Diglossia II

Is language a home?

Home?

In Egypt, people speak the Egyptian dialect of Standard Arabic.
A language that no one speaks and yet everyone across the Arab countries
uses for all written and official communication.

Diglossia I

This term is used when a single language community uses one language for oral communication
and another for written and official communication.

At the German school in Cairo I started learning German in Kindergarten,
English in fourth and French in sixth grade. Arabic was taught as a language/subject.
While all other subjects were taught in German.

At home we spoke Egyptian,
at school we spoke German to the Germans and to some Egyptian teachers.

News and books were presented/published in standard Arabic.

What is the color of mourning?

Liminality

A constant state.
Between a nuanced picture and an incomplete one.

It is interesting to look at what is known as “Linguistic relativity”,
how language is thought to shape perception. There is a fight going on, does it or does it not.

 I only have an answer for how I have been seeing the world.
I’ve been observing it from some sort of an isthmus.

Box

A constant feeling of not being quite this or that.
Always in-between and always almost, but never quite.

A container of pieces and memories. So similar but yet so different.

Epilogue

“How can I speak to everybody?”, asked the little human.

“The attempt to speak to everyone is a waste of time”,
replied the slightly bigger human.

“But I want to understand everyone and for everyone to understand me!”

Is time the same everywhere?