Prompt: Discuss your personal relationship with language.
Language is a very important part of our lives. It plays a role in how we communicate to other people, learn, and understand the world. It also plays a role making the world’s cultures distinct. Therefore, the more languages we know how to speak, the better we can communicate with the people around us and understand different cultures. My mother and father were both born in Egypt and moved here by the mid-1990s. I have two older brothers and one twin brother. My twin brother was born here in the United States. As for my older brothers, one was born in Egypt while the other was born here as well. Growing up as the son of two immigrant parents, I was raised in an environment of two languages. Since we are products of our environments, I inherited Arabic from them, the predominant language spoken in Egypt. My two older brothers grew up in the same environment yet became more fluent in Arabic than me. My twin brother, having suffered a traumatic series of events in middle school, turned into a quiet kid. He does not use his words often, making it difficult for us to communicate with him. Unlike me and my older brothers, he hardly understands Arabic and only understands English. Despite my respectable amount of knowledge, I still never became proficient in Arabic. Although I was raised in an Arabic-speaking environment, I do not speak Arabic fluently because I failed to master it as a kid. This made my experience with learning Arabic as an older child difficult, causing me to have a lack of confidence in my speaking ability and feel different from my brothers.
When I was young, I went to a local mosque on the weekends to learn how to read and speak Arabic. When my parents signed me up for that class, I didn’t want to go. Instead, I wanted my parents to teach me at home so that I can speak it like them. Despite going against my will, I learned the letters of the Arabic alphabet and some basic words and phrases. It allowed me to get a head start with my Arabic studies. But that’s all I got out of the class, a head start. Reflecting on that moment now, it would have been in my best interest to continue studying Arabic at a young age. As a result, I never became the eloquent Arabic speaker that I always wanted to be. In fact, at some point when one of my teachers had a conversation with me in Arabic, she noticed that I was struggling to communicate properly.
“Where are your parents from,” she said.
“Egypt,” I replied.
“You have two Egyptian parents and can’t speak Arabic fluently? That’s not good.”
“Yeah, it’s not.” I felt weak on the inside.
I took that conversation to heart. I was disappointed in myself but also frustrated at my parents. I kept that frustration to myself for a long time. Last year, I came across a moment where I tried to explain something in Arabic to my parents. My older brother was sitting nearby and heard me speak. I hesitated often and made a lot of noticeable mistakes. So, he felt bad and decided to say something about it.
“This is ridiculous,” he scolded. “You guys need to correct him because he’s making too many mistakes.”
My father responded, saying, “He’ll learn. He just needs to take baby steps.”
I jumped in and defended my brother, “No, I need to learn now!”
“Just take it slow.”
“So then how come he’s good at Arabic?”
“Because he practices a lot,” my mother said. “When you learn a language, you need to practice it or else you’ll forget it.”
“But I practice too!”
“Okay, so then keep practicing.”
I knew I wasn’t going anywhere with this anytime soon. I was angry on the inside. Trying to remain respectful, I said firmly, “You know it’s possible to learn Arabic in a few months,” hoping that would change their minds.
Neither one of my parents said anything after that.
At that point I realized I had to make the most of what I had. I tried my best to practice like they told me to and learned some new vocabulary. When I heard them say a new word, I asked them what it meant and wrote it down in my phone. I currently have a list of 14 vocabulary words on my phone. Even though I haven’t added anything to that list in 5 months, I still try to ask about any new words I encounter. Every once in a while, my parents will point out a mistake and correct me. Although I never had the courage to take an Arabic class, my Arabic has gotten better since last year. I’ve developed a curiosity to ask questions when I want to learn more. Despite my gradual improvement, there’s something that I still lack: confidence.
The biggest problem I face today is that my limited Arabic makes me feel different from my older brothers. Unlike me, they have no problem at all speaking Arabic. They talk to my mother more than I do on a daily basis. The confidence they’ve built when speaking Arabic is the reason why they can have a 20+ minute conversation with my mother and I can’t. The last time I remember having a long conversation with my mother was last April. That’s not because I don’t want to talk to her. It’s because I don’t want to have to use English. I want to challenge myself to speak Arabic for a long duration of time. I also want to be able to use Arabic with her just like my brothers because that would extinguish my feelings about being different. With my father, me and my brothers are normally comfortable speaking English, even though he can fluently speak both Arabic and English. My mother isn’t as fluent as my father in English, so me and my brothers use Arabic with her about 80% of the time. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to speak or understand English, it’s just that it feels right.
Dialects play an important role in determining the way you speak a language. There is not necessarily a correct version of Arabic, however there are some that are the closest to standard Arabic. We call this version of Arabic “Classical Arabic”. I would rather learn a dialect like Saudi or Classical Arabic itself because those are closer to the standard version. The Egyptian dialect of Arabic, however, can be quite different. To give an idea of what speaking it is like, take the Arabic alphabet for instance.Qaaf (ق) is 1 of 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. This letter makes a “k” sound but using the back of the throat. The word qamar (قمر), meaning “moon”, starts with the letter qaaf (ق). Most Arabic speakers pronounce it this way, which is the correct way. Egyptians pronounce this word as “amar”, leaving out the qaaf. These nuances made me think that the Egyptian dialect was the “right” way to speak, only to realize later in my childhood that this is one of many things that separate Egyptian Arabic from standard Arabic.
This pandemic taught me that discomfort leads to improvement. If I want to get better at Arabic, then I need to continue to challenge myself. In the near future, I will take an Arabic class. I will also try to practice Arabic as much possible with my parents. I know that many kids who grow up with immigrant parents are fluent in two languages. I may not be one of those kids, but I won’t stop until I get there. It’s never about how long it takes you; it just matters that you’re there.
