TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

[voron]

I love how the guy speaks as well - super clear and he uses almost no English words.

Yes, he is indeed very clear and not hard to understand. Makes me want to pick up 3ammiya again, too. To make the lust even worse, Antea recently shared the new Jordanian series on Netflix. It looks good and it may even have Arabic subtitles (haven't checked it yet):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZoR7D0Y-6j4

[voron]

I am going on with my Arabic reading. Read story 2 yesterday and story 3 today of level 2.

A pic:

[vijayjohn]

If it helps you feel any better, I've been terribly slow about getting around to Levantine Arabic myself. And not exactly fast about getting back into MSA, either...

You should be able to download the PDF from the Archive.org link even if the web preview isn't working.

Yep, it worked! Thanks!

[voron]

I read story 4 of level 2.

[vijayjohn]

You seem to really like this particular set of stories. Is it perhaps because it has lots of pictures?

[voron]

You seem to really like this particular set of stories. Is it perhaps because it has lots of pictures?

This, and because I have them in paper. It's so much easier to find time to read a paper book. It only takes seconds to grab it and open it.

[vijayjohn]

Heh, I think I'm kind of the opposite with paper books, although that may be because of the difference between what I read in paperback and what I just read online.

[voron]

I read story 5 yesterday and story 6 today.



I need to return to the Kurdish book I'm doing with Vijay at some point. Perhaps after I finish 3 levels (out of 4 I have) of my Arabic reader. My reading is going really well and I don't want to interrupt it.

[voron]

Heh, I think I'm kind of the opposite with paper books, although that may be because of the difference between what I read in paperback and what I just read online.

We all know what you read in paperback: your grandfather's diary, and obscure poems in Malayalam.

[vijayjohn]

Heh, I think I'm kind of the opposite with paper books, although that may be because of the difference between what I read in paperback and what I just read online.

We all know what you read in paperback: your grandfather's diary, and obscure poems in Malayalam.

And novels! Don't forget novels!

And it's just one poem. That all schoolchildren had to memorize part of just a few generations ago! And my grandfather's diary only took so long...Oh and actually, I found the poem online, too.

[księżycowy]

Is it a Malayalam poem? Or something else?

[vijayjohn]

Yes, of course. The one I've been spending years trying to memorize already.

[księżycowy]

So it is in Malayalam? Ok.

But why are you having to memorize it? You like torturing yourself?
And what is it anyway?

[vijayjohn]

So it is in Malayalam? Ok.

Yeah.

But why are you having to memorize it? You like torturing yourself?

I don't have to, but I'm curious to see how much I can. It's so hard to practice all in one sitting, though. I run out of breath lol.

When my parents were growing up, they had to memorize at least part of it, so my dad sang part of it to me when I was younger (poems in Malayalam are supposed to be sung), and I got kind of jealous. I also feel it helps with my vocabulary.

And what is it anyway?

It's actually a really boring poem. Basically, it's a semi-autobiographical poem written by a royal nobleman whose wife was the king's niece. The king exiled him as a result of court intrigue (and also partly just because said nobleman was kind of an arrogant asshole) but didn't allow his wife to go with him. This is all backstory and not really mentioned in the poem itself.

In the poem, the nobleman, now exiled, meets a peacock and tells him to send a message back to his wife. That's pretty much all that's going on for the entire poem. It's made up of 141 quatrains. Most of it is just a travelogue (i.e. he's basically telling the peacock, "On the way to the capital, you will see this place and this place and this place, and this place is like this and has this building and this building and this building and you should see this and this thing will make you happy, etc., and that place is like that" etc.). He doesn't come out with the actual message to his wife until almost the very end of the poem.

[księżycowy]

Sounds more like prose, but then again there are things like what Homer wrote. Those are poems.

Anyway, one last question and I'll stop stealing voron's thread. What's it called?

[voron]

Anyway, one last question and I'll stop stealing voron's thread. What's it called?

Feel free to steal it. I like it when our personal threads diverge in different directions.

Some musings over words I saw in one of my Arabic stories:
1)
بطل means a hero
باطل means vain, pointless, absurd
Is it the same root? The oppositeness in meanings is amusing.

2)
دعا to call, to invite and دعا to pray -- are these the same word with two different meanings, or do they differ in something, e.g. conjugations? I may have looked it up before a 1000 times but I keep forgetting.

3)
There are two different words for 'to cry, to shout' which look kind of similar (at least graphically):
صرخ
صاح

4)
There are countless words for 'to start (doing something)'. The ones that come my mind:
بدأ
صار
جعل
ظلّ
أخذ

[voron]

For the past days I read stories 7, 8, 9, 10 of level 2, so I'm moving on to level 3!

In level 3, the layout of the stories is again a bit different: there is even more Arabic text on each page, and there is no translation, only a wordlist. The translation of the whole text is given at the end of each booklet.

[eskandar]

1)
بطل means a hero
باطل means vain, pointless, absurd
Is it the same root? The oppositeness in meanings is amusing.

No, two different roots. The first from بَطُلَ baTula "to be brave, heroic", the second from بَطَلَ baTala "to be vain, false".

2)
دعا to call, to invite and دعا to pray -- are these the same word with two different meanings, or do they differ in something, e.g. conjugations? I may have looked it up before a 1000 times but I keep forgetting.

I'm pretty sure these are the same. To pray is a semantic extension of to call, ie. to call out to God.

4)
There are countless words for 'to start (doing something)'. The ones that come my mind:
بدأ
صار
جعل
ظلّ
أخذ

At least in classical Arabic, there are shades of distinction between all of them. As you know most of these have additional meanings (صار to become, جعل to do/make, ظلّ to continue, اخذ to take). I always thought it was interesting how many verbs there are for "to become", as well, which IIRC has to do with the distinctions they had in classical Arabic, like اصبح which means to become something in the morning, vs. بات which is to become something overnight (or at home? I don't remember )

[voron]

Thanks Eskandar!

I read story 1 of level 3 today, غيط الفيران.

EDIT: I just tried to google its name, and I found it here, with the same text and illustrations that I have in my book!
http://www.wonderland-stories.com/stori ... %D9%86.pdf

[vijayjohn]

Sounds more like prose

Since voron said it was okay to talk about other things here, too: Why?

Anyway, one last question and I'll stop stealing voron's thread. What's it called?

[məˈjuːɾə sən̪ˈd̪eːɕəm], or "The Peacock's Message." (The words for both 'peacock' and 'message' are Sanskrit loanwords. However, the etymology for the Sanskrit word for 'peacock' is apparently disputed, and it could itself be a Dravidian loanword into Sanskrit; the common word for 'peacock' in Malayalam is [məˈjɪl]).