Arabic Study Group

[vijayjohn]

That reminds me, sometimes, I try watching Easy Arabic videos (from the Easy Languages series). I also bought Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic and Beginner's Iraqi Arabic. I have the CDs for the Iraqi Arabic book, and someone uploaded all the audio for the TY book on YouTube.

[Saim]

I'm still around, and still chugging away at Arabic. Generally I read Al Jazeera and DW articles and make lots of flashcards.

I've also been doing a bit of Levantine Arabic using the Living Arabic dictionary. I've tried to use GLOSS and go back through Integral Syrian and such again but honestly I find that so intensely boring that I've decided to just study song lyrics and otherwise focus on MSA.

[vijayjohn]

Yeah, I don't care much for GLOSS when it comes to Levantine Arabic tbh. At least some of the dialogues in it seem to be in Jordanian Arabic that's spoken super-slow for some reason, shuk-ran! I like LangMedia for that purpose much more.

[Saim]

Personally I can barely be bothered with LangMedia, either.

[vijayjohn]

I mean, like I said, I haven't been doing any serious study of Arabic lately, so it's not like I've been making very heavy use of LangMedia myself!

What kind of songs in Levantine Arabic have you been studying lyrics from? Rap in Syrian Arabic or something? (Honestly, I don't think anyone has ever posted any except voron who once posted a song that YouTube now considers age-restricted for some reason. I mean, it is about the war, but it looks far less violent than بدون قيد, for example).

[Saim]

Yeah I've basically been going through Bu Kolthoum songs whenever I find an English translation, he's one of my favourites lately. I'd do the Synaptik (Palestinian from Jordan) too but I can't find any good translations and am useless at decyphering it on my own, which is a shame since I was bopping to Dari for weeks when I first discovered it.

Back in the day I would do a lot of Mashrou' Leila which I think I'll get back to, I love all of their stuff. I've also been meaning to get back into Ramallah Underground lyrics.

[eskandar]

Shall we work through a text together? And/or we could try to translate a song - maybe one of those that you struggled with, Saim?

[vijayjohn]

Yeah I've basically been going through Bu Kolthoum songs

Bu is short for ibu 'mother' in Malay, so this makes me tempted to imagine you listening to Umm Kulthoum.

Shall we work through a text together? And/or we could try to translate a song - maybe one of those that you struggled with, Saim?

You know me; I'll try anything!

[Saim]

I've been looking at Zamilou by Bu Kolthoum.

Here's a translation (but I'd like to get down to the specific words):

https://lyricstranslate.com/sr/zamilou-cover-me.html

Or if we're feeling adventurous we can look at this one by the Synaptik, which doesn't have a translation available.

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/The-S ... Far3i/Dari

[vijayjohn]

Personally, I'm inclined to use the translation because I'm positive my Levantine Arabic by now is probably worse than eskandar's and definitely worse than yours!

But either way is fiiiiine

No matter which way we do it, though...I'm surprised you never actually posted the song! Why not? It's a great song! Ohh, they're different songs! (I finally actually opened the second link ).

[eskandar]

If we go with the song that has a translation, what should we do, exactly? Ignore it and create our own? Or try to gloss it more carefully/specifically?

[vijayjohn]

I think the idea is to try to make something like a word-by-word gloss.

[eskandar]

طيب يلا نبلش!

زمّلوني زمّلوا و طفّي بردي يا بو حور
you-pl. cover me, you-pl. cover, and extinguish my-coldness O haver of deep black eyes

زمّل to cover, cover up, wrap up [I think the sense is "in a blanket or cloak"]
طَفَى، يِطْفِي to put out; turn off, switch off [cf. MSA طفأ يطفئ . I wonder if it's originally onomatopoetic for blowing out a candle?]
حور intense black pupils in contrast to white iris. Could only find it in MSA dictionaries as ḥawar, pl. ḥūr.

زمَّلوني و زمَّلوه و على صدري حمّلوه
you-pl. cover me and you-pl. cover him and upon my-chest you-pl. lay (lit. cause it to support or bear [your weight])

حمّل to make (sth) bear (a burden)

[vijayjohn]

I started trying to translate the next line and then realized I don't even remember where to look words up anymore!

[eskandar]

For colloquial words, Lughatuna is my go-to. For MSA (which I often need to rely on even for understanding colloquial) I find the following resources useful:

Hans Wehr
المعاني
Reverso Dictionary
Glosbe
Aratools if the morphology is really throwing me for a loop

[vijayjohn]

!شكرا

But even with all those dictionaries, I really have no idea. Oh well:

يكفّي يوحي عكفّي روحي كفّنوني يالعيون
may it be enough may it seem on-my-palm go y'all-cover-me o-the-eyes(???)

حنى طيني بكفّو ليني يعلم القاسي الحنو
to-bend(?) my-mud with-her-palms soften-me may it teach the-hard the-contortion(??)

[Saim]

If we go with the song that has a translation, what should we do, exactly? Ignore it and create our own? Or try to gloss it more carefully/specifically?

Yeah it could be good to break it down a bit more and extract any vocabulary and expressions. The translation doesn't correspond exactly to the lyrics, it translates the spirit of the lyrics more than the actual words.

[Saim]

!شكرا

But even with all those dictionaries, I really have no idea. Oh well:

يكفّي يوحي عكفّي روحي كفّنوني يالعيون
may it be enough may it seem on-my-palm go y'all-cover-me o-the-eyes(???)

Yeah he's calling her "eyes", meaning someone with beautiful eyes, continuing the theme of calling her بو حور. That's explained in the lyricstranslate translation.

[vijayjohn]

!شكرا

But even with all those dictionaries, I really have no idea. Oh well:

يكفّي يوحي عكفّي روحي كفّنوني يالعيون
may it be enough may it seem on-my-palm go y'all-cover-me o-the-eyes(???)

Yeah he's calling her "eyes", meaning someone with beautiful eyes, continuing the theme of calling her بو حور. That's explained in the lyricstranslate translation.

Yes, I saw that; I just really wasn't confident about my literal translation.

سند أنثى بألف رجال تبني بضهرو سدود
support female for-thousand men she-builds on-his-back barriers

ربينا عسود الدور تضوي سمانا نجوم
we-were-raised on-black of-homes she-illuminates our-sky stars

[n8an]

I'm also still here - still no MSA though