S/he may be a gift from the Divine to the language teaching profession. You have done the tests. You have read Charles Dickens' ‘David Copperfield' in the 62-page abridged edition. You watch American movies with subtitles and understand them – sort of – apart from the expression ‘tabban lak' which seems to correspond to every curse and profanity uttered by America's finest and not-so of the saliva screen. You can write a composition in English about the Gift of the Nile with a cavalier disregard for the differences between ‘there', ‘their' and ‘they're'. So what? Their all pronounced the same, isn't it? Now, you are ready to take on the unenviable challenge of working with English people. You will hear such bizarre sounds as ‘er-ough' and ‘azzitgoan' which are to be interpreted as greetings ‘all right?' and ‘how is it going?' These may be followed by such meteorological observations as ‘so'inneer inni', ‘o'innuffya izzi' and ‘innarf cawdoubt up there'. Later, you learn that English people feel duty-bound to comment on the height of the mercury or their brains will seize up or evaporate in the heat, you suppose. As for the third expression, now you feel as if you are getting warmer, i.e. you infer that there is reason for sufficient doubt in the offices on the floor above. Wait a minute, your work station is on the top floor. Are these people talking about the technicians working on the air conditioning units on the roof? Is this line of inquiry worth pursuing? You then catch snatches of a conversation about, well, someone has a Scandinavian friend who says ‘hooray' because he was favourably impressed by the speaker's conduct. Then aimless walks in wet grass, probably early morning or late evening, at four o'clock – again, time of day is not specified – and an inquiry about grazing? Indeed, grazing must be the topic of the discourse, because ‘sheep' are mentioned, albeit in a comparative form peculiar to adjectives and adverbs. Apparently, a chair for the upper guttural region is indeed an odd concept all the same. Then the interlocutor makes reference to a sheer something or other and goes on to inquire about the departure of an acquaintance from a province in southwest India. My, how these English people miss out so much in their conversations. It is a wonder that they understand each other at all. You think I did not hear them correctly. Well, to the best of my recollection, this is what they said: ‘Lars cheer we went on behave.' ‘You didn't, did you? What chew wander dew that four?' ‘It's sheeper, inni? I mean, necks chair weird doing the same.' ‘What about this sheer? You Goan away?' As for the poor Saudi gentleman on a language course in England, he was eager to show that he watched English television and lifted expressions from what he heard in a bid to expand his vocabulary. He waylaid me one day asking, ‘What mean profusconfulation?' I asked for repetition of this inquiry. I was still no wiser. ‘Where did you hear this?' I asked. His retort to the effect that he could not remember came as no surprise. He attempted to write the locution on the whiteboard. He turned to me and, replacing the cap on the board marker, said, ‘But you English! You must to know what is mean “profusconfulation"!' I apologised for my ignorance and incomprehension, but he stormed off in a huff. I hope this serves as a step towards busting the myth that British English is the ‘classical' norm, as opposed to the ‘colloquial' American brand. However, the diglossia of Arabic is a false analogy, because Americans do not use their American English with each other and then switch to British English when they address the global community. By way of a footnote, according to an article in British Daily Telegraph, the Queen's English has changed over the last six decades, which is not strictly true. Having listened to Her Majesty's accession speech of 1952 and her 2011 Christmas speech, Elizabeth II's pronunciations have barely changed. The Queen's English, regarded as the ‘best' and most suitable norm for formal occasions and broadcasting, has changed in response to socio-economic change. Even so, I have an inkling of the bewilderment and confusion felt by those who grapple with the idiosyncracies of my native tongue. My first exposure to ‘real' French was on a school trip to Normandy in 1969. On hearing locals exchanging banter over the café counter, I felt as if I had learned nothing. I sipped my expresso, my pride in my ability to order this beverage in nearly flawless French had taken a near-mortal blow. Then, the French teacher who accompanied us on this visit to the land of our erstwhile foes informed us that the locals had “a strong accent". Fantastic! Brilliant! All those hours of listening to comprehensions in Touraine French, and we ended up in an intellectual backwater where patois ruled, OK. And a subsequent visit to Paris was no help, either. Senegalese street hawkers were hardly the model of ‘le francais qui se cause' in the 1970s. Before I came to Cairo in 1983, I was well aware of the difference between the so-called ‘classical' Arabic and the Egyptian colloquial. And I had set my heart on learning this wonderful urban flavoured speech for the simple reason that it is widely understood throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Within half an hour of landing at Cairo Airport, I realised I understood nothing. Even now, the odd taxi driver's speech eludes me, prompting me to inquire about mastication and exhaling heavily while addressing tiny parasites. ‘What chew sigh, mite?'
