Everyone is fast and loose with arabic words of wisdom, blessings, advice, strength and so on and I have no idea what these words mean. I have to google them to make sure I understand what someone is saying sometimes. Is it perhaps that everyone my age has now come to that level where we are meant to talk the lingo? I didn't grow up in Saudi so using the terms in my daily conversations proves to be very challenging. I didn't grow up in a household that did either so it is rather new to me and my English ears.
When you speak with arabic terms you assume that the person listening knows what you mean. You could come off sounding a bit condescending, making the listener feel inadequate in their knowledge. Inevitably preventing the person from understanding your message and killing any courage they might have to ask you to translate. To that person, I mean me, you could be speaking in Chinese. Perhaps the fault lies with me and my lack of arabic knowledge and understanding.
I had look at Mufti Menk's Facebook status updates for some guidance and his last 20 updates had zero arabic terms in it. If someone so learned doesn't feel the need to use them in those updates, then I wonder if it is necessary to speak that way to be a better Muslim?
Will I get more credit? It reminds me of high school. We are all here to pass through. We will all pass through. Some with better marks than others. We all studied the same subjects in the same language. There was no extra credit if you could say 'atom' in five languages. The credit for atom lie in the knowing of what an atom was.
By all means speak the speak if it makes you happy and proud. But remember without knowing what you need to know, the speak are just words without any weight.
No comments:
Post a Comment