would like everyone to know there’s been no linguistic development in Arabic since the Quran. The “suggestion of some creative linguistic development” comes only from a borrowing from English?
That annoys me far far more than the little reference to Rabin at the end put in to suggest Israel gets the credit for the whole ‘kifaya’ sentiment.
kifaya ba’a indeed.
ah yes, well, just like arab nationalism, it could have only come from contact with the west. kifaya ba’a!
Meh. Too much Western writing on the Middle East is just self-regarding nonsense pretending to be about the Middle East… I’m more than a little tired of trying to read about Egypt and finding myself reading about America…
Libyans are adopting ‘khalas‘ as their revolting motto.