Speak of inferiority complexes…

Hafeth al Marathi: He thpeakth not with a lithp, but with a calculated twitht:

"Unlike most of his compatriots, too, since the mid-1980s he has shed all vestiges of Egyptian self-centredness, an attitude that expects other Arabs to understand Egyptian dialect and appreciate Egyptian nuances of culture even as Egyptians brazenly fail to return the favour, however minimally. Even informally, he speaks a kind of pan-Arab lingua franca in which he has reverted back to the classical "j" sound of his upbringing in Maghagha, in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya (in contrast to Cairo and the Delta's "g" sound, famously preserved by anchor Ahmed Said), pronouncing the qaf as often as not; Marazi questions the long established though by now groundless notion of Egyptian cultural and media hegemony; and half-jokingly he describes his marriage to a Tunisian in terms of loyalty to the principles of the station in which his career took off."

Al Jazeera has a written or unwritten rule for its Egyptian anchormen, reporters and guests...Come be a guest on our channel, but first, before you do so, we require only one little thing of you...you must drop all vestiges of your mother tongue; Sell us your soul!

Now I have no problem with Al Jazeera dictating to their staff to speak in a certain way, and I have no problem with "Hafeth al Marathi" choosing personally to speak a certain way...that is his personal choice and I totally respect that. But I do have a problem with him lecturing the Egyptian viewers of his show on how bastardized their Egyptian mother tongue really is, and how they should revert to a "more proper" classical Arabic lingo similar to his own...whatever that is he thinks it is.

Hafeth el Marathi: Speaking like an outdated mechanical reader of the classical text, and substituting the pronounced letter z for the sound th, and the Egyptian pronounciation of the letter g for the softer Syrian pronounciation of the letter j, does not make you more of "a proper" speaker of the Arabic language. Asshole.

If you want to speak a more proper form of Arabic, then why don't you adopt the Saudi dialect instead? Why don't you substitute your softer Syrian pronounciation of j for the heavier Saudi pronunciation of "dJ"? Isn't the Saudi dialect the more proper of the two? And what is a more proper accent anyway? I imagine that there is more than one accent in the Arabian Gulf...which one is it, in your opinion, the more proper Arabic tongue for you to choose?

And the excuses he uses are silly; reverting back to his native Minyan accent, he says. Well good luck to him telling his bosses that he wishes to use the Minyan accent on his show. As for other Arabs not understanding the Egyptian pronounciation of words, and him fixing this by substituting the pronounciation of these two letters in order for them to do so...well I can see exactly how that works; God forbid he introduce himself once on his show as "Hafez el Marazi", instead of "Hafeth al Marathi". His shocked bosses at Al Jazeera would certainly say: "Who is that anchorman on our channel? He looks just like our Hafeth al Marathi...but he most certainly isn't! And what language is that he speaks? We cannot understand!"

Now if you find this funny, here is the ultimate height of the absurd:

When the Alyoub province train wreck happened I flipped through all the satellite channels to gather what had happened, and I settled on the Nile News channel which was the only one covering the event. This is the scene that unfolded in front of me...

For the duration of the hour or so I was watching, the anchorman was speaking in classical Arabic on the phone to the eye witnesses on the scene of the crash, who on their part hardly understood what he was asking, and after almost every question would retort back with: "ehh??" (meaning, "what??"). Every now and then the anchor would forget, and his darned Egyptian accent would slip out of his tongue, but no sooner would he notice this than he would immediately correct it once again.

That would be the equivalent of the anchor on CNN or ABC news asking eyewitnesses in New Orleans standing on the scene of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in old Shakespearian English: "Ummm...And how doth thy tempest tither??" (I'm sure that makes absolutely no sense, but that's exactly the point!)

The Nile News anchor was obviously vying to be eyed and adopted by the bosses of his idol Hafeth Al Marathi, and hoping to be rescued from this wretched country which pays little and cannot pronounce words right.