- Andrew Freeman's Perspectives on Arabic Diglossia Dec. 9, 1996 No discussion of Arabic is complete without at least a cursory discussion of diglossia. Charles Ferguson is credited with first using the term diglossia in an article which he wrote in 1959 called Diglossia. He identified four languages, Arabic, Greek, Haitian Creole and Swiss German as being prime examples of languages which fit ...www-personal.umich.edu/~andyf/digl_96.htm