u/Future_Foot_9822

I'm not trying to disrespect any particular influencer or claim my Arabic is better.

But I've noticed that when I listen to Arabic-speaking polyglot influencers, they sound noticeably different from native speakers. It's not just incorrect pronunciation and grammar but the entire word order and cadence feels off. A bit robot-like.

Furthermore, most of them do scripted videos with lots of cuts and rarely speak live. Or when they do speak live, it's something extremely basic like saying "hi" on Omegle or ordering at a restaurant where the conversation can be anticipated and planned ahead of time.

Are there any non-native speakers who have done a live interview in Arabic on something technical beyond just "this is who I am and this is how I learned Arabic"? Personally, I can't name a single one. Perhaps I'm just being too harsh though. Can anyone more well-versed confirm?

I've been studying Egyptian Arabic for several years and my conversations with Egyptian-speakers are significantly more awkward than my conversations in other foreign languages. Maybe a good analogy is this (for context, I'm a white American):

• I get treated like an ordinary Frenchman when speaking French. (which I honestly prefer)
• I get treated like a D-list celebrity when speaking Mandarin.
• I get treated like an alien when speaking Egyptian.

It's like I'm a novelty but not in a "woah, that's cool!" way but in a "woah, that's intimidating..." way. Even without the language barrier, the Egyptians I talk to frequently seem on edge: they avoid eye contact, give terse responses, frown at me, etc.

I kind of get the sense that I'm unintentionally embarrassing them by speaking Egyptian better than their English. They feel "expected" to speak English and can't. Meanwhile I already speak the global lingua franca and essentially learned their local dialect for fun. Has anyone else noticed this? Perhaps I'm completely misreading the vibe.