A reasoning ... Why I Use English instead of arabic

Today it just hit me to think of the reason why I predominately use English as my language of choice... while regardless of what I claim Arabic is supposed to be my mother tongue.

Alot of venom gets spat around just for using this language, I am too familiar with the run of the mill reasons; it's a proof of the elitist class, the language of the enemy, Arabic is a wonderful language, and yare yare yare ...

As I got lost in my chain of thoughts it brought me back in the years to notice where did it change, and i came to the following conclusions...
unlike kids today were the parents are over pretentious about displaying their wonderful abilities is speaking the most abysmal English ever spoken (hmm not really but pretty up there, south asian, and asian FOB's gotta take the cake) and transfering the "fruit" of their knowledge to their young ones back in the day that attitude was more lax, and still my generation came out as it is right now. So that scratched the "parents are using english more and more with their kids" reason, i just had to get that out of the way.

Now i have been comfortable with English more so than in Arabic for as far as i could remember, with memories dating back to the preschool days (even mentioned it before in here ).

When i was young all the material that was available for me from Arabic origins was always talking down to me. Dad says do that and that (think "kaman 7azeen" or may "eureka"), religion says do that (oh so many religious kids shows in my days to count), society says do that ("2ifta7 ya sim sim"). essentially the other option to that demeaning programing was .... a dumber than dumb Arabic publications.

From then it got burned in my mind that whatever had a hint of an Arabic influence degraded the quality of the product. (hey i liked sesame street parts of 2ifta7 ya sim sim, but hated the rest) essentially there was no escape, no area for just breathing a fresh air. Kids are already absorbing so much information from their society and surroundings that they find escape when they head to TV and books.
So when they start to compare the originals and Arabic versions they start to notice subtle and mostly non subtle difference. With time that drives them to stray away in pursuit of the truth, which at a young age they revere it as the holy grail.

Then the pursuit to find suitable reading material since all efforts to find watchable TV material that didn't seem to over stress the lessons you to endure to enjoy the show have all failed (remember how depressing all the TV shows were ? with the exception of like grendaizer, and all the other mecha shows ..... there was just too many drama "am an orphaned kid pity me cartoons"). So you start reading some Arabic stories it doesn't take to long to figure out that it seems "ali" and "alia" are pretty much every where doing almost the same thing .... no creativity at all, and later in life you find the ones that interested you the most were only adaptations (the example to spring to mind is a book series I loved when i was in KG , it was called "burhan" which was French in origin if am not mistaken). So you keep going back to the same point over and over... that the quality of stimulation that you get from Arabic material is lot lower than anything else that you know.


The vague glimmer of an admirable all arabic production in my mind was a Syrian show, I think it was called "kan zaman" where a grand mother tells fantasy stories to her grand children each episode. that was a well done show for the time :)

by that time the kid hits school age, and smack he is hit with a tough as hell curriculum of grammar .... and a lethargically misadventures of a kid and girl.
Dare we forget the poetry which is either of a national flavor or way beyond relevance to the kids age. So that encourages the regurgitation rather than the digestion of the information.

Then due to lack of any stepping stones since they are not deemed literal heralds, you are thrown into the pits of "abu 2il 2isba3 2al 3odwani" and "2al ja7ith". just the name should drive to strangle your self....
The literally level is so high that every time you read a paragraph of "2al bo'5ala2", it makes you feel like the idea of bashing your head against the wall seem like an act of mercy xD
So at that point you are frustrated, and unless you were of the lucky minority who had a knack for learning Arabic (Yes reality is so few of us have the innate ability to comprehend it so easily) you were left with the "duck and run BOY! " option.

While all of this is going on, you are exposed to mind blowing experience in what you perceive as English speaking programs. You progress in your reading from Dr.Seuss style books to Ronald Dahl ... to Ian Flemming. which ease the transition to the prophets of the pen....
You learn grammar through exposure and practice, not through rules and memory cramming. In a way that it becomes second nature for you, and you don't really have to think and doubt your self "is it a dumma or kasra, willa la2 fee noon 2il niswa .... AHH"

So you learn to think in English for the sole reason that it makes more sense to do that ! eventually you decide that the highest competency you CAN achieve in Arabic is the colloquial Arabic, and regarding "kawa3ed" they lost you at the tenses and now they are discussing "3orood" (poetry meters as far as I understood it).....
Your 9th grade poetry book is discussing a renegade women riding a Harley smoking her reefer and discussing how she got deflowered, while Mr. Hatim seems to be like a broken record bitching about how he killed his horse to feed his guests .... Nice going STUPID!

Tell me now is it any wonder why ??!!

(I should have probably never included the last line since it will prompt a knee jerk reaction due to the claimed "hedonistic" tendencies of poetry, but I can't recall how many lines of virgins and wine I had to memorize during my school while being told in the following 30 minutes that we are not supposed to appreciate those things. That is just neurosis in a book ! )


Essentially language bridges in Arabic are very lacking, they are delusional in their belief that you can make the shift from every day speech to something spoken 1400 years ago and still be able to relate and comprehend. There is a reason why you don't get exposed to Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare till later in life, and it feels like the books are reborn than what you recall when you first read them and they didn't make any skills.

It simply means you were not ready then, so stop discarding poorly written stories that help bridge the gap or start producing works for different levels.
The really sad thing about this all is that I don't feel remorse for not learning Arabic in a proper way, since the reality of the matter is I don't use it for anything more than every day speech ........ I can't even maintain interest in reading an Arabic book because I don't have an impetus to bridge my gap, since there is nothing of interest that isn't translated, and when i read the translated version then i'll refer to the original to verify a few doubts I would have for the context and carry on .........


Ok fun Fact of the day, almost 70% of this post was thought off during a shower today. I guess the heat and having the AC busted at work finally got to me.

Listening to: PANIC! AT THE DISCO - Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Witheout Taking Her Clothes Off