I write this article out of pure shame. I write it because I’ve paused a few times trying to remember what an English word translates to in Arabic. I constantly use “Franco” Arabic because I never actively taught myself how to properly type in Arabic. I spend my free time reading English books. More than half my dialect with my friends is not even spoken in Arabic.
It’s quite tragic really, because I’m not the exception to the rule. I was born an Arab, whose mother tongue is Arabic and yet I don’t even remember the last time I wrote a considerable piece in Arabic or spoke fully in Arabic without an English word slipping here and there.
All too often I catch myself saying a sentence in Arabic only to embellish it with “really!”, “too much!” “yeah!” “I know, right?” or any other English words to get my point across. This would be slightly understandable if words did not have Arabic equivalents or synonyms, but that’s actually not the case.
I cannot count the number of times my mother stopped me midway through a conversation to correct my pronunciation of an Arabic word, even though I am supposedly a fully-functioning adult. I will never be able to hide my disappointment at myself whenever this happens.
When once asked to professionally write in Arabic, I immediately replied with “no.” My reply came almost instinctively, without me even having to take a minute to think about my decision. Why, though? Why did I decline the offer even though I’ve spent years and years at school learning proper Arabic- not the crappy slang we now all use? I probably said no because I’ve never put my Arabic skills to good use beyond passing an exam in school.
Whenever I’m asked to sign my name, I automatically sign it in English- even if the paper I’m signing is written in Arabic and even though my name is purely Arabic.
Our connection to our supposedly first language has gotten so disturbed and severely distorted to the extent that we can now write English dialect in Arabic- just check some of Egypt’s sarcastic Facebook pages, tweets and posts.
To conclude, I did not write this to blame anyone or make them feel guilty. I simply wrote it as a public, inquisitive question for all of us: where is our language going? Or rather, where are we going to allow it to go?