American TV in Arab households
I witnessed the most interesting thing on my short trip to Oman. If you read my entry you’ll know that I was jumping from one house to another interviewing women about their status in not just Oman but the GCC as a whole, and I got to see the different lifestyles of each family I had the chance to meet. The total of women we ended up interviewing was somewhere around 11, if you count 2 very short interviews with women in the souq (market or bazaar.)
In some of the houses (most of which are traditionally designed by the way,) women were sitting around in their national clothing discussing …. Desperate Housewives.
If you first see these women, how they dress, how they talk, how they look, where they live, and what they eat, you will not even think that they were exposed to this sort of rubbish on television. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they’re “backwards.” The opposite, actually. These were intelligent and well educated women, who unfortunately couldn’t find something more productive to talk about other than “Desperate Housewives,” making themselves seem like … well, desperate housewives. From the way they talked about it, their excitement, the way they can’t wait for tomorrow’s show, I felt kind of sorry that this is the highlight of their week. I felt like saying, “ladies, get a job.”
It took a lot for me to actually register the fact that this was happening. This is not something I expect women to be talking about in this part of the world, but right now, if you’re a woman in the Gulf and you don’t know Desperate Housewives or similar American shows, that’s a big deal. If you don’t have cable television, you’re way behind. If you didn’t see last night’s episode of Sex and The City, you will not have anything to talk about with your friends at lunch. Usually I try my best to change the topic of discussion, I’ve never been a fan of such shows and the only thing I can actually sit through and enjoy is British or “Jewish” comedy, but it never really stops. I’m becoming more distant from my friends because of this lack of a common interest. On Arabsat, you have at least 5 different channels in English, all of which provide similar episodoes as well as re-runs of shows like Friends, Dawson’s Creek, Smallville, and these are especially popular amongst our youth. Children are adopting American accents despite them attending Arabic, British, or (primarily) Indian schools where there aren’t many American teachers. My friend’s sister thinks she’s one of the members in The O.C., a popular American show about a bunch of dramatic teens. She dresses like the character, talks like the character, and even began pronouncing her name the “American” way.
This, of course, is a generalization. Certainly not all women are like this – but it’s going on, and it’s a big deal. It’s not just Oman, I think in Bahrain we might be suffering from one of the worst cases, mostly because we’re more “digital.”
Is living in an electronically accelerated culture a good thing? Where if you don’t have either a television or a computer, you become an immediate outcast? I always feel the need to catch up with silly shows if I want to have something to talk about. What is the real impact of American television in the Arab world? Would you go as far as to say that this is electronic imperialism? Are we witnessing a cultural transfer? Are we losing touch with reality? Is this one of the reasons why we’re striving towards “Western” values? Seems like all of these outside influences are turning our cultures into contemporary hybrid ones.
I will not be surprised when our souq turns into a JC Penney within the next few years.
And don’t worry, killing your TV won’t help.
We will be influenced in other ways…
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Coca-Colonialism.
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Raping our cultures?
Join the Conversation
There is good and bad in this. Culture spreads for many reasons. Arabic is spoken all the way from Bahrain to Morocco, and the Berber and Coptic languages have been almost (but not yet) wiped out. Was, Arabic culture and language was the “outside influence”, Now, the English language and American culture is rising. History goes on. Is it a bad thing? At least, it gives us all a common means of communication.
But beyond the language, the culture? I do not watch “desperate housewives”. But I do know this: For women to discuss the mis-adventures of “indiscreet” yet attractive women is not an American thing, it is universal. Americans have merely provided a set of ficticious women the whole world can gossip about, which is probably better than gossip about real neighbors! We are not people of small villages any more. If two women meet at work, they might not know each others’ friends and neighbors, but they both know television.
Funny thing, I almost never watch television of this kind (I am a documentary fan) and yet I never seem to have a problem finding something to talk about. The real issue is not what to talk about, it is who to talk to.
The next step beyond McDonaldization is what I call Disnification. This is when the original culture is only maintained in a carefully presented, packaged “display” setting for tourists. Venice, Quebec City, various Native American sites across the American Southwest, Hawaii, and many, many other places have been Disnified. San Francisco’s Chinatown and Fort Worth’s Stockyards are Disnified. So is the entire island of Barbados.
It is the future.
Ben
Hmm, by replacing other cultural beliefs, languages, and traditions? English being the “global” tongue opens the door for countries like America to export their products with ease – it’s become an accepted fact that they’re the dominant culture.
Not a good idea in my opinion, but I’m also not blaming them. Imagine how boring and uninteresting it would be if all of us walk around with Starbucks coffee cups and GAP T-shirts. Some cultures are opening the door to that. We need to aggressively preserve our cultures if we’d like to maintain our identities.
This may sound nationalistic to you, but it’s really not. My argument here is that difference is what makes life interesting – if we all adopt similar beliefs, the same culture, and forget our past, that’s not really a good sign. That’s wiping out history.
I disagree – I think this might increase the gossip about real neighbors because it’s constantly portrayed as a “normal” thing. You start focusing on what other women wear, who they go out with, who they end up marrying, how they raise their children, because that’s what you see on these shows. Sex, men, interfering in your friends’ lives, dress codes, fashion, love – you expect more, so you want more, and in our cultures you can’t get it. This is why we end up welcoming such shows with such excitement. It’s a whole different world, one we’d like to submit ourselves to. When you’re exposed to these concepts, you start valuing different things.
Well, then the future is depressing. Everything is getting obsolesced; replaced; you constantly have to change. It’s overwhelming. The pace of this world makes us expect and want more than what we can handle.
“This may sound nationalistic to you, but it’s really not. My argument here is that difference is what makes life interesting – if we all adopt similar beliefs, the same culture, and forget our past, that’s not really a good sign. That’s wiping out history.”
That’s a reasonable point of view, and I don’t disagree. Would you extend it in other directions, then? Would you be in favor of removing Arabic as the language of North Africa in favor of the native languages?
Would the restoration of a Coptic speaking Egypt be a positive or negative thing?
“Well, then the future is depressing. Everything is getting obsolesced; replaced; you constantly have to change. It’s overwhelming. The pace of this world makes us expect and want more than what we can handle.”
This is also very reasonable, but please consider: today’s future will one day be history, too. All of history, which you don’t want to wipe out, is nothing but an endless chain of overwhelming change, and people adapting to it, or failing.
People in many cultures look back to a “golden Age” when everything was static and perfect, when in truth, it never was. You yourself want to change many things.
Ben
I think there is a difference, though. What you’re talking about is an issue of history. Not the introduction of a completely new culture through technology and indirect interference. There were no troops or a political elite who enforced these new “Western” beliefs, practices, and values upon us, they are being “given” to us and we are blindly accepting it claiming that it’s part of modernization and progress.
The question is, aren’t we bringing this onto ourselves? No one said it has to be this way. Is this really something inevitable? We can welcome change without having to move thrice as fast as we should be.
Esra’a, I think Ben was using the “straw man” strategy with you
This means setting up an exaggeration as something you support and then attacking it, defeating it, and then by implication, saying that your arguement was defeated.
Desperate Housewives, is, on the outside, that is from the audience point of view, worse than a waste of time. I stereotypes women, enourages vices, and promotes hedonistic attitudes. All under the cover of “Entertainment”. Pretty clever. No wonder the US neocons have their mirror images in the Morality Police in Iran.
But we can always compare Desperate Housewives to something like building a car bomb, and then say, “What had you rather two people be doing, talking about Desperate Housewives, or talking about building a car bomb? See Desperate Housewives is really benign and may even be beneficial.”
“We need to aggressively preserve our cultures if we’d like to maintain our identities.”
I agree with you in terms of principle but reality is different my friend. The thing is that sometimes our culture is being shoved down our throat. Plus there’s nothing cool about it in the eyes of many. We need to make it marketable. A year back I was sitting with a group of young Sudanese kids. They were all listening to hip hop so I started asking them if they listened to Sudanese music. They replied “eww the beat sucks and it’s too light. We don’t even understand the lyrics coz most of them are using really difficult old Sudanese folk poetry”… I thought to myself “hmmm they have a point. In this age of big subwoofers and killer bass, old Sudanese music just sucks”… I came back to them after 2 weeks with a hip hop remix sampling an old Sudanese song. They LOVED it. They felt the music truly represented them. Suddenly one of the boy’s mothers told me to make them more interested in their culture more rather than listen to that gangsta rap too much… Slowly it worked. Through that remix, they became interested in hearing the original song and slowly slowly they started getting in touch with their roots. I didn’t stop them from hip hop. I just infused a Sudanese flavor into it and that alone got those kids so interested in their country and tradition.
I don’t agree when you say that American culture is invading us. No it isn’t. It’s us the youth who are letting ourselves be invaded. Nobody is forcing it on us so why are many of us still adopting it? To be frank, I watch almost all of the shows you mentioned and I love them but there are useful things I do too. Culture is meant to evolve. It’s not meant to stay static. Just look at Shakira for example and her belly dancing moves. Her dancing style is already influencing other female hip hop artists. Does that mean Egyptian culture is invading America? No, it just means that cultures influence each other back and forth. History tells us so.
I love American pop culture and I don’t deny it. I jam Metallica songs with my band, Jimi Hendrix, Blink182 and many other stuff BUT we’re always trying to fuse Arab sounds to our own music. Hence in our own way, we’re preserving our cultures.
I welcome all cultures but I don’t believe in the idea that all cultures should remain pure. It doesn’t work that way.
BTW your friends sound like a lot of girls and even some dumb guys I know who watch too much MTV. Like I said… they’re the ones allowing their head to be filled up. There many others who still stick to who they are. I think for those who start becoming “wannabes”, the process is just a simple phase.
Did you remix it yourself? Aywa ya walad
It is invading us in the sense that we allow it to, like you said. They are taking advantage of that in every way possible. There’s like, a special Disney Channel especially for the Middle East, we have more American news networks than international ones, etc. It just gives us a whole new different mentality.
Because it’s made in a way that makes it almost impossible for you to reject it.
I never stated otherwise. My point is that we are completely letting go of our cultural beliefs – if you don’t believe it, come to Bahrain. You will witness it happening first-hand. American television does have an influence, whether we can see it or not. When I speak English, I have a slightly American accent despite me never going to America (unless an airport counts.) I didn’t have this accent through schooling. I have it because I watched television as a child, I imitated what I heard, I wanted to go to a high school like that where PDA is seen as normal and people didn’t have to be forced to take classes like Islamic studies and wear the hijab. I wasn’t even that far behind – I went to a coeducational school which was pretty liberal unless religion is concerned. I remember how people in more strict public schools felt as a result of these shows – it was a huge difference. They simply rejected the idea because it wasn’t “normal” for them, it was too much of a change.
Now you see girls complaining about things like, “I can’t believe that in our culture, we can’t introduce our boyfriends to our parents at this age.” Why? Because this is what happens in the shows you mention. Do you really think they’d be complaining about that if they weren’t exposed to how the Western world does it?
You should read the articles by Saudi Jeans, he sometimes talks about why Saudi youth want, expect, and strive for more because they watch movies and they think, “why can’t we be like that?” Needless to say, he’s being accused of Westernization – but I agree with what he says. His views are modern. Modern is associated with Western, but it is not “Western.” Believe it or not, these ideas were expressed and have existed for a long time in the Arab world. People forget history.
I wrote an article summarizing some of Ahmed’s views a short while ago. Saudi youth should have more, but they WANT more only because they are AWARE of the fact that others have more through what they witness in television, music, internet, etc. If they were completely isolated in terms of technology and any form of outside influence, they might not be wanting all these “new” things. Like the children of Afghanistan, they would grow up learning how to just accept it. But they are part of the digital process now – many Saudis do have the money to travel, and when they come back they do bring their influences with them. I think it was Mai Yamani who wrote that in her book about Saudi’s new generations. You can’t shut these ideas out of Saudi because the outside influences are too huge – and you know, Bahrain is right next door, which gives them more of these ideas.
If you want to see real Westernization you can visit and see how many “Western” ideas we adapt and apply to our modern culture. Modernization is good, Westernization and the wiping out of the real culture is not good. Maybe Sudan is different, but you should see what’s happening in the countries of the GCC. Look at Dubai. What’s “Arab” about it today? My friend got lost once and couldn’t even find Arabic speakers to help her find her way. It’s full of foreign investors, Western ideas, Western architecture, and British or American brands. The only thing that convinces me that I’m still in the Arab world is the weather and whatever part of the true (as opposed to artificial) environment is left.
I love transformation. I love whatever gives us more comfort and freedom. I welcome modernization. But I also really love my culture, and I feel like I can’t hold on to it anymore. The influence is too huge. We are moving too fast and it’s further away from what we grew up with. I miss what we did in the past – the traditions, the beliefs, the tightly-knit community, what we once used to celebrate together. Now it’s just different. Sometimes it feels like Christmas is more of a deal than our real national holidays which we no longer celebrate with much pride. We used to have carnavals on the street. We used to camp in the desert. You actually saw teenagers in mosques. We used to do so much more than what we do now, we were more active, alert, and awake. Today… it’s an embarrassment.
“We used to camp in the desert.”
I’ve done it. With sandstorms. You’re not missing all that much, believe me.
And now, a brief look at social commentary through the ages:
“You actually saw teenagers in mosques. We used to do so much more than what we do now, we were more active, alert, and awake. Today… it’s an embarrassment.” Esra’a, 2006
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint” (Hesiod, 8th century BC).
“The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced … at the English Court on Friday last … It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous interÂtwining of the limbs, and close comÂpressure of the bodies … to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was conÂfined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is … forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
- The Times of London, 1816
This is not about your experiences. This is about ours. You may have camped and you may have not liked it, but this is not about you. So don’t tell me, “oh it’s not that great.” Camping was the highlight of my experiences as a child. Now I see the kids of today and I think to myself, “wow, what a boring lifestyle.” Their fun is going to the malls that have replaced our historical sites, our beautiful deserts which has once characterized us, etc. The saddest part is that when I tell them what we used to do they tell me, “wow, you guys really did that? Why can’t we do that too?” But they’re too busy having Starbucks and American brands and restaurants being shoved down their throats. I have things to talk about when I refer to my childhood, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t even be able to distinguish between their culture and the cultures of others.
“This is not about your experiences. This is about ours.”
Not necessarily. “Yours” and “ours” have little meaning here. The choices are there. “Love of sandstorms” is not something in your DNA, and camping with scorpions isn’t a racial thing. Many Americans do it frequently. It is about what you choose, and if you are upset over the fact that children do not choose the same things you do, you are in a very very long line.
Yes, Starbucks is everywhere. Damn that Arab imperialist culture, forcing coffee beans on the innocent world! Consider it cultural revenge. You gave us coffee, we give you Starbucks.
“You may have camped and you may have not liked it, but this is not about you.”
Unless you have lost the right to camp because of your government, or another government, it is not about you either. Are there no public camping areas left in your part of the world? Is the problem here that you cannot camp, or that the children do not want to?
This is the important line:
“Now I see the kids of today and I think to myself, “wow, what a boring lifestyle.—
The only truly meaningful question is, what
do the kids of today think of their lifestyle? And what do they want? They will still be here when we are gone, just as you will still be here when I am gone, and holding them to your expectations, or mine, is not fair.
One more person to quote today, David Bowie:
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.
Ben
Yes, rip those damned Arabs off and then market it as American subculture.
Actually yes it is – we have replaced camping spots with tedious stuff for the sake of economic purposes. And I wouldn’t complain if we actually gained from such projects, but we don’t. But let’s not bring the goverment into this – local politics is not a good thing to discuss these days on the internet. I know that we have eyes on this site ever since I have discussed the bandar gate scandal, so don’t bring this up. I will tell you however that the government does have a lot to do with this. Hint: why else would Google Earth be banned for a while in Bahrain?
They want a lot of things because they have high expectations. This is what digital culture does to you. All you do is want and it leaves no room for enjoyment or appreciation. It is a sad thing to witness.
I don’t see why I would care about this. Why should I care and how is this relevant? My argument is not that it’s a racial thing – my argument here is that good adventures are being replaced because of what we import. Children don’t really know how else to have fun because they are glued to their televisions, computers, video games, etc. They don’t value their own cultures because they don’t experience it. It’s being replaced. We don’t aggressively preserve anything – not even historical sites.
And suddenly it hit me: what she is saying and what I think she is saying are two different things. I thought the issue was “they will not go camping in the desert, all proper Arab children must love the desert” but in reality it is “there is no place to camp”- and indeed, I hadn’t thought it like that, but then, of course, Bahrain is a very small country. One new Golf course (blame the Scots for that!) and there goes half the wilderness. That is the problem, isn’t it?
Okay, I admit it, there are a couple of good memories from camping in the desert. I will never forget one of my friends jumping up and screaming “A Rat, A Rat in my sleeping bag!” and sure enough, when he picked up the bag, something about the size and shape of an eggplant, but hairy*, fell out and ran away.
And there is something magical about watching a thunderstorm in the distance.
Okay, you win, it’s a bad thing to take away. I just looked at it from a different point of view- adding choices, not taking them away. But in a really small country, it’s the same, isn’t it?
Obvious solution: Bahrain needs to annex some more land! The Saudis have a lot of desert they are not using for anything important.
Ben
*I am assuming here that the standard eggplant is NOT hairy. It may be, in your part of the world, if so, I apologize.
Ben
Ben I must say that I really enjoy reading your comments.
Bahrain is small – we have resorted to building “man-made islands” to fit more business projects. It seems as though most of the land is going towards business companies and not citizens. We often have people complaining about the lack of lands for housing. This is why Google Earth was such an issue. A lot of land appeared to have been, well, “stolen.”
I guess more people creates more problems. Unemployment is also an issue because of this. Immigration is also a big problem. But let’s not forget that our country, like America, thrives on these immigrants.
Saudi Arabia is huge and most of its people are very concentrated in the big cities because that’s where the life is (jobs, schools, hospitals, etc.) If they cared enough they could use the multi-billions of riyals they make each month and do something amazing with their country. But that won’t be possible, they are too far backwards in terms of culture for them to make much use of what they already have. I worry for Saudi, really. It is one of the few countries that I have almost no hope for. I wish the youth was more engaged in what matters.
I wouldn’t say hairy, but it has some stubble. I hope that’s the right word…? Haha.
Very rarely does that happen in Bahrain, unfortunately. We have like 2 or 3 days of rain in a year, if not less sometimes, and when we do, the country is so small that we have little floods! It’s a cute country. But it needs more organization – all we do is introduce more and more projects not thinking about the consequences. The environment, the land, the culture, the citizens. So many Western workers in Bahrain are way better off than Bahraini citizens themselves, it’s sad.
Esra’a I really like the way you put it when it comes to the desert thing. For us northern Sudanese it’s the Nile, the desert, Sufism and our ancient Nubian civilization that defines us. For Bahrainis it’s mainly the desert and camels for sure.
I’ve already got crazy ideas to make Bahraini culture more “marketable” so that Bahraini youth can accept it. Actually some of them relate a lot to my dad’s work. He’s a professor of anthropology and he researched Gulf States’ culture especially Qatari for more than a decade. I remember him saying something smililar to what you said in these comments. He’d talk about the new generation growing up on Sega video games, comic books and football which he called great but very sad when the desert takes a back seat. He experienced the desert, the camels, falcons etc. and he loved them.
Again Esra’a, all you need to get Bahraini youth interested in those things is marketing.
Desert + Starbucks + falcons + camels or horses + more Starbucks + shisha + maybe even guns or swords + more Starbucks again = more appealing Bahraini neoculture… LOL… No?
“For Bahrainis it’s mainly the desert and camels for sure.”
AND the pearls, the gulf, the wooden ships, the fishing etc… You get it.
Esra’a, The first sign of a dying culture is the urge to protect it. What Americans (that’s me) know is that culture does not need to be protected; it needs to be alive. In America, we love Japanese cartoons and where clothes made in China and steal Dutch reality TV, but it has not made us more Japanese or more Chinese or more Dutch.
Research on the effects of I think it was the Bold and the Beautiful or some other globally watched soap showed that cultures were not becoming more homogenous as a result of watching these soaps, but rather were interpreting them differently based on their own particular cultural identity.
As I live in different cultures, I am amazed when people say that their culture has become just like American’s as a result of tv or food or movies. It would be like me saying that I am Chines-ified because my shoes are. I am not saying that American culture is not imperialistic or that native cultures should not be protected: what I am saying is that change happens. Change is what keeps a culture alive.
I disagree, and I think some of my comments here clarify the real issue here. I never said our culture was becoming primarily American – but now that you brought it up perhaps that is true. When a starbucks replaces the local coffee shop, when a mall full of American brands replaces our historical sites – that’s a dying culture.
If this is how things are going to change then I do not want change. I would rather be reminded of who I am and where I come from because it’s through that lense that I interpret this world. It doesn’t help me subscribe to labels, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that it is important to know where you come from, and you cannot let your history die the way my country’s history is dying.
I think you need to understand that I come from Bahrain. Not any other big country where culture is so alive you can’t replace it, like Iran. If you have American TV shows in Iran that’s hardly change in attitude, or change in lifestyles or culture. But in a tiny country like Bahrain where the change is overwhelmingly, well, American, and you can definitely see that it’s American, it matters to me. We are small enough to the point where wiping out the culture completely is SIMPLE and I am saddened to see the fact that it’s in the process of being like that. But like Drima said it is like this because we allow it to be like this and that’s what my article is about.
To really understand this I would suggest you visit Dubai as well, a lot of people in the UAE, especially the older generations, complain about this. But they are not heard because economy and business is what that area has become all about. Dubai has almost none of its culture left – it is just small traces. Like when you eat a big chocolate bar and all you have left is the little crumbs – this is Dubai. Their culture was eaten up as a result of all those money-hungry local and foriegn investors and it is saddening. Change shouldn’t be like that when many people are bothered by it. We need to hold on to our traditions no matter whose products we introduce in our cultures but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that when we import more than what we can handle. I know that people are beginning to adopt the values and beliefs of Western cultures because of this, in Bahrain you see it happening first-hand.
Also, I’ve had a part-time job in the PR department of a group of North American universities in Bahrain, and you won’t know the amount of time we are blamed for bringing this “Western” education into the country. Needless to say, the ones complaining were usually parents.
My job is incredibly easy because it doesn’t take much to sell these ideas to the younger generation. This is what they want and it freaks the older generation out, they’re thinking, “English is taking over, our language is dying, our culture, our Islam, our beliefs – they are all being replaced and it is through these institutions.”
It is fun reading such mail because you can really study the sociology of the population. Yes change is inevitable, and in many ways it is good, but it is important to help shape the way in which things are changed. We can’t be irresponsible and let things happen for no reason and then complain years from now that we allowed this to happen.
Esra’a, it’s really interesting how the English language is taking over. In the past the only youngsters who spoke English fluently were those who studied in international schools. Now everyone seems to be speaking English thanks to Britney Spears and 50 cent songs. It’s all good if they weren’t actually forgeting the Arabic language.
But that’s the problem Drima, they are forgetting. Damn, now I really want you to come to Bahrain! I would take you to Bahrain School and show you how even Arab students communicate with each other in English, and it is actually encouraged by their families.
For me, my family communicates only in Arabic. My mother hardly speaks any English, you will not hear this language in our house. It is either Arabic or our dialect of Persian. It is interesting that many Arabs are familiar with Hindi languages as well because of the immigrant population. My mother speaks one of the languages fluently, I think it’s Punjabi. In some ways, that is competing with English when it comes to “street talk.”
For many, their families speak English fluently so it becomes the dominant language. It is usually the private school stuents who are like this, so it is definitely not the majority of students. English is widely spoken in Bahrain but the majority are by no means fluent. It is broken English, used mainly to communicate with the migrant workers. But younger students keep feeling that they can’t get anywhere without English, which is true, but they start focusing and studying in only English and they forget their mother tongue, or they at least no longer excel at it.
I get what you mean but the trend is growing. Previously even students from public schools didn’t know any words except “yes”, “no” and “thank you”. At home we speak Sudanese or Arabic too. I must admit that I speak in English a lot with my little sister who’s been studying in an international school since standard 1. We sometimes speak in Malay if we don’t want the rest of my family to understand what we’re saying =)
My sister and I picked it up from our Malaysian friends.
BTW you speak Persian? Cool!
Khod Hafiz… (that’s the only good thing I know how to say… I’m sure you don’t want to to hear the tons of bad stuff I know how to say in Persian though. Don’t blame me. Blame my crazy Iranian friends)
It is very good to take advantage of the language wherever you are in. I am studying Indonesian, but it’s hard because I have no one to practice it with. There are a lot of Indonesian maids in Bahrain and that’s how I picked up this fascination.
Oh I wish. This is a different type of Persian – in Bahrain we refer to it as “holey.” It is mostly spoken by the Sunni Iranians in Bahrain, and then it spread to some Shiite Iranians as well. It is not Farsi or Arabic. If you speak both of these languages you can get a few words here and there but otherwise it is different. When I went to Tehran I understood a lot but wasn’t able to use the language to respond back.
The extended family from my mother’s side use this to communicate, so I grew up around it. My little cousins don’t understand much of it though so Arabic is becoming the dominant language in the house unless adults outnumber the children. Then it goes back to holey again. We switch a lot and it’s confusing but I love how the combinations sound.
You can practice Indonesian with me if you want… Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia are similar in many ways.
Apa khabar bodoh? Baik ke? Aku nak tidur la. Jumpa lagi esok!
Oh ya and make up your mind. French or Indonesian? I wana learn Spanish or French.
There are no limits as to how many languages you can learn. I can handle learning both at the same time. But I do give more attention to French, just because it’s a more useful language.
Yes please, when we meet you will sit down with me and teach me how to pronounce things.
I know apa khabar is how are you and baik is fine, but what’s “bodoh”?
but what’s “bodoh�
It means stupid. LOL
Thank you Drima.