gyptian mother of two Amira Abdel-Rahman is, like a lot of Arab parents in the region, keen to see the Arabic language thrive and be spoken freely at home.
Her children, Mourad, 8, and Laila, 6, speak the mother tongue, but at different levels.
“Laila is moving to Year 2 (British Curriculum) this year. Besides the challenges we all faced during the online learning, she had struggles and still is struggling with learning Arabic at school,” Ms Abdel-Rahman told The National.
“Although we speak our mother tongue language at home almost all the time, writing and pronouncing Arabic letters to her was kind of riddles.”
We expect parents to encourage their children to communicate using Arabic and to show pride in learning the language, especially in early yearsMaha Al Halawani, American Academy for Girls, Mirdif,
She said Arabic is battling against the predominance of English as the common language spoken in the UAE.
Both she and her husband work on improving Laila's language skills by getting her to write down the Arabic letters and read them, but it is not easy now that the summer holidays have started.
The role of parents in improving the Arabic spoken by their children is important, say schools, who are also trying to make the language more engaging and interesting for pupils who speak English more freely.
Spoken by nearly 420 million people worldwide, Arabic is the official language of the UAE.
It includes two categories — Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), also called fus-ha, and the colloquial Arabic, which comes with distinct accents and dialects that can be sometimes intimidating and complex but also fascinating and lyrical.
Ranked among the hardest languages for English speakers to learn by both Rosetta Stone and language learning app Babbel, Arabic can be important in careers or even in family gatherings.
The coronavirus pandemic meant residents from other Arab countries faced even more challenges with their children’s learning of Arabic, with distance learning proving problematic.