Selina Saliba is a student at Cal Poly whose parents grew up in Palestine. While she grew up in the Bay Area, she has visited Palestine almost every summer since she was born. She speaks both Palestinian Arabic and American English.
Phonetic Features of Palestinian Arabic
Q: Do you or any of your family members have any accents? And can you describe that accent?
A: Yeah so my mom has an accent. She struggles to say her "r"s and then, I don't know how you would describe this, like the way she pronounces words will be incorrect, but my dad doesn't have an accent. But she does. But when I was younger, I struggled to pronounce certain words and everything and had to be put into speech therapy because of the way my parents taught me English.
Q: Do you know what sounds were difficult?
A: For me it was [ s ] and then [ r ] also.
Q: So, from my research, it looks like the sound "th" in "the" or in "thing" doesn't appear in Palestinian Arabic.
A: Um, yeah, I think that's accurate.
Q: Do a lot of people struggle to learn that "th" sound?
A: Yeah actually. That does make sense actually. Instead of like "the", they'll be like, more just like the "t" noise? They also, I don't know if this applies the same way, but there's a sound of [ɣ] (pronounced the voiced velar fricative), which is like "kh", which doesn't really exist in English. So a lot of people struggle to learn it if they weren't around it when they grew up.
Q: What are some common slang words in Palestinian Arabic and how do they translate into English?
A: I don't know if you call this slang, but they have a lot of terms that are, like, religious based. So like, "إن شاء الله", which means "if God wills", and nobody here says that. So if I were to say to my mom "Next year we should go on a trip to New York" she would probably be like "إن شاء الله" instead of saying "hopefully". Yeah, that would be like the equivalent. And then what else would they say. I can't think of a lot of slang. But they call all adults "uncle" in Arabic, but it's like a sign of respect.
Learning English
Q: What was the first language you learned?
A: So I learned them simultaneously, both Arabic and English.
Q: What languages do you know?
A: So I know English and Arabic and a very proficient level of Spanish.
Q: Okay, and did you learn Spanish...?
A: Just in school.
Q: In school, okay. So how did you learn English? Were you raised with it?
A: So yeah both my parents speak fluent English and Arabic. And just through schools here. I learned it mostly through schools but they also spoke Arabic at home.
Q: Is English taught in Palestinian schools?
A: Yeah, so since first grade, so all my family there speaks English also.
Q: And then is there some sort of English Proficiency requirement in Palestinian Schools?
A: I think so. So you know how it's very common here to take Spanish in high school but they have classes [in English] from first grade all the way through college. So yeah, they're being graded on how they speak.
Israeli occupation
Q: How have the conflicts with Israel affected your life?
A: I'd say it's definitely significantly affected my life, and, like, my extended family's life. This summer I was in the Middle East and me and my brother got held at security at the Tel Aviv airport. Basically there's so many levels of discrimination there. So they basically asked me my dad's name, which is a Palestinian name, and when I answered they immediately sent us to security and they were interrogating us for three hours in order to enter. We all have American citizenships, there's nothing that's "not allowed" happening. When you're in the Middle East, there's probably borders about every mile to ten miles to pass into a different city because all the cities are controlled by the different governments. So like you could be in Palestinian territory then a mile later be in Israeli territory and then be again into Palestinian territory. You don't have to always stop at the borders but you'll see the cars ahead of you go by and then once we go by they always stop us. I would just say it's a lot harder to visit there if you are Palestinian.
Q: Would you say that knowing English helps with any of the discrimination against Palestinians?
A: I think if you're Palestinian American, it does, but if you're just Palestinian, it does not. Like if you actually live there it doesn't help at all. When I'm there, and I'm at the border, I don't speak Arabic, I speak English, and we act as if we're just normal Americans so that they don't give us more trouble.
Q: What other contexts would you speak English in Palestine?
A: A lot of areas in Israel they don't speak Arabic, they speak Hebrew. So you either have to know Hebrew or they can speak English. So at the airport, they don't speak Arabic, they only speak Hebrew or English. So even my family there, they have to speak English at the airport.
Q: How would you say the English language has affected Palestine?
A: I think it has a lot of impact. You could use the term "Westernized", maybe not just "Americanized", but the country has changed a lot since I've started going there. Even when they buy iPhones there, the iPhone comes in English. People don't even have Arabic on their phones. They have English on their phones. And on their laptops, the keyboard has English and Arabic letters on it. And then they really want their kids to know English. That's something that is really important to them. Some schools that are wealthier will teach English and Hebrew, even in Palestine, but the most important thing for them is to know English on top of Arabic, because they don't really like Israel so they don't really care about their kids knowing Hebrew. They do care about English. This is random, but one of my cousins from Palestine just moved to America because his family wanted him to get out of the conflict. He's trying to attain citizenship here because of the conflict there. People really want their kids to know about American culture to give them a better life.
Q: So does the fact that the United States still doesn't recognize Palestine as its own sovereign state affect their view of America?
A: They don't know the whole story, so they love America, and they realize that America doesn't fully recognize them, but they love America because America is so white and Christian. It's kind of torn. This is getting kind of complicated. If you're Palestinian and Christian, they love America. If you're Palestinian and Muslim they hate America. And the Christians there love America because Trump wants to get rid of the Muslims, and the Muslims hate America because Trump wants to get rid of the Muslims. I think it was a month ago when Trump made a comment about how Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and then there were riots, fights, and attacks in the streets. My grandma told me people died because all the Christians there love Trump because they're like "He's getting rid of the Muslims. This is great." And then, once he basically betrayed the Christians by saying Jerusalem is Israels and not Palestine's, then all this fighting started happening and the Jewish people there got involved. It was really bad.
Q: That's interesting, because it seems like his words have a direct impact on people's lives. A: Yeah. I think of a lot of people here don't realize that [Trump] doesn't just affect what's happening here, but there are millions of people around the world that are listening to what he's saying. But they also just see America as "opportunity", and the American Dream is still very much alive for them. They realize that a lot of things aren't great in America, but most people in America aren't looking to survive on a day to day basis. Most people are able to get an education and dream big, whereas for them, they can only dream big if they have the correct citizenship, or to be super wealthy, or to be lucky enough to live inside Israel. If they don't have the money and they're Palestinian, and they have a Palestinian visa, they can't do anything.
Analysis
My interview with Selina was very revealing as to the status of English in Palestine and the way Palestinian English differs from Standard American English.
She told me that the English language itself is not enough to grant someone prestige, but that being American can help one's credibility with Israeli authorities. An American passport looks much less suspicious to authorities than a Palestinian passport. Selina's Standard American dialect also helped gain her credibility. She says she and her family will act like "normal" Americans. A major component of that is the way she speaks. This means that Standard American English is a prestige dialect in Palestine, and can directly impact one's life. She also said that it is very important for parents to have their children learn English, as it is a means of providing them opportunity. A question remains, however: how do Muslim Palestinians view the Standard American dialect? Would they associate that manner of speaking with the anti-Muslim sentiment of Trump?
Selina also provided a window into the way Palestinians speak English. She confirmed my theory that Palestinians have difficulty pronouncing the voiced and voiceless interdental fricative, which is present in some dialects of Arabic, but not in many Levantine varieties. Levantine Arabic does possess the alveolar stops [ t ] and [ d ], however, which often substitutes the interdental fricatives. Selina confirmed that the interdental fricative is oftentimes just pronounced [ t ], which means that speakers of Palestinian English substitutes [ t ] for the interdental fricative.
She also told me that she and her mom both had difficulties learning the [ r ] phoneme. A possible explanation for this is that Palestinian Arabic only has a phoneme for the trilled [ ɾ ] while American English has only the retroflex liquid [ r ].