As stated above, Moroccans are crazy multilingual. Take my host father, who can speak Darija, Fus-ha, French, and English fluently. Or my Media Arabic teacher, who during our Arabic placement interviews, was known to bust out Hebrew, Spanish, other African languages, and German I think. Also the majority of Moroccan Jews I’ve met speak Darija, French, English and Hebrew. Haha its crazy here. A quick anecdote of how intense they are about multilingualism is how before I told my host family that I was Jewish (they know now and are awesome), my host father asked me what my second language was, and when I told him I only knew a little bit of Arabic (since I wasn't quite ready to tell him I was Jewish and know Hebrew) he was clearly a little disappointed in me. Also a couple of weeks ago Raechel and I were spending Shabbat in Casablanca, so we ate lunch at our favorite Moroccan Jewish family's house. While there we talked mostly to the son, David, who is completely fluent in Darija, French, and English. He was telling us, in almost completely unaccented and american sounding english, that since he was fluent in the aforementioned languages he thinks that its about time for him to learn another language! The kid is 16! Another thought on the multilingualism of Moroccans: Latifa, my host sister (who I have developed a really nice relationship with) is 9 years old. She is currently studying english in addition to French and Fus-ha. By the time she is my age inshallah (Which means God willing and is equivalent to b'ezrat hashem), she will be fluent in Darija, Fus-ha, French, and English, which according to my calculations means she will be able to affectively communicate with something like 1.5 billion people of the world without any trouble. It's awesome. While the multilingualism that exists here is incredible and awe-inspiring, it makes me a little depressed about the language abilities of Americans. Don't get me wrong, America is still by far the greatest country to have ever existed in the history of humankind, but we really need to get on this. If in Morocco's shitty shitty education system they can produce a population that is completely bilingual, just imagine what could be done in America. Also if you're reading this blog and you have children or will eventually have kids, please do them a favor and teach them a language when they're young. Not only will you be contributing to a hopefully more intelligent and internationally capable society, but also you will be doing them a big favor by teaching them a language when they're young. Anyway, saffi with the preaching (saffi means enough or stop). Again if i don't post more, which I might, then Shabbat Shalom umevorach!
No comments:
Post a Comment