Arabic in bite-sized parts (now with doses of JP & RU)

[Zireael]

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?

Where is your friend from? Iraqi Kurdistan?

Nope, Turkey and her husband is from India.


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

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

P.S. It seems the site is back to disliking my city's wifi. Argh.

[Zireael]

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.

Therefore I suppose Ennaoui's surname would be أنٌاوي

[eskandar]

I suppose Ennaoui's surname would be أنٌاوي

الناوي

[Zireael]

I suppose Ennaoui's surname would be أنٌاوي

الناوي

Woot!

Plundered the short site for more Arabic vocabulary

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

taxassas تخصص specialization
al-dzansiya الجنسيةcitizenship, nationality
at-taweel الطول height
al-wazun الوزن weight
al-indzazat الإنجازات accomplishments
ash-shahsiya الشخصيةpersonal

***
M'abed معبد temple

[eskandar]

Some corrections:

al-indzazat ash-shakhsiya الإنجازات الشخصية personal accomplishments

taxassus تخصص specialization
al-dzinsiyya الجنسيةcitizenship, nationality
at-tuul الطول height
al-wazn الوزن weight

ash-shakhsiya الشخصيةpersonal

***
Ma'bad معبد temple

[Zireael]

Thanks eskandar.

***
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)
***
I finally went and got my first 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.

----
Catching up with the log.

[Zireael]

Due to the migrant crisis, Arabic language and culture have become the center of media attention here. Poland has agreed to take in 7k migrants and the gov't keeps insisting it means refugees and not economic migrants and the distinction is getting a lot of coverage, too. Loads of people are suddenly thinking we're gonna get flooded and Islamicized by the migrants. Overkill much?

Obviously this means for my family and friends, Arabic stopped being "that weird language you keep learning for no real reason" and suddenly became "hell yeah, keep learning it since it will boost your chances to find a good job!". Made even more relevant by the fact I'm currently looking for my first real job.

A pile of Maha notes is waiting for the job situation to clear up a bit and me to have more free time instead of filling out paperwork I need to submit before I start working.

---
UniLang again blacklists my wifi connection but not the backup mobile one, so my posts may be sparse.

[dEhiN]

UniLang again blacklists my wifi connection but not the backup mobile one, so my posts may be sparse.

Why is it blacklisted?

And don't you love it when fam/friends at first think you're odd for doing something, then suddenly they see a relevance and start encouraging you? As if the reason for your doing it in the first place is because of the relevance. It couldn't possibly be just because you like it and want to do it.

[Bubulus]

This thread, at 7000+ views, has about 5 times the number of views what a normal TAC thread gets at 7 pages. I wonder why that is.

[dEhiN]

This thread, at 7000+ views, has about 5 times the number of views what a normal TAC thread gets at 7 pages. I wonder why that is.

Yeah I wonder why that is as well. I remember thinking before (the viewcount hit 7000+) that there's almost no response from others on here and only posts from Zireael. Well there are some from eskandar. But yet so many people are I guess reading this TAC.

[vijayjohn]

Maybe it's because often enough, the posts in this TAC refer back to other posts that are on other pages, so if we want to follow what's being talked about, we have to go back and forth between earlier and later pages.

EDIT: Maybe Zirael just visits her own TAC a lot!

[dEhiN]

EDIT: Maybe Zireael just visits her own TAC a lot!

[vijayjohn]

Oh yeah. Oops. Sorry, Zireael!

[Zireael]

7000 views? I admit, I sometimes failed to post and hence visited 5-10 times instead of one, but I can't have visited so many times lol. That is really surprising concerning the number of people replying.

Or maybe it's the fact I've put the newer part of the log on the new http://forum.language-learners.org/ site after the HTLAL had a big outage in August - and linked to here for those who wanted to see the old part.


***
Job search: a giant mess.
Other news: I got sick. So I couldn't listen to Maha and I can't round up the notes enough to post them.

The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet (رباعية الحوار الوطنى التونسى) is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

New words
Rubayat رباعيةquartet
Al-hiwar الحوار dialogue
Al-watani الوطنى national

[Zireael]

My Polish Sign Language course restarted, so the postings in the log may get sparse. Still haven't gotten around to organizing those Maha notes.

[Zireael]

Job search meant I had little time and my Maha notes aren't finished still

I'm back to digging around Ancient Egypt trivia. What is the first word on the plaque? here:


I can't read it. Looks like ..qadzrat but I don't know what that first letter is.

[vijayjohn]

مقبرة

[Zireael]

The mqbr consonants made me suspicious and sure enough, Wiktionary says English macabre > French macabre > Spanish macabra > Arabic maqbara (or its plural maqabir)

[vijayjohn]

Well, Wiktionary says English macabre comes from French, which may have gotten it from Spanish, which in turn may have gotten it from Arabic, but Romance linguists don't agree with this etymology.

[Zireael]

A card with Arabic writing has been left among the tributes at Bataclan in Paris.



Anyone can help me decipher the writing? It's covered in places by lamps and flowers. I can't even read the English at the bottom.