The wrong preposition. That was all it took for me register that I could no longer claim I was fluent in Arabic. To my dormant Arabic mind, I knew something didn’t sound right, but, after laughing at me for a full minute, one of my cousins was there to save the day. Despite my argument that having 3 languages with differing levels of proficiency knocking about in my mind was bound to lead to some mistakes, I found my attempts at redemption paled in comparison to his one line argument: “No excuses - you’re officially a foreigner.”
To be a foreigner in your own language, a language you still switch to when you’re overcome with anger at someone being a slow walker, was a humbling realisation. Although my mind still thought in Arabic, I found my tongue refused to co-operate.
I soon realised very early on that Duolingo was not going to be much help if I understood the language orally but struggled to read it - especially since the Duolingo options for Arabic were meagre compared to those of Spanish or German, for example. My fear of studying cases in German only to be confronted by them in Arabic meant that picking up a grammar book was also not going to be on my to do list any time soon.
I found my attempts at redemption paled in comparison to his one line argument: “No excuses - you’re officially a foreigner.”
I came to the wonderful epiphany that to treat this re-connection as a chore would remove the joy of it completely, and if my Arabic skills were replaced by consuming everything in English, so why shouldn’t the same logic apply to regain my skills? Soon enough, I started watching YouTube with Arabic subtitles and learning the lyrics to Fairuz and Cheb Khaled. Sadly, language learning isn’t as simple as watching Netflix, but I have picked up some key tips along the way.
1. Your Reason Why. Write out a clear list of reasons why you want to re-learn your language. Write it on a pie