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Arabic in bite-sized parts

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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 145 of 152
24 June 2015 at 12:44pm | IP Logged 
Gracias, iguanamon y Luso!

Sarah's "liked" the FB post, so I wrote her. Let's see if she replies.

Internet access is very patchy in Yemen and I know some of Sanad's friends were killed (as in, killed dead IRL) in the last few months. Luckily it's not anyone I know, but all the replies to the tune of "no one is safe in Yemen" and "don't worry b/c you can't do anything" are not doing anything to assuage my worries.

New words
Daradʒat al-magistir درجة الماجستير MA degree
Daradʒat درجة degree
Xerrigat خريجة graduate (fem.)

P.S. I used to keep a copy of the log at UniLang for readability purposes but they've blacklisted what seems to be my city's wi-fi network's static IP and I can't post there anymore.

Edited by Zireael on 24 June 2015 at 12:44pm

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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 146 of 152
13 August 2015 at 10:02am | IP Logged 
Three updates in a row. I've been posting this on the new HTLAL site, too.

Today's note is very short: I dreamed of two prominent Baldur's Gate characters (I'm a diehard fan), Jaheira and Khalid. In the Polish and English voiceover the husband's name is pronounced /kalid/, with a clear K, and that's how I'd been pronouncing the name for years. They often feature in my dreams, and today was the first time when my mental voice did the proper Arabic pronunciation, /halid/.

Coincidentally, I asked around for the pronunciations of the Baldur's Gate names here: http://linguaphiles.livejournal.com/5568091.html. Jaheira's name is apparently pronounced [ʤə'hirʌ] in the original VO as opposed to /yaheira/ in the Polish soundtrack.

This led me to thinking on the origin of Jaheira's name. As BG characters, they were originally played by the devs in a pen-and-paper RPG game and no info is probably ever coming on why such names were picked.

Might Jaheira be a variant spelling of Jahira (Arabic: jewel)? No Arabic script here, sorry.

***
Attended a lecture on creating conlangs two days ago. It turned out to be more about the features that languages have (phonology/phonetics, syntax, grammar) and less about conlangs themselves.

Anyway, the lecturer claimed Semitic languages are alternating because they use alternating vowels instead of word position (positional languages) or cases. I can't find any evidence of "alternating" languages as different from "positional".

The q-t-l root was provided as an example of how Semitic word roots and vowel alternation work. There were more examples but I didn't have a pen handy - completely not expecting to hear any Arabic - and I initially misheard it :(

New words
Qatala قتل he killed
Yaqtul يقتل he kills


My Kurdish friend got married. Her new surname is Ikram Sheikh. Is that kind of a surname a common thing in Arabic countries? Does it mean her husband is a leader or simply descended from a leader?
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Luso
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Portugal
Joined 5820 days ago

819 posts - 1812 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 147 of 152
13 August 2015 at 1:08pm | IP Logged 
I've never heard the terminology that the lecturer was using. I can even see a few problems with it:

1. Semitic languages use a root system based in consonants. There we are in agreement.

2. The system uses vowels (usually following a model based on the verb "to make / do"), but also prefixes such as "ma-".

3. Finally, the use of vowels does not exempt you from having to follow a word order. Those are two different things.

--- " ---

The word shaykh means "old" in Arabic, not "leader". But leaders are usually older people ("elders", if you will). Hence the confusion.

As to whether it's a common surname or not, I don't know.

Edited by Luso on 13 August 2015 at 1:10pm

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A Callidryas
Newbie
United States
Joined 3345 days ago

7 posts - 20 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 148 of 152
14 August 2015 at 2:46am | IP Logged 
'Sheikh' was historically used by the Kurds as a title of respect for their tribal leaders, so it is possible that her husband's family is descended from a 'sheikh'. This would be particularly likely if the husband's family is from Turkey. Until the 1930s surnames as we know them in the West were not really used in the Middle East, but in 1935 or sometime thereabouts, in his drive to westernize Turkey, Ataturk imposed a surname law, requiring all families to adopt a surname, and if you were a sheikh, what better surname?

On a different topic, some Arab women actually have "Sheika' as a first name, not as a title. I don't know if this means that they had a Sheik in their family history, or if it is like the occasional American couples who name their child 'Princess'.
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 149 of 152
15 September 2015 at 5:16pm | IP Logged 
Several updates at once. I'm also keeping this log at the new site. Still having occasional problems with UniLang.

My trousers have multilingual instructions appended, in 8 languages, including Arabic. :)

New phrases
صنع في بنجلاديش made in Bangladesh
أبقيها بعيدة عن النار keep away from fire
الالوان الاكنة تقسل متفصلة wash dark colors separately

***
Watching the athletics in Beijing and loving the Polish sports commentators who pronounce foreign names fairly well (with the exception of the Cote d'Ivoire sprinter Murielle Ahoure, who consistently gets mangled).

There is a new athlete in the Polish team, namely the 19-year-old Sofia Ennaoui, who has a Polish mother and a Moroccan father (sorta like my friends whose father is probably Senegalese). Since the surname is consistently romanized, I couldn't find the Arabic spelling until I recalled the Moroccan middle distance runner Malika Akkaoui. The Moroccan is also consistently romanized, but she has an Arabic Wikipedia page :) Her name in Arabic script is مليكة العقاوي

***
Ennaoui's surname seems to be الناوي and she has an Arabic wiki page... (thanks due to Eskandar from UniLang)

New words/phrases
al-indzazat ash-shahsiya الإنجازات الشخصية personal accomplishments

taxassas تخصص specialization
al-dzansiya الجنسية citizenship, nationality
at-taweel الطول height
al-wazun الوزن weight
al-indzazat الإنجازات accomplishments
ash-shahsiya الشخصية personal

M'abed معبد temple

***
I got sucked into alternate history again. This time I'm looking at New Kingdom of Egypt, which means there's loads of Arabic placenames.

New words
Tell تَلّ hill, elevation
Hammamat حمامة bathrooms, baths, showers (pl.)
Banu بنو sons (pl.)
***
While poking around ancient Egypt history for that AH I'm making, I discovered that the names Phineas and Susannah are ultimately Old Egyptian at their root.

Also discovered that English Wikipedia knows what Daesh is (I decided to check out since the acronym is increasingly used in Polish newspapers)
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 150 of 152
15 September 2015 at 5:22pm | IP Logged 
Today's update:
I finally went and got new headphones.
I decided on a corded headset and spent the last two weeks going to various malls and testing whatever they had. For good reason - some had no way to lengthen/shorten the arch, one pair was too loose so I couldn't hear in one ear because the earmuff was too far away from my hearing aid, one was so tight that they nearly knocked my hearing aid off. And some were just too quiet - mostly those light-weight, small earmuff types.

The headphones are brilliant, I tried listening to "Learn Arabic with Maha" and I could actually UNDERSTAND her, internet hiccups notwithstanding. And I've checked that they work for my old NFS and for audiobooks from podiobooks.com, too. Oh, and the cord is 2m long, meaning I could use them for the TV, too.
1 person has voted this message useful



Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 151 of 152
04 April 2016 at 12:56pm | IP Logged 
Update: log moved to the alternate forum you know very well. I don't trust HTLAL not to go down again. Also, I started learning Japanese a week ago and can't fight HTLAL's display :(
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Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 4894 days ago

762 posts - 664 votes 
Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 152 of 152
26 September 2016 at 4:54pm | IP Logged 
Zireael wrote:
Update: log moved to the alternate forum you know very well. I don't trust HTLAL not to go down again. Also, I started learning Japanese a week ago and can't fight HTLAL's display :(


Is this forum goint to expire? If so, when will be it?


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