Language and grounding

and lack thereof

In the Arab countries we have a phenomenon known as “Diglossia”. We don’t speak the same language we use for writing and vise versa. The 22 countries of the Arab world each have their own “dialect”, and the official language that unites these countries is Standard Arabic or فصحى. The difference in these “dialects” is so big that two people from two different Arab countries would have big to severe difficulties understanding each other. For a long time the uniting spoken language was Egyptian Arabic since a lot of people in the Arab world grew up watching Egyptian TV shows and movies. For a long time Egypt was the leading country in entertainment production. This shifted years ago.

I grew up in Egypt. My parents sent me and my sister to a German school because of its proximity to our house, the fact that I had two uncles who migrated to Germany and got married to German women and that fact that it was an all girls, catholic school and as a missionary school the school fees got less the more students continued with their education.

From Kindergarten up to 12th grade I had all subjects in German and Arabic was taught as a subject. Back then we didn’t think Arabic was “cool” so we didn’t really pay attention or really respect our teachers. I grew up religious so I had Quran lessons every week. This is where most my knowledge about Standard Arabic comes from.

As we graduated from high school, the running joke was: We will never meet other people who would speak four languages in the same sentence (We had English starting 4th grade and French starting 6th grade).

I then went to Cairo University to study German literature and later I did a master’s degree in translation in Germany. It was only then that I realized how bad my Arabic is. As a professional translator you always translate into your mother tongue. My mother tongue is Egyptian and Egyptian is not a language, at least not officially. My official mother tongue is Standard Arabic.

I learned and grew and worked as a translator for about 10 years. With every translation I would be feeling the dread of not being sure of my grammar, not being good enough to play around with the sentences and their structure. I had one assignment where I got to translate a play from German into Egyptian and I got a taste of how it feels like to know your language inside out, to be comfortable in it.

After moving to the US because of family obligations I continued to translate for a few years but between losing my network and my struggles with Standard Arabic I eventually retired from being a professional translator.

If for a moment speaking 4 different languages in one sentences seemed to be a lot of fun for me or for you dear reader, let me tell you that it makes communication really hard. It makes expressing yourself very hard. Bilingual speakers know how that feels like.

Not being fully grounded in one language is one of the biggest departure point for my art practice.

Check this writing I used as my artist statement while in grad school.
If you want to get an idea about how my brain works. Listen here.

Now that you know the background of my relationship to my own mother tongue. Stay tuned for updates about that during my residency at AANM.

…I am a poet without a mother tongue, driven by Sehnsucht, a longing so deep,
it has no beginning and no end. I see the world through the languages I speak,
of which I master none…