Vision Voices

Is My Arabic Good Enough? About Language, Identity & Growing Up Arab | Radwa Hassan

Lara

In this episode of Vision Voices: The Arabic Series, Lara sits down with Radwa Hassan to unpack the deeply personal and often unspoken question many people carry: “Is my Arabic good enough?” What begins as a conversation about dialects quickly becomes a reflection on identity, belonging, and the emotional weight that language carries—especially in a place as diverse as the UAE.

Radwa, an Egyptian native Arabic speaker and mother raising her children in Dubai, shares how the Arabic she grew up with is completely different from the Arabic her kids speak today. Together, she and Lara explore how language evolves through school systems, social media, and cultural environments, and why younger generations naturally blend English with Arabic to create something entirely new.

They also discuss the challenges expats face when choosing which dialect to learn, the gap between classical Arabic and everyday speech, and why using “imperfect” Arabic should be celebrated rather than judged. Radwa sheds light on how expressions like “mutate the mic” or “brief me” reveal the living, adaptive nature of the language—proof that Arabic is not fading, but transforming.

This episode is a warm, honest invitation to rethink what it means to speak Arabic, to reclaim confidence in your voice, and to appreciate the language not just as grammar or vocabulary, but as heritage, emotion, and home.

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