Speak My Tongue

Ramadan talks about navigating language in a biracial relationship. Learning Arabic is not an easy task. Statistically, Arabic is the second hardest living language to learn after Japanese. Also, the fact that its alphabet is Semitic, while English, French, and German--languages he speaks to various degrees--are all Latin languages. Finally, English is a small language, meaning that the word pool of English is limited to around six million words, while Arabic's word pool is an ever-expanding 560 million words. Even in their ways of describing the same things, the two languages are vastly different. Languages carry with them not only a way of communicating but, they also carry culture, song, dance, metaphors, and tradition.