Three people argue in animated Arabic a few seats behind me. Arabic is a profoundly hideous language. Two people muttering quietly in Arabic sounds like a fistfight in a shit-kicker bar. Three people having a quiet conversation sounds like the Battle of Agincourt, the bad part after the longbows but before the serious dismemberment, the part where the screaming reached its perfect zenith.
The argument behind me sounds like the Second World War, if it had been fought by people with life-threatening respiratory infections.
Russian is a beautiful language. To speak in Russian is to talk with a mouthful of honey. Speakers of French sound like chrome ice-skaters. Japanese is a tap-dancing millipede. English isn’t beautiful to the ear, but it makes up for it with the fact that it can be sung like no other language; compare a Martin Luther King speech with any address by Hitler to see what I mean.
But Arabic is just ugly. It starts like a bad day and ends in a cough and I find it hard to believe that any beautiful or true sentiment could ever be spoken in it.
The three people behind me are about to come to blows. Then one of them laughs. They’re just talking.
In a language I don’t think I’ll ever understand.
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