I was teaching a class today on postgraduate research proposals, and a student spoke to me to say that she was planning on writing on breastfeeding (healthcare student), and we talked about about what sort of research question we might go for, things like whether there were any particular programmes which had affected the rates of breastfeeding in a particular community. She was from Saudi Arabia.
I was walking along behind her and a friend as we came out of the classroom, and they were presumably speaking Arabic. It sounded like this: ""[ArabicArabicArabicArabic]breastfeedin
"[ArabicArabicArabic]systematic review[ArabicArabicArabicArabicArabic]"
"[ArabicArabic]breastfeeding[ArabicArabi
Etc.
Anyway, it made sense that they'd use English for "systemic review" and "programmes", since we were talking about those in the context of studying in the UK. But it surprised me that they were using the English for breastfeeding. Is there something about the way we talk about breastfeeding in the UK? Does the Arabic word not cover it, or do the words tend to be specific to local or family dialects rather than part of standard Arabic? Any suggestions?
