Carlos Sentís speaks about the pandemic in Arabic on DMC Egypt National Television
First interview in Arabic on a national TV!
I decided that I wanted to learn this language 14 years ago.
But I went for Chinese first instead.
Wanted to learn ever since. Never found the time.
Last December I spoke in front of thousands of people and prepared a few sentences in Arabic.
It worked.
So I started learning the language this January because I want to support peace initiatives and Human Rights action in the Middle East in the future.
I spent more than 650 hours studying, almost 5 hours a day until June.
I took classes almost every day with my amazing syrian teacher
Haya Saif
.I watched every political debate I could.
Started understanding 0 words. Now I sometimes get only 20 percent, but if I know a bit about the topic I understand up to 70 percent.
After 5 intensive months studying at home during the lockdown I stopped because I couldn't continue developing our projects with such commitment.
A few months later, just this Saturday, my friends at DMC, the largest TV channel in Egypt, asked me to share some remarks the next day.
I told them I would do it in Arabic.
They said I could speak in English.
I appreciated it, and stuck with Arabic. Obviously.
I prepared for 7 hours what I wanted to say to reply the questions they sent me.
Got ready.
We did the connection test.
We started.
The anchor, the amazing
Sara Hazem Taha
, that I adore even though how fast she speaks, asked.I managed to understand the questions well enough to know that there were changes in the questions I prepared for. (Of course)
Couldn't say what I wanted.
I did awful, but I did it.
Made a lot of mistakes. But it kind of worked.
I guess the moral of the story is:
If you don't speak Arabic perfectly don't speak in front of more than 1 million people because you will probably make a fool of yourself !
Or rather:
Keep learning. Keep trying to improve yourself. You will never be perfect, but you can be better. You can work harder, you can work smarter, you can be kinder, you can be more generous, you can try to provide more value to the others, you can challenge yourself, face your fears, do what you believe is right, be humble enough to recognize that you are almost a complete ignorant and try to learn and think to at least try to be a little bit closer to the truth.
Purpose, potential and execution. Know your why, unleash what you are capable of doing, and do it.
PS: Contact me if you want to join our Education initiatives and social impact projects. Stronger together.
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