My 16-year old niece was describing a bunch of boys she saw somewhere in Amman who seemed to her as a bunch of “emos". I had to stop her and ask her to explain what the hell is an “emo”?
She said you know “emotional” with a total American accent. I told her, please enough with this American bullshit accent and I asked to her to pronounce normally…she answered back “shoo…what do you want me to say “emoshanaillle”…So I said you don’t have to make fun of Arabic accent to be speaking properly. Besides I told her why are you guys (her generation) imitating everything American…? why can’t you try to be authentic? More Arab? The answer was a snicker and another “shoo….what do you mean?”
Shoo…? Shawee….to all this Americanized generation who has nothing authentic about it, and which seems to be all about imitation and pretension. Allah yirham ayyam el harra wa mughamarat elbaskalaitat wa lulu wa tabboush! We were not fluent in English then, but we sure did know how to speak life!
6 comments:
I am no fan of the so called tags, but I had to tag you to pull you into the blogsphere by the ear.
http://al-arabiat.blogspot.com/2008/03/mab3oos-tags-mohannedwhat-is-purpose-of.html
BTW, you have been blogsphered :)
Mohanned, I have no idea what it means "to tag someone"? The same applies to being blogsphered? Both sound exciting though :-) Thanks Mohanned!
Is it a drawback if she spoke English with the American accent? Would speaking English with a lousy Arabic accent be more "Arabized" and hence better than "Americanized"?
I agree with you on the blind imitation of the west while not having an authentic identity, but I don't agree on the accent part.
Ok, so a tag is a question you reply to. It is a way to get the blogsphere going, something like an espresso shot.
You are now a member of qwaider planet :)
I really hate it when people try to speak with an American accent ! they end up as idiots who drop Ts from words and being Arabs they have this stress on the R wich makes the word they are trying to americanize anything but american !
Imitation is bad in all its forms and um not sure if ur niece's definition of emos is correct !
I miss lulu w taboush too even though I am not old :P
Anon, the accent I am talking about is a fake accent accompanied with a set of gestures and peculiar type of body language :-) I am all for proper pronunciation of foreign languages, english and otherwise. You made my niece a happy person this evening. We read your comment together.
Mohanned, Wow this is super cool. Thanks for the info:-)
lost within, my niece just filled me in on what an "emo" stands for. Disturbing stuff. My sister tells me that a teenager committed suicide in Cyprus due to an "emo" related incident.
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