Sorry, I Don’t Speak Arabic

By Ali Al Yousifi

The Garden of the Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran

               
               Several days ago, I came across two videos of Kethra’s roundtable (dewaniya-style) conference called ‘Kuwait Modern City’. Although there were some non-Arabic speakers participating in the event, including the moderator, most of the speakers and audience members were Kuwaiti, and by default could speak Arabic; but they didn’t. The discussion and questions by the audience were all done in English, and it wasn’t just out of consideration for the attendees that didn’t speak Arabic.

               The cause behind this English-only discussion is that it’s only part of the larger also English-only architecture culture in Kuwait. Whenever I find two people discussing architecture (not the construction business) I can be almost certain that they will be speaking English, even if they are perfectly able to speak Arabic. Isn’t this bizarre? Architects in Kuwait are literally speaking a different language from everyone else in this predominantly Arabic country.

 As a student in Kuwait University, I am taught in English by professors who have been taught in English-speaking countries, meet architects that prefer speaking in English, attend lectures given in English, write essays in English, aspire to become as good as famous architects that speak English, and am encouraged to read books written in English; But guess what my clients will speak: Arabic.

And there are even more important problems to this English-only architecture culture concerning the question of identity. To ask: “how can we develop a unique Kuwaiti architectural identity?” is an oxymoron. The proper question is: “ كيف لنا تطوير هوية معمارية كويتية؟ ” (sorry if you don't read Arabic). The language we use is not a passive tool to convey our ideas; the language we use helps determine what ideas we have and what ideas we miss. The German Philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in his essay ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ states: “man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man”. We are the language we speak.

Trying to develop a Kuwaiti architectural identity through a foreign language is like trying to explain math by playing the piano, or to design a building using poetry: it’s terribly inefficient. The means has to match the end.

This is not a call to abandon the English language, nor is it a call to design buildings that look like Arabic calligraphy. And I do understand that English, through decades of concentrated usage, has become much more adapted to conveying architectural concepts than Arabic, but let’s take a moment to put aside our architectonics and dialectics and problematics and argumentatives and criticalities, lets for a moment forget the specialized architectural jargon used by English-speaking architects, and explore what the Arabic language has to offer the architectural field.

There is no doubt that roundtable/dewaniya discussions like Kethra’s above-mentioned conference are essential to enlivening the silent architectural field in Kuwait, but maybe next time the discussion can be conducted in Arabic; because I truly believe that not only will watching Kuwaiti architects struggle to articulate their thoughts in Arabic be hilarious, but that the very usage of Arabic will help focus the discussion towards new and more locally contextual topics.

(Yes, I do get the irony that I wrote this post in English)