Who said that if we spoke in Arabic we won't be "cool"? Susan Talhouk - TEDxBeirut

Susan Talhouk - President of the "Fe'el Amer" Association - takes the initiative to revitalize the Arabic language updates, and to revive the use of Arabic as a creative expression language, in order to reclaim our identity and to overcome the inferiority complex towards foreign cultures.

Good morning.

Awake?

They took my badge
but I wanted to ask you,

Did anyone write their name
on the badge in Arabic?

Anyone? No one? Ok then...

No problem

Once upon a time, not so far away

I was having dinner with a friend of mine
at a restaurant.

So I looked at the person serving us
and asked him,

Do you have a list of dishes?

He looks at me weirdly thinking
he didn’t hear clear enough and says,

Sorry?

So I told him again,
Can you please give me the list of dishes?

Don’t you know what’s it called?

Yes. No. It’s called a menu (as it’s said in English)
or “menu” in French right?

Come see what she wants.

He was disgusted.

At first he was trying to hit on me.

And then he was saying to himself,
I wouldn’t look at her

even if she was the last girl on Earth.

A list of dishes? What’s that?

Two words were enough
for a Lebanese guy

to judge a woman sitting in his restaurant
of retardation and ignorance.

How dare she speak so?

So I started to think.

I got upset and I was hurt.

Yes of course I was.

I’m not allowed to speak
my native language in my own country.

Where can you find that?

How could we have possibly
reached this point?

There’s a lot of people like me in here
who could reach a point in their lives

where they would erase everything
that already happened

just to prove that they are
contemporary and civilized?

Am I going to forget my entire culture
and all of my thoughts,

all of my knowledge
and all of my memories,

the best memories of the war
are probably the childhood stories?

Am I going to forget everything I learnt
in Arabic just to fit in?

Just to blend in?

Where’s the logic?

Nevertheless

I tried to understand him.

And I don’t want to judge him
the same harsh way he judged me.

Arabic doesn’t meet our needs,

it doesn’t.

It isn’t a language neither for
scientific production nor for researches.

You don’t need it
neither at universities nor at work.

We don’t need it to make
any advanced scientific research.

We definitely don’t need at the airport.

Because if we speak Arabic
they’ll take off every piece of our cloth?

Where are we going to use it?

We can all ask that.

Do you want Arabic?
Where will we use it?

Okay this is an existing reality
but there’s a far more important reality

that we should consider and notice.

Arabic or mother language

studies and reports show
that being fluent in other languages

requires being fluent in mother language.

And that being fluent in mother language

is an essential condition
to excel in other languages.

How’s that?

When Gebran Khalil Gebran started writing

he began writing in Arabic.

His thoughts,

his imagination,

his inner self, his metaphysics,

his philosophy.

He took all of these from that child
who sat in the village

and who grew accustomed
to a certain smell,

a certain voice and a certain thought.

So when he began writing in English

he had a huge knowledge

even when he was writing in English

and when we read his writings in English

we smell the same odor,

we feel the same feelings,

we can picture him both the person
excelling in English

and the one living in the country,

In a village from Mount Lebanon.

So that’s one example
that can’t be refuted.

Second of all, it is said

if you want to kill a nation,

the only way to do so
is to kill its language.

And this fact is known
by developed nations.

The Germans, the French,
the Japanese, the Chinese.

All nations are aware of this fact.

That’s why they pass laws
to protect their language.

That’s why they sanctify it.

That’s why they produce
using this language

and they pay a lot of money
to develop it.

Do we know more than they do?

Okay, If we’re not a developed country
and we still have no access

no to such advanced thinking but
we want to catch up this civilized world.

Countries alike us have decided now
to develop and to make researches

and to catch up these countries.

Like Turkey and Malaysia and others.

They grasped their language
while climbing the ladder

as if it was a diamond.

They preserved it and kept it close

Because if you receive
any product from Turkey

or others with no Turkish language

it wouldn’t be a local product.

You wouldn’t believe
that it’s a local product.

They would have consumed and stupidly

just like we do most of the time.

So in order to innovate and produce,
they had to preserve their language.

If I say “Freedom, sovereignty,
independence”, as it’s said in Arabic

what would it bring to your mind?

Nothing?

Regardless of who, how,
and and why but you know,

language is not speeches
and whatever words we are using.

Language represents
particular phases through our lives

to which our emotions relate
along with these terms.

That’s why when I say
“Freedom, sovereignty, independence”

each one of you has a certain image
in their mind.

With certain words and feelings
for a certain day, a historical period.

So language isn’t mere words
and aligned letters.

It’s an inner idea
related to the way we think

and the way we perceive others
and others perceive us.

What is our intellectual stock?

Why do we say this person knows
while another doesn’t?

So if I come and tell you
“Freedom, Soverneighty, independence”

If your son comes and says,
“You are still following that thing

that has freedom, that symbol."
What do you feel like?

If you feel at all then that’s very good.

We won’t have a problem anymore.

Let me just leave from here
because I will be talking nonsense.

The idea here is that these phrases
remind us of certain things.

My friend is Francophone
and she married a French guy.

I was asking her how was she doing
in everything,

and she said it’s all good

except once I spent an entire night
trying to translate

what “To’borni” means
(Literally: I would die for you).

Because She told him “To’borni”
by mistake

he was thinking, is there anyone
who is that brutal?

Or maybe she wanted to kill herself?
“Bury me” for example?

This is something really small

but look how much
it makes us feel helpless.

I can’t tell my husband this word
because he won’t understand it.

And he is right, that is how he thinks.

Then she told me
that he listens to Fairouz

with me but one night
he sat next to me

and I was trying to translate it
to him maybe.

He can feel what I feel
when I listen to Fairouz,

so she wanted to translate.

“I extended my hands
and stole you away from them.

And because you belong to them”

Here is the catastrophe,

“I pulled my hands back and left you”.

Translate this for me.

Ok.

What did we do

to protect the Arabic language?

We have made this
into a civil society issue

and we launched a campaign
to protect the Arabic language

even though a lot of people told me,

“Don’t bother yourself with that”.
No problem.

The campaign has launched
a slogan that says,

“I talk to you from the east
and you answer me from the west”.

We did not say,

“No, we don’t agree.
And we are the language.”

We didn’t do that because

we won’t understand this way.

And if someone comes to me and says that

I will start hating the Arabic language

we are saying that….

We are trying to see
how we are living in reality.

Then be convinced with a way
that mimic our dreams and ambitions.

A way that dress the same way as we do
and thinks the same way as well.

So “I talk to you from the east
and you answer me from the west”

Is the perfect saying for such a thing.

Something that is really simple
but innovative and convincing.

After that we started a campaign
that has the letters put on the sidewalks.

You saw it outside here.

A letter with a yellow stripe around it

written on it, “Do not kill your language”.

Why?

Seriously do not kill your language.

We all need to not kill our language

because if we kill the language
we will have to go back

and search for an identity.

We have to look for existence.

We need to start over from zero.

Not only that,

we won’t be able to be civilized
and contemporary.

Then we took pictures
of young guys and girls

hugging the Arabic letter.

“Cool“ pictures of young people,

because we are very “cool”.

And whoever says we caught you
saying an English word (cool),

I am adopting the word “cool”.

Let them come and do
whatever they want to do.

Let them give me a better word
that works on our reality better.

I will keep saying the “internet”.

I will not say
“A slice on the spider web”

because it just doesn’t work.

We are not kidding ourselves.

But to get here
we all have to be convinced

we do not want to make
the one who is bigger

And thinks he has the power
over the language

that he can make us think
and feel the way he wants us to.

The idea here is innovation.

If we can’t go to space and build a rocket
we can be innovative.

Every person here
is an innovative project.

Innovation in the mother language
is the way.

Let us start now from this moment.

Write a novel.

Produce a short film.

One novel can make us international.

It can bring back the Arabic language
to the first place.

It is not like there is no solution.

Seriously there is.

But we have to pay attention
and be convinced

that there must be a solution.

And we have to be a part of this solution.

At the end what can you do today?

Now? Tweet! Who here is tweeting?

I beg you.

Seriously I beg you even though
time is almost done.

In Arabic, English, French
or even in Chinese.

But don’t write “Ma’oul”
(reasonable) like “Ma32oul”.

Because that is a disaster.

This is not a language.

You are entering a virtual language
and a virtual world

and no one will take us away
from this place ever.

That was the first thing we can do.

Secondly there are a lot of things
that we can do

today no one is convincing anyone

we are here to be alert about the subject

and now I will tell you a secret.

A child when born the first way
he recognizes his father through language.

So once my daughter is born
I will tell her

(Arabic): “This is your dad honey”.

Not this is your dad honey.

And in the super market
I will promise Noor if she thanks me

I wouldn’t tell her,
“Daites merci mama”.

And I hope that no one heard her.

Let us get away
from this foreigner complex.