I’m of Lebanese heritage and grew up speaking, reading and writing Arabic but then moved to Australia and never looked back for over 20 years. I’m slowly losing my ability to speak Arabic so I make a point of doing so when speaking to my parents nowadays. I also really love that tools like this exist so I can refresh myself. It’s a very sad thing to lose one’s mother tongue.
I know it’s not the same dialect since it’s Egyptian but it’s easy enough to tell apart when I started reading. Still helpful!
As a Palestinian living in North America for over 20 years, I totally hear you about it being a sad thing. Feels heartbreaking and scary to me, given that it was part of my identity.
Feels heartbreaking and scary to me, given that it was part of my identity.
I took two years of a language, merely for enjoyment, and it saddens me now that I've neglected to maintain my studies that I've lost most of what I learned. I get frustrated looking at sentences where in my prime I would have been able to sight translate with ease. I can imagine it's offers of magnitude worse to feel something similar with ones own native language, starting to struggle to use the language with which you had your first thoughts.
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I’m of Lebanese heritage and grew up speaking, reading and writing Arabic but then moved to Australia and never looked back for over 20 years. I’m slowly losing my ability to speak Arabic so I make a point of doing so when speaking to my parents nowadays. I also really love that tools like this exist so I can refresh myself. It’s a very sad thing to lose one’s mother tongue. I know it’s not the same dialect since it’s Egyptian but it’s easy enough to tell apart when I started reading. Still helpful!
As a Palestinian living in North America for over 20 years, I totally hear you about it being a sad thing. Feels heartbreaking and scary to me, given that it was part of my identity.
I took two years of a language, merely for enjoyment, and it saddens me now that I've neglected to maintain my studies that I've lost most of what I learned. I get frustrated looking at sentences where in my prime I would have been able to sight translate with ease. I can imagine it's offers of magnitude worse to feel something similar with ones own native language, starting to struggle to use the language with which you had your first thoughts.
I moved right about 10 years ago, kamen min lebnen :)
It’s actually a major thing I think about especially when it comes to any kids I might have.