EFL: English is a Foreign Language

 

We, as Egyptians or Arabs, learn English because of a rainbow of reasons. Asking a school student this question: 'Why do you like English?' will very likely elicit the answer: 'Because it's a nice/an easy language'- easy compared to Arabic of course!

Impressionistically speaking, a particular language can be nicer or easier than any other language. My students have often said that Arabic is the easiest language on earth. As an objective informer, I used to tell them that this is not true unless Arabic is compared to other languages via objective common criteria. But since such criteria are not there, I feel obliged to agree with them.

But what makes students say English is easier than Arabic? A seemingly convenient answer may be that English textbooks are more fashionable than those of Arabic. The typography varies widely from English to Arabic. Every possible facility is employed to make English texts appeal to the reader. I am personally impressed at how tiny words appear in dictionaries, for instance, and how clear. I have never faced any sort of trouble whatsoever leafing through my dictionary looking for this word or that. The blend of text and graphs is greatly attractive. The students I currently teach do not have school bags. They come to school with their books in their hands all pilled inside the English book! Also, the way grammar is presented and explained makes any student feel and believe Arabic is really difficult to study – how about foreign learners?!. On the contrary, English grammars are tremendously attractive, appealing and making things easy even if they are not really so.

Arabic textbooks traditionally rely heavily on text in presenting their contents. Graphs appear very little. You can understand why young people are keen on comics rather than newspapers. The very substance of newspapers, as well as textbooks, is text. Photos which appear on papers are either about crime or of public personnel. In comics, photos are the main substance of the publication.

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Walk about in the streets of Cairo or any other urban centre and you will find no difficulty in counting the number of Arabic words on shops and plates carrying street names. Counting the number of English words, on the other hand, is quite impossible because they are everywhere. I have always thought of Cairo – or Egypt, in general terms – as a cosmopolitan place. Record a video of people walking in Roxy, for example, without viewing any street or shop names. Then let people from outside Egypt see your video and decide where it was taken. The best answer you might possibly get is that it is somewhere in an Arab country.

Try a similar task in Saudi Arabia or any of the Gulf States. I think the task of identifying the place would be comparatively easier. This is because you can easily distinguish Omani wear from Saudi wear and so on. Have you ever thought what the official dress of people in Egypt could be?!

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You can identify where someone is from from his speech. You can determine that this person is from England and that person is from America. If you are a specialist in phonetics, like G. B. Shaw's Professor Higgins, you can determine the exact place of origin of an individual speaker from what comes out of his/her mouth. Experienced Egyptians who have been all over the country may well decide where someone they meet is from from his speech. At least you can decide that this person or that is foreigner; s/he does not belong to your place. Just as other people would identify you as an Arab (a foreigner), you are going to identify an English speaker as a foreigner.

English is a foreign language because it is the language of foreigners. We do not use English as a medium of communication with our fellow citizens in public occasions or in our domestic household; therefore, we cannot say it is a second language. Arabic, not English, is the medium of instruction in the majority of Egyptian schools. Arabic, not English, is our national language according to the constitution. We think and dream in Arabic, not English, we buy and sell in Arabic, not English, we marry and divorce in Arabic, not English, and we read and recite the Qur'an in Arabic, never English.

It is advantageous to learn a foreign language. First and second languages are rather acquired than learnt. So long as English remains a foreign language, so long as it can be learnt. So long as English is not a foreign language, so long as it cannot be learnt.

"He who learns a language of foreigners can be safe from their conspiracy."

Prophet's Tradition