We speak English.
Fluently.
We pass your job interviews, write your college papers, nail the punchline, read between the lines.
We hold entire conversations without pausing to think.
We’ve done the work, the grammar drills, the idioms, the code-switching.
We’ve shed accents, added new ones, and watched people’s faces change as we spoke.
But fluency doesn’t guarantee understanding.
And being articulate doesn’t mean we’re truly heard.
Because what we say, and what you hear, are often not the same.
In Arabic, we grow up with layers.
A single sentence can hold warmth, pride, sarcasm, and sorrow, all at once.
We learn to speak with our eyes, our pauses, our tone.
We say “inshallah”, and it can mean yes, no, maybe, or “don’t ask me again.”
We grow up knowing that what isn’t said often speaks louder than what is.
But in English, in Western culture, things are more direct.
Say what you mean. Be clear. Be honest. Be assertive.
So we learn to be that too.
We push ourselves to speak up. To be “transparent.” To name our needs.
Still, it doesn’t always land.
We try to express disagreement gently, it sounds like we’re unsure.
We soften our voice out of respect, and it’s read as weakness.
We hesitate out of cultural politeness, and someone thinks we’re hiding something.
Sometimes, we speak love in a way that’s misread as control.
Or offer silence out of protection, and it’s mistaken for guilt or distance.
We ask a question that, to us, is curiosity, but to others, sounds invasive.
It’s exhausting.
And when we do speak honestly, when we finally say the hard thing, we risk being told we’re “too emotional,” “too indirect,” “too much.”
So we return to silence.
Not because we have nothing to say, but because we’re tired of explaining what we meant by what we said.
What Native English Speakers Can Understand
You don’t need to learn Arabic to hear us better.
You just need to listen a little deeper.
We are translating constantly.
Not just words, but emotion, culture, rhythm, context, and history.
When we speak English, we’re often trying to shrink entire lifetimes into a sentence that feels safe to say out loud.
So please
Be patient when we pause.
Notice when we hedge our words, that might be the moment we’re saying something deeply vulnerable.
If we speak with too much passion, try not to flinch, that’s how we show care.
If we’re quiet, don’t assume we agree, ask again.
If something doesn’t make sense, don’t laugh. Ask.
If a phrase seems strange, it might be a translation of something sacred.
If we avoid eye contact or lower our voice, it’s not always shame, it might be respect.
Understanding someone across cultures isn’t just about “listening better.”
It’s about becoming curious.
It’s about recognising that your way of speaking isn’t universal.
It’s about holding space for discomfort, and trusting that the silence between us is not a void, but a bridge.
Because in the realm of The Unspoken,
we believe that language is more than communication, it’s memory, migration, and emotion.
And sometimes, the hardest things to say are the things we carry in silence.
But the moment we feel truly heard, not just grammatically correct, but emotionally understood
is the moment we start to heal.
Together.
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