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One of my tasks for the summer is to learn a new dialect of Arabic. It's necessary, and fascinating, and frustrating, as all language study is.
My name, the one I use here, rests on a pun of Arabic-to-English transliteration. عملنا حرية means "our work is freedom," and املنا حرية means "our hope is freedom," but you'd write the first 3amalna hurriyeh and the second amalna hurriyeh so it's a simple thing to make them the same thing, to create a person, Amal Nahurriyeh, from the linguistic mess. (It helps that Amal is, actually, a name.)
One of the things about the dialect I'm learning is that it does away with the [q]. Formal and classical Arabic has a sound, like a [k] but made in the back of the throat (here it is), but most dialects do away with it, turning it into a [k] or a [g] or an [ʔ] (that's the glottal stop, often rendered as ' when people aren't using IPA for fun and little-to-no-profit). In the dialect I'm learning, it turns into a [ʔ]. Simple enough to remember: qawha is ahwa (coffee). waraq is wara' (paper).
But qalam is 'alam (pen). But that's a problem, because then there's 3alam, world and if you start telling me that the world is a pen I'm not going to know what to do with myself.
***
If I sound like I'm a little crazy, that's pretty accurate. Suffice to say that you're very lucky you're getting medidations on Arabic phonology and not a ten thousand word essay on why Regina Spektor's Eet is the perfect embodiment of my mental state right now.
it's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
you can't believe it, you were always singing along
it was so easy, and the words so sweet
you can't remember, you try to feel the beat
spend half of your life trying to fall behind
keep using your headphones to drown out your mind
it was so easy and the words so sweet
you can't remember, you try to move your feet
My name, the one I use here, rests on a pun of Arabic-to-English transliteration. عملنا حرية means "our work is freedom," and املنا حرية means "our hope is freedom," but you'd write the first 3amalna hurriyeh and the second amalna hurriyeh so it's a simple thing to make them the same thing, to create a person, Amal Nahurriyeh, from the linguistic mess. (It helps that Amal is, actually, a name.)
One of the things about the dialect I'm learning is that it does away with the [q]. Formal and classical Arabic has a sound, like a [k] but made in the back of the throat (here it is), but most dialects do away with it, turning it into a [k] or a [g] or an [ʔ] (that's the glottal stop, often rendered as ' when people aren't using IPA for fun and little-to-no-profit). In the dialect I'm learning, it turns into a [ʔ]. Simple enough to remember: qawha is ahwa (coffee). waraq is wara' (paper).
But qalam is 'alam (pen). But that's a problem, because then there's 3alam, world and if you start telling me that the world is a pen I'm not going to know what to do with myself.
***
If I sound like I'm a little crazy, that's pretty accurate. Suffice to say that you're very lucky you're getting medidations on Arabic phonology and not a ten thousand word essay on why Regina Spektor's Eet is the perfect embodiment of my mental state right now.
it's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
you can't believe it, you were always singing along
it was so easy, and the words so sweet
you can't remember, you try to feel the beat
spend half of your life trying to fall behind
keep using your headphones to drown out your mind
it was so easy and the words so sweet
you can't remember, you try to move your feet
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