Speaking Mexican

By and large, folks in Syria and Lebanon are quite comfortable speaking to me in Classical Arabic (Fusha) in the streets, in stark contrast to my experience in Egypt. Everyone is so gracious in accommodating my many mistakes. But here in Lebanon this morning, I heard someone remark behind me that I was speaking Mexican. I spun around and indignantly told the guy that I was actually American, and I was pretty sure I was speaking Arabic, thank you so much.

"Oh no, you speak Fusha beautifully! But we call it 'Mexican' here, because we watch Mexican soap operas and they are all dubbed into Modern Standard Arabic. When we hear someone speaking Fusha, as you are, we say they're speaking Mexican. Anyway, welcome to Lebanon!" I sort of cried but mostly laughed, and then asked why they watch Mexican soaps and not the wildly popular Egyptian soaps which are in colloquial language. "Egyptian soaps are all about politics, or religious problems, or things like that. Mexican soaps are just about love and divorces and re-marriages, so we watch them instead, even though they are in Fusha."

About an hour later, someone else in the street asked me if I was Iranian, because I spoke Arabic like Iranians do, and I looked like someone they knew from Iran. Someone overheard him and said to me, "You are Iranian? I have a cousin in Tehran. Welcome to Lebanon!"