August 29, 2011

Broken Arabic


This post is about nothing. I’m just trying out my new camera (dropped the other one in a river), a lovely toy.
My daughter, although born & raised in Lebanon, and the proud owner of a Lebanese passport, speaks only English. Her Arabic is limited, to say the least. She has a decent command of the classical Arabic, thanks to her teachers at school, but her spoken Arabic, or Lebanese, is poor, because she isn’t exposed to it very much. I admit, her parents are entirely at fault here, but we figure she’ll learn it eventually.

Her cousin, although born and raised in Lebanon, and the proud owner of a Lebanese passport as well, speaks only French. His Arabic is limited as well as his home environment is mainly French.

My daughter won’t learn French until next year; her cousin has to wait another 4 years before he will be taught English in school. Yet these two love to play with one another, and language is very clearly not a barrier. They comprehend one another very well, and they do this with the limited Arabic that they do know.

It’s quite amusing to hear the two talk to one another, with their ‘Arabeh mkassar’, broken Arabic.  

5 comments:

Simon said...

So even though both kids born and raised in Lebanon, they talk "Arabic mkassar"!
I find that very interesting. I'm guessing your child's friends are from non-arabic speaking background. That would explain the arabic mkassar, considering that kids spend nearly 7 hours at school playing and associating with other kids.

Been following your blog for quite some time now. Love your Silent Sundays and Wordless Wednesday Door posts :)

zgharta.com said...

Welcome back

Nick said...

Hi- well their arabic is a million times better than mine! Good to see you're back. we're here now too and I'm sure will bump into each other before long.

Sietske said...

Hi Zgharta!!! Am coming in your neighborhood pretty soon, once the temperatures drop a little.
Hi Nick!! I'm in room 260! BD building! Look me up.

Sietske said...

Hi Simon!
Welcome to my blog. No, both kids are fully Lebanese, but one is going to a French school, the other is in the English system, so very little 'street' Arabic is spoken there, except maybe during recess. Oh, well, it will all fix itself (I hope).