I am a white guy married to an Arab. I speak more than a bit of Arabic, gained through travels in the Middle East, university classes and years of my wife’s family many of whom do not speak a word of English……oh and many years laughing at Tash ma Tash.

I find this goes both ways. I have had to put up with the idiots who make comments, in Arabic, and assume that anyone white might not be able to understand. Like the mental midget who tried to flirt with my wife in Arabic, then decided after the fact to ask in Arabic if I spoke Arabic.

Imagine the surprise in his eyes when I asnwered for my wife and said “Na’am”.

More likely than not this person was just trying to show off and make the others think that she knew some hard to learn language. Why else throw out some useless irrelevent phrase?

You would have knocked her off her highhorse if you had politely pointed out that her pronounciation of Arabic would not be able to be understood by any Arab, and then proceded to correct her phrase, maybe tossing in some different ways of saying said phrase in different Arabic dialects.

She was trying to look smart. You should have showed all observers just how smart, or not smart, she really was.

And by the way, you can never eat ethnic food again that is not Arab (as if “Arab” is monolithic). You wouldn’t want to “coopt” someone else’s culture, now, would you? Get over yourself. This is America and people are going to wear, eat and say whatever the hell they feel like it, so get yourself a French (made in China) handbag, a nice pair of Italian designer (made in Kazakhstan) heels and a shirt that says “rape me” in Japanese (for that “look at me, I’m special” look), and get with the program!

sick of these white women, Ive had similar situations. i remember one of them tried to “speak on behalf of the Palestinians” whilst in class. but dont you just love them when they want to save us Arab women?

Btw, it was not only the butchering of the phrase, that irked me, but irrelevant placement of it in our discussion. Perhaps I did a bad job explaining the source of my irritation. She says an irrelevant phrase in Arabic, butchers the pronounciation and translation (this is what makes Arabic such a difficult language, the cultural context of words and their changing meanings in sentences are hard to grasp if one hasn’t lived in an Arabic-speaking country or grown up hearing the language), and assumes that I have no knowledge of the language even though I had constantly make my linguistic identity be known in class discussions-that to me was a package of irriation no over-the-coutner ointment could ameliorate.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a gringo say a improperly pronounced or worded spanish phrase , bad accent and all, I’d be rich. I admit that it’s annoying, even more so because they think they know what they’re doing, but it’s hardly the markings of cultural elitism.

Not everything is an issue. Not everything is a co-opting of culture. Sometimes a student with a poor grasp of arabic and an inflated sense of importance is just that. And nothing more.