Bilingual- Gone Bad!

I guess, to me, being bilingual means possessing proper command of two languages (in my case Arabic and English). While I am equally comfortable using either, I would slightly favor one over the other depending on the area. For example, Arabic will always be my mother tongue; the language I grew up hearing and speaking. No matter how fluent or comfortable I’ll get in English or any other language for that matter, I would always want and miss using the purely Arabic colloquial expressions. They are so expressive, and yet are lost in translation.
When it comes to the read and written language however (again, I can do both perfectly well) the scale tips in favor of English. I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

My feeble attempts to be trilingual have obviously amounted to nothing. The French classes at school were a big bucket of time wasted. Then there was that “Italian For Beginners” course I took during my last summer in college. Well, originally I was going for Spanish. You see, I thought it would be wise to learn a phrase or two if I were to marry Enrique Iglesias! (Which was the plan at the time:P) But Spanish wasn’t available in the summer, but my friends told me Italian is close, and would be good enough. Huh.

My school where I work now is bilingual. However, the kids are redefining what “Bilingual” means to me. Bilingual is what produces sentences like these:

Hammad: NO TEACHER WALLAH he khatterni (cut in front of me)!
(Said after being told off for pushing his friend in line)

Abdulaziz: Miss Mariam can I go to the bathroom? Pleeeeeeeeeeease pleeeeeease 7addi 7addi 7asran! (Can’t hold it any longer).
(Said with a cringe that gets me all panicked and hurriedly yelling: “GO GO GO”)

Ahmad: Teacher see Barak! He hit me biryoola (with his legs)
(Said as Barak looks at me ever-so-innocently!)

Each and Every boy: Just wait I will a6iggak 6rag (beat you silly) in recess.
(Said, well, pretty much all the time. Unless he decides to proceed with the “6rag” right away, in which case this very thoughtful forewarning would seize to exist).


It’s really quite impressive how they fluently and automatically mesh the two languages into this unrecognizable awful hybrid!
It used to confuse the hell out of me at first. Now not only do I expect it, but my brain has gotten so used to this instant language hopping, that when they do happen to say a complete sentence in English or Arabic, my automatic response is “come again?”.