TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu)

[eskandar]

Do you think knowing Persian has helped you learn Arabic?

Enormously. It gave me a huge head start with the vocabulary (and to some degree the morphology-- since there are so many Arabic words in Persian, I could intuitively understand some of the patterns used in Arabic before I even learned them). Even now, the two reinforce each other. When I learn a new word in Arabic, there's a chance I might encounter it some day (or at least a related word from the same root) in Persian, and of course when I learn new Persian words that come from Arabic, that helps too. I just wish I had started seriously studying Arabic sooner - it would have helped when I was learning Persian.

[eskandar]

Another few pages of مسافر الكنبة في إيران down! I find in the past that when I've created flashcards, I tend to load them down with too many meanings from the dictionary. My new strategy is to give definitions that match only the sense in which the word was used when I encountered it, and then I'll add more meanings as necessary in the future. However if I keep up at this pace, reviewing flashcards is going to become burdensome. Either I have to slow down to a half page or page per day at most, or stop looking up so many words and making flashcards (especially since almost half the words I look up turn out to mean what I'd guessed anyway).

New vocab

تأشيرة visa
جازف to risk
بحجة under the pretext of
اضطرار compulsion, necessity
جزم to assert authoritatively
توتر tension
بالی to care about (لم أبالِ - I didn't care about) [this one was tricky! Damn defective verbs!]
مازح to joke or jest with
قيد الاعتقال detained, under arrest
انتماء membership, affiliation, adherence (to)
متهكّم derisive, mocking, sarcastic
مانع to oppose, to mind (sth)
فيما يختص with regard to
بالذات itself
عجّ بـ to teem with, be swarming with
دعارة prostitution
مقنن legal, legalized
هراء nonsense
مطبق absolute, utter, sheer
عقد النية to resolve/decide to do something
معوق obstacle, barrier
مغامرة adventure
تعليمات directions, instructions (false friend to Persian where it means "education")

[vijayjohn]

I just wish I had started seriously studying Arabic sooner - it would have helped when I was learning Persian.

I wish I could say something similar about Sanskrit, but I never really got around to seriously studying it since all I have for learning resources here at home is Learn Sanskrit in 30 Days (and I actually used that same series for starting to learn Malayalam!). Studying other Indian languages in general has always helped with my Malayalam, though, since basically everybody borrows heavily from Sanskrit. Tamil helps sometimes and...is really confusing at other times.

[eskandar]

I wish I could say something similar about Sanskrit, but I never really got around to seriously studying it since all I have for learning resources here at home is Learn Sanskrit in 30 Days

Do you prefer using physical/print resources? If not, there's a lot of material online, including a free online course I saw somewhere on Facebook the other day... It also seems like you have a strong preference for living languages (that you can practice with native speakers) over classical ones, no?

[vijayjohn]

Oh yeah, I can definitely use online resources for Sanskrit! And yeah, I have enough languages on my plate as it is right now, so I'm not about to add Sanskrit to it yet even though trying to memorize a 141-quatrain poem in Manipravalam is definitely helping me learn some anyway! Every time I try to practice what I already learned, I sound like some Hindu priest mumbling ślokas or something.

[eskandar]

I don't know why, as much as I hate "shuddh Hindi," I really love the sound of Sanskrit (especially ślokas and poetry). I'd love to learn a bit someday.

[vijayjohn]

Maybe you already know some, though! I mean, I'm sure you'd recognize at least some Sanskrit words (e.g. mahārājaḥ, parvataḥ, śāntiḥ, oh, and of course, namaste ). The inflectional endings would probably be trickier. Maybe verbs, too, just because they've obviously changed a lot (like gacchati for jāta/jāti).

Also, you just inspired me to recite the first 26 quatrains by the time I finished writing this post.

[eskandar]

Sure, and there's probably others I'd recognize, too. (I didn't get parvataḥ though - from Googling I guess it's cognate with Urdu پربت ?)

[vijayjohn]

I didn't get parvataḥ though - from Googling I guess it's cognate with Urdu پربت ?

Yep, mountain!

[eskandar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUk1bmn7YK0

ay doğdu batmadı mı
humâr göz yatmadı mı
seni yaradan allah
beni yaratmadı mı

The moon rose and didn't set, did it?
Drunken eyes didn't go to sleep, did they?
God is your Creator
He didn't create me, did He?

çay taşı çakmak taşı
yarimin çatık kaşı*
çirkin ile bal yenmez**
güzel ile taş taşı

River pebble, flintstone,
my beloved's sullen face.*
You can't eat honey with ugly,**
[but] with beauty, you can carry a stone

*I guess the more literal meaning here is something like "my beloved's bushy eyebrows" or "my beloved's cross [frowning] eyebrows"? I chose to interpret it as a symbol of a frowning, unhappy face.
**This reminds me of an expression used in Persian: با یک من عسل هم نمیشود خوردش - 'you can't even eat them with a maund of honey!' - used when someone is grumpy and frowning, ie. they're so sour even honey wouldn't help. I wonder if a similar sense is implied here at all?

elmasta koku olmaz
sevende uyku olmaz
seveceksen sev beni
bu kadar korku olmaz

Diamonds don't smell, [in the diamond there is no smell]
lovers don't sleep. [in the lover there is no sleep]
If you're going to love me, [then] love me;
don't be so afraid [there shouldn't be this much fear in it].

New vocab

doğmak - to rise (sun, moon, etc.)
batmak - to set (sun, moon, etc.)
yaradan - [the] Creator, Maker
çay - creek
çay taşı - pebble
çatık kaş - frowning, scowling with eyebrows
kaş - eyebrow
çirkin - ugly
taşımak - to carry
koku - smell
seven - lover
korku - fear

[eskandar]

OK, let's see how long I can keep this up. Currently on page 13 of the Arabic travelogue. Sorely tempted to distract myself from my distractions with further distractions: start reading an Urdu novella, or working my way through German for Reading again. German might happen a little later. Right now I want to at least finish the introduction to مسافر الكنبة في إيران - there are only 12 pages left of that.

New vocab

بضعة some, a few
اتّخذ to take
سيارة أجرة taxi
طهو cooking
مستيقظ awake
سلق to climb
فوهة mouth
سلاسة ease, smoothness
إقناع persuasion, convincing
مرافق companion

[voron]

ay doğdu batmadı mı
humâr göz yatmadı mı
seni yaradan Allah
beni yaratmadı mı

It should be:

Didn't the moon rise and set?
Didn't the sleepy eyes go to bed?
God who created you
Didn't He create me (as well)?

He's listing a few undoubted truths, and the fact that he was created by God is yet another one.
Humâr - it means both sleepy and drunken. It is an obsolete word; in the modern language, mahmur is used (in both meanings as well).

The other two stanzas you translated correctly.

çay taşı çakmak taşı
yarimin çatık kaşı*
çirkin ile bal yenmez**
güzel ile taş taşı

There's an expression "kaş çatmak" which means frown, knit one's brow. Çatık is an adjective from çatmak, so the translation is "her brows are frowned".
"Taş taşı" is the imperative mood.

The connotation I get from this stanza is that there is a bad-tempered and rebellious beauty, who would knit her brow for no reason and make you carry stones (literally or figuratively), but you'll still love her better than the ugly one, with whom even eating honey together is not that sweet.

[voron]

doğmak - to rise (sun, moon, etc.)
batmak - to set (sun, moon, etc.)

Also, maybe you know already, Turkish names for the cardinal directions come from these roots:
doğu - east
batı - west

(the other two are kuzey, from kuz - shadow, place hidden from sun, and güney - from gün)

[eskandar]

It should be:

Didn't the moon rise and set?
Didn't the sleepy eyes go to bed?
God who created you
Didn't He create me (as well)?

I see. This form was confusing to me. Another reason why I really need to read a Turkish grammar and not just try to teach myself through poems and song lyrics...

Humâr - it means both sleepy and drunken.

Yeah, it has both senses in Persian, too. Maybe "sleep-drunk eyes" or "eyes drunken with sleep" would be nicer for humâr göz.

There's an expression "kaş çatmak" which means frown, knit one's brow. Çatık is an adjective from çatmak, so the translation is "her brows are frowned".

Ah, I see! Maybe "my beloved's furrowed brow" would be best.

"Taş taşı" is the imperative mood.

"Carry a stone!", right? I got a bit of clarification on this part here. They gave the meaning as "I'd much rather carry stones alongside a beautiful person, than eat honey with an ugly one."

Also, maybe you know already, Turkish names for the cardinal directions come from these roots:
doğu - east
batı - west

That actually occurred to me as I learned the verbs doğmak and batmak! Just like Arabic!

Revised translation (taking some liberties, and trying to recreate the rhyme):

Didn't you see the moon fall and rise?
Didn't you close your sleep-drunk eyes?
God, the Exalted, created you;
didn't He create me in the same guise?
River pebbles, black and brown;
my beloved's sullen frown.
I'd rather lift boulders with a beauty
than eat honey with a hound.
There's no rest for diamond-cutters
and no sleep for weary lovers.
If you want to love me, so love me;
don't fear what you might discover.

[eskandar]

Made it to page 15 of مسافر الكنبة . Sometimes it's frustrating just how much more difficult Arabic is compared to any other language I have tried to learn. The first word in my daily reading was يتيح . It's not in Wiktionary-- which is a really useful source when it does have the word-- and it took me several tries before I was able to locate it in Hans Wehr. Then I have to check conjugation tables just to make sure I'm making a flashcard for it with the correct conjugations since HW doesn't supply them. There is just so much more effort that goes into learning a single word in Arabic than in, say, Turkish. I notice this when reviewing my flashcards; I breeze through the new Turkish ones, even though pure Turkic vocabulary is sometimes hard for me to remember, whereas the Arabic cards take me more time even though I have more to latch on to. Yet at least I have some grounding in Arabic grammar, so grammatical forms rarely take me by surprise, whereas grammatically or syntactically Turkish still throws me for a loop a lot of the time. Anyway, obsessively looking up every word I have any doubt about has gotten old, so now I'm mostly only looking up the words I really can't guess. (Even then, there are some I got lazy about and looked up, like استغنی and استحم, where I realized I should have been able to guess them!)

New vocab

أتاح to offer, make possible
وثق to trust
مرح to be happy or joyful
ظلّ to persist, keep doing something
دون جدوی to no avail
نزوة whim, caprice
خبأ to hide
هائل enormous, great; terrifying
أعاد to repeat, do repeatedly
استغنی عن to have no need for
استحم to bathe
متهالك exhausted
طلق العنان to unleash
خاطر to risk
عدسة lens

[vijayjohn]

Have you considered just Googling unfamiliar Arabic words? I was wondering what يتيح meant, so I just popped it into Google and voilà, I found this and this (listed in that order, but I actually checked them in the opposite order ).

[Bubulus]

Have you considered just Googling unfamiliar Arabic words? I was wondering what يتيح meant, so I just popped it into Google and voilà, I found this and this (listed in that order, but I actually checked them in the opposite order ).

It doesn't always work... That wordreference link for one would be a lot less valuable if it wasn't for mahaodeh's post distinguishing form I taaHa from form IV 2ataaHa.

Then I have to check conjugation tables just to make sure I'm making a flashcard for it with the correct conjugations since HW doesn't supply them.

Personally I blame lexicographers for making dictionaries that aren't helpful enough. For instance, Awde and Smith's dictionary is the only English -> Arabic dictionary I've found that gives all three principal parts of verbs*. It's scandalous. It makes Standard Arabic harder to learn than it needs to be.

I do consider it a major fault in the Hans Wehr that verbal nouns for derived verbs are not provided. They're not reliably predictable! In conjugation tables you find that the verbal noun of form IV verbs is usually a masculine 2iCCaaCun: 2aslama 'to leave, abandon; surrender; become Muslim' > 2islaamun, 2ansha2a 'to establish' > 2inshaa2un, etc. But I know that 2adhaa3a yudhii3u 'to broadcast' (a hollow verb just like 2ataaHa) has a feminine verbal noun: 2idhaa3atun. Does this mean that the verbal noun of 2ataaHa is 2itaaHun or 2itaaHatun? This Wikipedia article on accessibility in design for the disabled, entitled 2itaaHatun, seems to suggest the verbal noun might be the feminine version. I also remember once coming across a form X hollow verb (I don't remember which) that had istaCCawCun as the pattern for the verbal noun, with a w!

*Yet, sadly, it has other problems: the prepositions that verbs and adjectives need are often not given, and when multiple translations are given under the same headword they're not distinguished. It's also a small dictionary.

[eskandar]

Finding the meaning of a particular word is usually not the issue. Often I can figure it out from context, or if not, Google Translate is actually not bad for individual Arabic words or very short phrases. The bigger issue is that for most words, I want to know the root, the past and present forms of the verb, and the verbal noun (maSdar) - Googling doesn't always turn all of that up, at least not easily.

Personally I blame lexicographers for making dictionaries that aren't helpful enough.

I guess if they were to add all the necessary information, Hans Wehr would be a massive dictionary. But I wish there were at least a very good online dictionary that would do just that, so I wouldn't have to cycle between HW, Almaany, Wiktionary, verb charts, and more in search of the relevant information for a single word...

[voron]

You may try this for MSA. The author constantly works on its improvement.
http://www.livingarabic.com/arabic-dictionary.php

[eskandar]

Thanks, what a great resource! I put in يتيح to see how it did, and it gave me exactly the information it had taken forever to dig up between Hans Wehr and web searches. Marvelous!!