Analysis

Old is Gold:

An interview with my beloved father

I wanted the interview to seem comfortable and spontaneous; the reason for my call was to check on family members. Then I informed my father that I was going to videotape an interview in which I would ask him questions about life in the past and life today. I also informed him that the record will be displayed in City College’s Freshman English Composition Class B2. Having been made fully aware of the interview, he had no questions and subsequently agreed. My father is monolingual; thus, the entire interview was conducted in Arabic. My father is 56 years old, thus he is an idle person to talk about whatever has changed from his youth to the present. Unfortunately, after many attempts, I ended up recording only the dialogue because he did not know how to use the applications on his phone, and I was running out of time.

First/Second question: The first question was a general one: do you think life is better now than in the past? Or the other way around? Do you think technology has made life better or worse for your generation? “I think this was my next question about the behaviour change, however, you did not tell me what this has to do with technology.”

It is no secret that what my father described is an issue for all communities throughout the world, and many groups are attempting to raise awareness of the repercussions of overusing technology, particularly smartphones. One journey on the R train demonstrates how people are completely controlled, with no one looking at or speaking to each other. The thing is that without smartphones, The problem is, without cellphones, I believe we would have the opportunity to meet new individuals every day. Meeting people online is not the same as meeting them in person, and there is a significant gap between the old and new lives.

  Also, my father mentioned something about visiting family on important occasions, which I believe is also correct. We used to accompany our parents to spend time with relatives, and they were constantly stressing the significance of maintaining close connections with our family. Unfortunately, they now click on “send all” and that’s it. From my perspective, I believe it steals our ages; individuals no longer feel the days or even the years, which pass swiftly. For me, whatever they trying to make it shine the technology, it is not.

Third question:

I can validate what my father said about life in the past in terms of language. This week, I spent several hours attempting to get an interview with a 90-year-old farmer who still lives in the same old way, eating everything he crops. To be honest, despite the fact that we grew up in the same area, I couldn’t comprehend all he said, and he couldn’t understand anything I said. We discussed two distinct dialects, which verified my father’s point of view: although certain words become part of the spoken language, others are lost. For example, during the interview, the old guy used the words “Al hijaneh,” and I had no idea what that meant. Turns out that it refers to a cane with a handcrafted head. This term is no longer spoken in the village. Another example, the term “Handleha” is the same as “Handle” but with the Arabic suffix “ha” which signifies “solve it.”

It is an interesting subject for lexicographers. Globalization is rapidly affecting languages and we do not know whether this is good or not, I think old language is part of us, I may it shapes our identity and who we are. It doesn’t mean that we should not look at other languages and learn them, but rather it means that while we think about learning other languages, we should look after our original language from disappearing.

In brief, many changes have taken place since we entered the 20th century and these changes, according to my father, are not in favour of human beings, even if it sounds like it is advancing. We lose more than what we gain. On the other side, change happens naturally, nothing stays as is, but we must raise awareness and focus on what is being neglected from our past as it is who we are.