Ah! The many pitfalls of language.
Jhumpa Lahiri did a feisty thing this year, when she announced she was ‘renouncing’ “her more dominant language” English, to write in an alien tongue, Italian. This new tongue wasn’t familiar to her. It was – as she described it – a new lover – one that she was constantly scared would reject her.
Lahiri wanted to traverse beyond the ‘phoniness’ of language, and we largely applauded her for it.
But Egyptian journalist Shaimaa Abdel Moneim wasn’t so lucky. A couple of minutes at the Oscars press room this year was all it took to turn her into an internet meme.
The Very Strange Exchange
Here’s how that transpired:
Moneim, who had been sent by the privately-owned Youm7 channel, was the first Egyptian representative ever to cover the Oscars. Yes, a pretty prestigious achievement – except that, in a few moments, her world came crashing down. When the mic was suddenly passed to her and an expectant Leonardo DiCaprio and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu looked on (the duo were fresh off their Revenant win), she said:
“I am the first Egyptian woman to cover the Oscars. And what about first Oscar for you?”
Leo did a double take and asked: “I’m sorry, what was your question?”
“What about first Oscar for you?” Moneim insisted.
“What about it?” a visibly puzzled Leo ventured. By this point, Inarritu had burst into peals of laughter – a cue for every other journalist in the room to do the same.
“Yeah, it feels amazing,” the Oscar winner replied through grins.
“It’s a first, what about it?” Moneim refused to give up – till Leo finished kindly with a well-rounded: “Yeah, it’s the first. Look, like I said, I’m just incredibly grateful. It feels amazing.”
And there ended the two minutes of Lenoardo’s press meet, and began the infinitesimally longest two minutes of Moneim’s career.
‘Bad English’ Leads to Admittance of ‘Sin’
What is particularly shocking is the way the Middle Eastern reporter has been taken apart – by people from both her own country, and by those elsewhere. The reactions range from utter derision to high-brow contempt, with the fulcrum pretty much resting on: “What was she thinking?”
A report in the Egyptian Streets summed up some of the comments:
“Egypt is full of people who speak English fluently.”
“Why did you not give a chance to someone who could actually do it right and represent Egypt without dragging us into the dirt!”
The worst of the lot is probably a Twitter trend that began with viewers trying to guess what Moneim had struggled to say. The most popular choice was: “What about French toaster for you?”
The saddest part of the incident, though, was when Moneim came out with an apology – one that perfectly summed up the linguistic hierarchy.
“I have sinned against myself and my country… I also wronged the paper that trusted me... and let down readers who wanted stronger coverage.” – she said in a Facebook post that was translated by Cairo Post.
Would the epithet of ‘sin’ really have been used by any other first language journalist who’d fumbled at what is admittedly the most coveted entertainment event of the year? One imagines a fresh-faced Ryan Seacrest wannabe laughing off his fumble with a cocktail at the after-party and a witty joke that would have come easy to him, courtesy his linguistic familiarity.
The use of a word like ‘sin’ has effectively bracketed her into a third world representative, who is guilty of having let down a people for whom she’d represented some sort of golden hope.
The Curious Case of Linguistic Hierarchy
Youm7’s Chief Editor, Khaled Salah has hastened to take to Facebook and defend the reporter, stating that she was simply “confused” and that the only problem was that her “voice had been unclear”.
But why does Moneim – who asked a silly question, it is true (in journalistic terms, a ‘softball’ question when you ask an interviewee how they ‘feel’) – have to justify her accent or terminology?
Moneim has been dissed for asking an “incomprehensible” question/a “grammatically ill-phrased” question”/a question asked in “horrible English”.
We’ve got two question of our own:
(a) How many of these trolls would have been able to enunciate the same question in Arabic?
and,
(b) Why is English suddenly the be-all and end-all for the career of a reporter from the Middle East?
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)