Caught at Jackson and Wabash. Jabril is his name.
“Where are you coming from? Job?
“yes, I work during the day and teach at Columbia at night.”
“Oh, so you are an artist??
“I guess you could say that. But I still have a day job. I think everyone has to do something creative. What’s your creative thing?”
“I have a Masters in Linguistics from Morocco. I came here for 9 years and started substitute teaching. I teach French so I didn’t get called that often. They only pay like uh 50 to 100 dollars a week.”
“What other languages do you speak?”
“I speak my home language, Moroccan, French, Swedish, Arabic, and English.”
Jabril and I talk about how there are many different dialects of Arabic. I tell how one time I was reading and practicing the few words I knew for one of my trips back to Palestine on a train. A Moroccan man next to me looked at my book and said I was doing it all wrong. If I wanted to speak pretty Arabic, I would speak Assyrian Arabic. Jawil says its the nicest Arabic.
“English is hard you know. Like Arabic there are so many kinds of dialects. When I came here some guy came up to me and said “what’s up.” I didn’t know what he was talking about! (laughter). At first I came to New York, but didn’t like it and came to Chicago. I like it much better here.”
“What’s your favorite accent?”
“That would be California. I love the way people from California talk. I had a lady from California last week and I wanted to drive her around all night long. Where are you from?
We talk about the South and the differences in the accents. The slow drawl of the Deep South with few consonants. then the shortness of the Appalachian mountains. He asks me perform each one.
“I want to get my PhD from Northeastern. Everywhere other school here is too expensive. So I want it from Northeastern.
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