Comprehending who’s Language? Mine or Yours?

I was thinking about this today.. from hearing my sister speak Arabic with messed up feminine / masculine nouns, but still speaking it fluently.. Better than those who are not born here and came young though. I remembered the days I was living in the US. I lived in the US for 5 years in this secluded city away from Arabs. No Arabic at all. My cousins, boy and girl, where born in the US but after my uncle’s divorce from their mom he sent them to live in Beirut with my grandmother and Aunt. So they lived there I think till 1987 and went to preschool and grade one. So my cousin would have been 6 and my other cousin 4 years of age. But think about it. They were speaking Arabic. They were fluently speaking it as their first language. Then they had to come back through the American Embassy after a long struggle and the situation got way worse in Lebanon. So anyways, long story short, they came back. And once I met them in 1992 they couldn’t speak a word of it. Not even remembering how to say hello. The distinct Arabic letters they couldn’t even pronounce. I was amazed at the age of 11. Not only that, I was actually bilingual. I comprehended English very well and spoke it to the best of my ability that the year after I was placed in accelerated English and Math classes. However, I still spoke Arabic and chose to always remember it.

Now I am 26 and I still speak Arabic. The problem is I did go through a phase of almost 7 or 8 years b4 I got to University where Arabic no longer became my first language. It became somewhat messed up because I didn’t speak it much and it was much easier to speak English. As I got older in my high school here in Canada, a lot more Arabs started showing up. I didn’t know who they were because I could care less really. I met one girl that figured I was an Arab because I decided to take a non science course! Bad move! Well, my name is Mona and I look like one. Duh! So she was like “wow. You speak English fluently.” I looked at her and said.. “yah so”. She is like but can you speak Arabic? I was thinking to my self, why is she asking that? If I spoke English well does that mean I couldn’t speak Arabic well? It amazed me. Then she started speaking Arabic to me and I replied back. She kept criticizing and saying no. You cannot speak it well. Also you have a Lebanese accent. That is not a Palestinian one. I was like hmm. So I couldn’t speak it well but I had a Lebanese accent. Weird ah? So I am from northern Palestine near Lebanon. Maybe walking distant to the Lebanese border as the old generation would say, and I am criticized for having a different accent and I cannot speak Arabic well. This all happened during a 5 minute conversation before class started. This goes back to the article I wrote about judgmental people. I wasn’t joking about that one. I have gone through it many times in my life.

So anyways.. just from that you can see that friendship did not last long. It had to end. I was accused the next day of meeting this girl that I was sending out bad emails to some other girl that I didn’t know, who was also an Arab, because it was sent from a girl named Mona. I was like am I the only Mona in this world? In this city? In this school. I doubted it. My name is a very common Arabic name. So I just ignored this accusation and just laughed at their stupidity and ignorance. Since the email was written in perfect grammatical English that it must have been me. This was in 1998 I think. The year when dial up was still the norm and I really didn’t care much about emailing some chick telling her she is a hoe. By the way she is and she dressed like one, but I would never tell that to her face obviously.

So speaking English is not a good thing. Speaking Arabic is worse because as people say I suck at it. Well. What can I speak then? I speak English to avoid this criticism. I don’t choose the language I want to speak. Whatever comes out of my mouth is what I say. It has just become a habit. Now I actually speak English in an Arabic accent cause for the past 6 or 7 years I have been hanging out with Arabs. I like my culture and it was good to get back to the routine of speaking Arabic daily.

But you know, it’s funny. When I get mad at my sister I scream to her in Arabic. I find Arabic to be more forceful. Just like German and Russian. I love rough languages. Especially when I use simple non offensive words with direct commands that it just makes it seem bad!

All I can say is. I love being bilingual, and I love the choice of speaking whatever I want to speak when I feel like it.

By the way, I also know Spanish but I chose not to speak it because I had no one to speak it with! I still understand it though! Although.. this is another funny story. My first year in University, no one knew I was Arabic. Especially guys. I would sit in the student community centre and not speak Arabic at all. Until one day one guy saw my necklace and said, “YOU ARE PALESTINIAN!”. I said, “yep! Damn proud too of it. So?” He said, “holy.. every guy sitting here thought you were this Spanish hot chick.” I said, “Aaah.. Muchas gracias. Soy hablo español!” He said, “Wow! You speak it too.”

Pssh.. Men..

Maybe I should go back to learning Spanish and become trilingual. I need a third language to communicate with since the first two are not that great in other people’s opinions.

Random Thoughts, Whatever!