English-Arab Accent

Living in a multicultural country exposes a person not only to different cultures, but also to the accents associated with those cultures. If you watch The Simpsons, then you already know the Indian accent through Apu. Being an Arab I pay special attention to our accent, with the ultimate goal of deciphering what we say and how we should say it. To my surprise, people who have been here for over 10 years still have a heavy accent, as if they didn't even try to adapt to the culture. Here are some things which I think Arabs should tackle first when trying to change their accents.

First, Don't let your tongue do too much work when it doesn't have to. It's not RRRRR, it's R.
Rule number 1: R not RRRR

Second, this especially annoys me with "modern" Arab-Canadians. As we know it's not cool to say Thawra (revolution) in Arabic, but it is cool to say "Sawra." Um Kalthoum's name is Um Kalsoum, and the list goes on with any word containing A7rof Lathawaya (letters containing the sound THis, leTHal etc) Sadly Arabs continue this coolness into English. So we get people who say:

What is zis? Zat over zere?
And the classic
Habby birzday to you, Habby birzday to you….. you are now sree years old!

Rule number 2: say THis, and say BirTHday, it's cool in English to pronounce these sounds.

Habby Birthday reminded of the most common mistake for us. There's the P, and there’s the B. I know we don’t have P in Arabic, but that does't mean we can't try to learn to pronounce it. For those who persist, just imagine saying Pandora instead of Bandora (tomato), see, it sounds odd.

Rule number 3: pay attention to you B and P, they can make a difference.

Oh, and this word was especially popular during the beginning of the war on Iraq. People would discuss the war saying "they drobbed BOMBs on the airport" what's wrong with that you ask? They pronounce the B at the end of Bomb. For those who have that problem, imagine the word was spelled Baum, and there, you have the perfect accent for that word.

I cannot come up with any more rules at the moment, but I'm sure there are more, which I may add later. I know that this was a bit satirical, but I do not intend to make fun of anyone here, I had many problems too. I am trying to get a point across. We should try to improve our accent, it's way a of submerging our selves in the culture. With a better accent, you can be more convincing during interviews, you wouldn’t get a bias towards you in everyday life, your communication will improve…

I hope that some of readers benefit from this, and I hope some of them live around here. Be honest with me now, do you notice the same problems with our accents? Do you think that it's crucial to improve our accents?


The picture on top is perfect..