Break Time!

I received these cartoons to my email and laughed so hard at them as they seemed so true. They happen everyday in our society.

I remember an incident where a friend of mine and I were sitting on the same table at a wedding. She has a 1 and a half year old boy and she wanted him to sit down and she kept on saying SIT SIT. I laughed at her and said .. he is your kid he isn’t a dog!!! She addressed him in English and I swear it sounded like she was talking to a dog or something. Later on, she only addressed the poor little kid in English so I just had to comment again, asking her as to why they talk to him in English, and she said well am German and his dad is Italian ( as a joke.. she is Arab and her husband too). We laughed and I just got it out of my system for a while. She explained later that she wanted the kid to grow up with fluent English. GUESS WHAT?? He will end up not speaking his own mother tongue language!!

It is lovely to have bilingual kids and even trilingual. The only excuse for an Arab to not speak Arabic is that they would have been born and brought up abroad in an English or French or whatever other language it is country.

I have always thought that English was easier to use as many people around me don’t speak Arabic, but once at home it is ARABIC that I want to hear. After a long day of English I miss hearing Arabic. I remember a movie for Ahmad Zaki ( Al Namir Al Aswad) that I was watching a couple of days ago on TV. He was in Germany for a while and the minute he heard ARABIC he was jumping around of happiness. I loved the way this actor expressed it.

It is such a shame that we find many Arabs who don’t speak Arabic AT ALL. The language is getting weaker everyday as we don’t want to speak it anymore.

The trend is say Hi in English, put some words in Arabic and then go back to English. Distorted sentences!!! People either think it is cooler to talk that way or it just says that they well educated!

Knowing other languages is a must nowadays, but of course we shouldn’t just let go of our own language as it is a beautiful one.

I go back to criticize myself now. Well I can speak Arabic very well but sometimes I just feel that I can express myself better in English which is something I SHOULD START working on. I will definitely start reading more Arabic books and Arabic poetry. I would definitely teach my kids Arabic first if ever have any ;) oh and I sure need Arabic typing lessons!!

Peace,