Lost in translation
In Lebanon, people often speak very well both French and English in addition to Arabic and Lebanese dialect. What a great thing to speak so many languages, I wish I could have know as much when I was young!
But, are the Lebanese lost with all those languages, or do they want to use it all when they speak?? This kind of language-mixed sentence is so common: “Okay merci kteer”, “yallah bye!”, “Hi kifak ca va”. Translation: “Okay thank you very much”, “Come on, bye”, “Hi how you’re doing”.
Isn’t funny? Well… yes, as long as everybody understand at each other, which I do at this point!
Then, the Internet and SMS brought another kind of language, and unfortunately I’m unable to understand it! It is basically Lebanese, but written with Latin letters and containing numbers, which role is to replace Arabic letters that can’t be translated by a Latin letter. And of course they still mix some French and English words in it!
Does anyone have a dictionary for this new language? I’m lost in translation here…
Hello everyone,
well as a lebanese girl who travelled to france to continue my studies i think that knowing 3 languages Arabic , French and English is really an advantage for me on the contrary to my french collegues who only know one language and are having really hard time to learn English .But i have noticed that we have problems trying to speak the common french and the commen english which i think it’s normal! For that being Lebanese make our road to success easier from this point of view.
Laudy
@ Laudy,
You’re right! I think too that French people are very bad at speaking foreign languages, and I know you’ve got a great advantage as a Lebanese for that.
Salut Elodie.
Il y a l’alphabet latin développé par l’écrivain, poète, philosophe Said AKL :
http://www.gotc.org/fonts/alfabet.jpg
Très sympa votre blog !
Je reviendrais à l’avenir.
Hi Elodie !
I am delighted to discover your blog and its frequent high-quality posts. But I am also surprised to notice that you are writing in English !
Maybe it’s a way to feel closer to the Lebanese cultural reality you’ve so well described, which focuses on multilingualism.
3 is the letter ‘ ‘aïn’, 7 is the ‘Ha’ and 2, I don’t know…