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MundoAmérica, ,

At Harvard, the star of Arabic A is a girl named Maha. Maha Muhammed Abulaal, to be precise. She's the pouty protagonist in the melodrama that runs throughout "Al-Kitaab," the standard beginning text in Arabic classes at Harvard and other American universities.

We are taught to speak our first Arabic sentences by expressing Maha's incurable angst. We learn in Chapter 1 that Maha is desperately lonely. In later chapters, we are told that she hates New York, has no boyfriend and resents her mother.

Soon we encounter her equally depressing relatives in Egypt -- such as her first cousin Khalid, whose mother died in a car accident and who was forced to study business administration after his father told him literature "has no future."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , ,

By E. J. Dionne Jr. (THE WASHINGTON POST, 23/05/06):

Yes, let's talk about the English language and how important it is that immigrants and their children learn it.

And please permit me to be personal about an issue that is equally personal to the tens of millions of Americans who remember their immigrant roots.

My late father was born in the United States, and grew up in French Canadian neighborhoods in and around New Bedford, Mass. When he started school, he spoke English with a heavy accent. A first-grade teacher mercilessly made fun of his command of the language.

My dad would have none of this and proceeded to relearn English, with some help from a generous friend named James Radcliffe who, in turn, asked my dad to teach him French.…  Seguir leyendo »