Language is a bridge to hearts and minds

I have noticed that teaching English has become a cultural industry and a lucrative business. In summer, universities and language centres are full of students. English texts of all levels are carefully prepared using vocabularies and expressions appropriate for each level. Special versions of novels and popular plays are adapted to different levels.

It is not surprising that those who live with people must love them, because they discover their humanity, their scientific, literary and artistic civilizations, their morals and their principles. It also applies to those who learn people’s language, as if they live with them. Because language is the register of their civilization and their exploits.

Our intellectuals learned the languages of the West, assimilated their civilization, and discovered their qualities and their faults. They overlooked flaws because they are human, let go of their prejudices, and stretched the bridges from the West to our hearts and minds. However, these bridges remain suspended because they are unilateral. Despite the spread of our emigrant communities in their countries, we have not been able to extend the bridges to their hearts and minds. We did not participate in civilization in the present to impose ourselves on the West scientifically or medically. We have gone into deep sleep and winter and summer hibernation for centuries, and Renaissance pioneers are still trying to get us out of our sleep and out of our hibernation. We did not compete with them at the Olympic Games. They do not know our language to read our literature and absorb our arts.

Our previous contribution to civilization was transformed skewed and counterfeit to Westerners. Their vision of us is full of caution, suspicion and prejudice. Persons of colonial and racist interest have given their people a distorted picture of our history, our religion, our language and exaggerated our faults. They were helped by the conduct of fanatical and perverse extremists from here. Even some members of our society who master Western languages ​​and ignore their own language and culture have been influenced by what has been said about us. They hated us, hated themselves with us, echoed the arguments of our adversaries, and tried getting rid of us or transform us into a distorted image of the West.

It is easy for these bridges to spread to the hearts and minds of Westerners if some of them learn our language. The language brings people together, prejudice collapses and false assertions collapse. Can we develop the teaching of the Arabic language for foreigners? Organize summer courses in our Arab countries and encourage new orientalism on a non-colonial tourist basis? Can we rely on tourism and language learning that many foreigners would like? The competition between them and us is open on the basis of tolerance and understanding of the other.

 

Abdellah Khammar

The second trimester: Second part

An extract taken from the novel: Entry bell to class