Ahlaan from America!
May 13, 2017 5:25:45 GMT 9
Post by Ayesha Nicole on May 13, 2017 5:25:45 GMT 9
Ahlaan wa sahlaan!
My name is Ayesha Nicole and we live on the East Coast of America. I am a native English speaker, studying the Arabic language (and its range of registers, also known as diglossia!), and my husband is a native Arabic speaker who is fluent in English. We are teaching our children Arabic, with the assistance of a professionally trained teacher via online classes twice per week. We also try to speak as much Arabic at home as we can, which is a challenge for me, because I am also learning the language. While my husband is a native speaker and a master of all registers, I am studying mostly MSA (written and a 'spoken' version of it) and CLA (Classical Arabic), and can understand a little of ECA (Egyptian dialect) and LCA (Levantine dialect). So, when we speak with other Egyptian family, we speak in MSA, which is the equivalent of Shakesperean English, and someone has to translate it into the local dialect. HA!
If the Arab speaker is college educated, then they can understand and are patient with our attempts. We also read Arabic books and watch videos and programming in both MSA and dialects.
Due to my own struggles of learning the language and the challenges of dilgossia, I became more interested in bilingualism and second language acquisition. I eagerly read Adam's book and others, which are incredibly helpful and inspirational. When I feel overwhelmed, I just try to focus on learning a new phrase or sentence or short conversational exchange and using it daily to slowly replace our English with it at home and when out and about.
One of the challenges is when the children play with other native Arabic speakers or are around other native speakers, they end up speaking English! So, we patiently persist. As we say in Arabic, "خطوة خطوة", which means "step by step".
At any rate, I am happy to join this forum and learn from everyone else on this bilingual journey.
Thank you!
Ayesha Nicole
My name is Ayesha Nicole and we live on the East Coast of America. I am a native English speaker, studying the Arabic language (and its range of registers, also known as diglossia!), and my husband is a native Arabic speaker who is fluent in English. We are teaching our children Arabic, with the assistance of a professionally trained teacher via online classes twice per week. We also try to speak as much Arabic at home as we can, which is a challenge for me, because I am also learning the language. While my husband is a native speaker and a master of all registers, I am studying mostly MSA (written and a 'spoken' version of it) and CLA (Classical Arabic), and can understand a little of ECA (Egyptian dialect) and LCA (Levantine dialect). So, when we speak with other Egyptian family, we speak in MSA, which is the equivalent of Shakesperean English, and someone has to translate it into the local dialect. HA!
If the Arab speaker is college educated, then they can understand and are patient with our attempts. We also read Arabic books and watch videos and programming in both MSA and dialects. Due to my own struggles of learning the language and the challenges of dilgossia, I became more interested in bilingualism and second language acquisition. I eagerly read Adam's book and others, which are incredibly helpful and inspirational. When I feel overwhelmed, I just try to focus on learning a new phrase or sentence or short conversational exchange and using it daily to slowly replace our English with it at home and when out and about.
One of the challenges is when the children play with other native Arabic speakers or are around other native speakers, they end up speaking English! So, we patiently persist. As we say in Arabic, "خطوة خطوة", which means "step by step".
At any rate, I am happy to join this forum and learn from everyone else on this bilingual journey.
Thank you!
Ayesha Nicole
) that this long journey is a "step by step" process that requires daily persistence. As I often stress...
