Lower Intermediate - Volcanic ash

hello, very usefull and frequent word "chance" no way, no opportunity. could someone explain about the difference between فرصة and مجال

thanks a lot

Hi, haven't looked at this yet, but just downloaded and noted that it comes up in file name as lesson 276. Should be lesson 277, and you might want to change the name to correlate with .pdf, etc., as the name of the (sound embedded) .pdf is 277.

Sure looks from the transcript like another gem of a lesson.

Charles

great lesson again - the news report is still to difficult for me - to fast - points to my difficulty of lack of exposure to the language - getting to speak where I am living (belgium)is almost impossible - any suggestion how to cope with this ? guess I am not the only one with this problem -

Yes, a very nice and challenging one indeed! What I love so much about your topics, ya Mohamed and Ehab, is that they are so close to everyday life and what people really talk about and what is important!!! Keep it up lads, and keep the wonderful challenges coming!!! ;-)
Hi Plop, I think we are all in the same boat here of not getting a lot of chance to hear the spoken language or practice speaking ourselves.
Here is what I am doing: Sometimes I go shopping in a small and cute arabic supermarket, I do my greetings in arabic, then hide between the aisles just to listen to the "arabic noise" around me ;-) and then I venture to order some لحم at the butcher's counter! All the employees are really friendly and welcoming and they always have a good laugh about some stupid mistakes I am making.... :-)
You can also check for some arabic communities in your area, here in Munich I found a very active Palestinian organisation, they are organising all kind of events like exhibitions, movie screenings, book presentations, musical events, you name it. Over the time I made some friends there, usually the communication is in German, but sometimes when they are talking to each other I just stand-by listening, not really understanding but happy to be just get the sound of it and maybe getting little bits and pieces here and there, and they always translate for me ... like I posted yesterday in "Mouse in the house".
Let me know if any of my suggestions helps :)

hi plop, same problem here of course, but I go to the local mosque, it took a bit of courage and a steep learning curve about wudu etc....ritual washing , which was the first hurdle , but it has given me contact to the culture.I listen to arabic news on tv, and check it later with that which i think i understand ...good luck .

If I understand correctly الرماد is a male plural, so why is it not البركانية ?

I always get a little liguistic vertigo reading Arabic and then English, especially when they are presented in the same paragraph!

Chinese is like this sometimes as they will go either way, but mostly left to right.

The noun ﺮﻤﺎﺪ is singular. In this case there’s no difference between English and Arabic usage. The English say “volcanic ash”, not “volcanic ashes”. Look at the texts on the website of the BBC World Service.

Thanks Desmond, once again for helping :-)

Have you read Vladimer's comment, na7la? "Linguistic vertigo" isn't in Wikipedia, but it's very good English and there are quite a lot of examples of this expression on the Net. I wonder how Ehab would render "linguistic vertigo" into Arabic. In French you can say "vertige linguistique", but it isn't quite so easy to find a good German equivalent. "Sprachliche Desorientierung" is the only potential equivalent I can think of at the moment. What would you say?

Desmond, I just thought what a brilliant expression it is (congrats Vladimer ;-)!!! But his English better be good, as he is teaching it...
As the word Vertigo is used also in German to describe fear of heights (unfortunately I am suffering from it big time...), I would tend to say sprachliches or linguistisches Vertigo. Let's try to use it and wait for people's reaction ;-)

"Linguistic vertigo" ought to be included in the "Student's Dictionary of Collocations" (Berlin: Cornelsen 1990). This word combination is witty, elegant and expressive.

I have strong misgivings about "sprachliches Vertigo". First, "Vertigo" is feminine in German, so it can't be combined with a neuter adjective. Second, "Vertigo" does not collocate with adjectives like "sprachlich" or "linguistisch". It's impossible to find these word combinations on the Net, so they must be wrong.

It's quite easy to verify the acceptability of word combinations if you have access to the Internet. You can put a word combination in inverted commas, run a Google search and check the results. Translations and texts written by non-native speakers have to be ignored since most translators are incompetent and non-native speakers rarely succeed in attaining nativelike competence in a foreign language. Joseph Conrad wrote brillantly in English, but he was a genius.

Hmmm, interesting, I never heard the word used as female „die Vertigo“, as it is a non-German word and an “abstract” one as well, I always used it as a neutrum and seemingly nobody bothered or knew better to correct me in doing so!!! Maybe the difference here lies in scientific use vs. spoken language?
Anyhow, I gave this translation some more thought and came up with “linguistisches or sprachliches Schwindelgefühl”, a bit longish as an expression and not as strong and to the point as Vladimer’s wonderful invention in English ;) Let’s award him with the prize “Creation of the month” :)

Mohamed and Ehab, is there a nice counterpart in Arabic for “linguistic vertigo”?

“Vertigo” might be ﺪﻮﺍﺮ (dizziness) in Arabic. Since London is a linguistic melting pot, Ehab probably hears dozens of languages spoken around him every day and may be tempted to write a poem about linguistic vertigo.

As there are countless examples of “linguistic vertigo” on the Net, I think it’s very unlikely that Vladimer invented this expression. He may have reinvented it in a flash of inspiration, but he is more likely to have borrowed it from a written or oral text produced by a competent native speaker of English.

“Vertigo” is clearly labelled as a feminine noun in the Duden Fremdwörterbuch, and a Google search demonstrates that native speakers of German use it as a feminine word. A further Google search shows that “Schwindelgefühl” never collocates with adjectives like “sprachlich” or “linguistisch”. That’s why I suggested “sprachliche Desorientierung” – an expression used by many native speakers of German.

The origin of collocations is a fascinating subject. We shall probably never know who used the expression “linguistic vertigo” for the first time, but the word combination is so felicitous that it is hardly surprising that it has been adopted by so many different users.

“Surf the internet” (Ger. im Internet surfen, Fr. surfer sur Internet) is equally interesting. The person who coined the expression “surf the internet” is probably still alive, but we shall probably never know his / her name, and we shall probably never know why prepositions have to be used in the German and French expressions that correspond to “surf the internet”. How do you say “surf the Internet” in Arabic?

Some collocations can be traced back to famous texts like the Qur’an or the works of Shakespeare and Goethe, but in most cases the origins of these word combinations are shrouded in mystery. Why do the English talk about male flowers, male nurses and masculine nouns? Why are “male” and “masculine” not interchangeable?

This raises the problem of linguistic freedom. Although new collocations are occasionally invented and adopted by millions of users, most collocations are immutable. They just have to be memorised and re-used, and language learners who invent new word combinations do so at their peril.

Your lessons are awesome! I just heard them today for the first time and I am looking forward to hearing more! Thanks!

Hi Jad, you will be addicted like the rest of us AP-holics very soon!!! Just wait and listen to more of these great lessons! Our hosts and teachers Mohamed and Ehab are highly contagiousssss, because their way of teaching is brilliant, entertaining, extremely motivating and just ممتاز ;-)
And the AP-students-community is not a bad bunch either, we all love the arabic language, help each other, study hard, but at the same time we also have a lot of fun here together :-)
See you around, ya Jad! Cheers, Sabine from Germany

Dear Iceland,
We asked you to send us CASH! Can't you read???

This is the first time I've encountered the phrase 'linguistic vertigo' but it seems very apt in expressing a rapid felt cognitive movement that can leave one dizzy. I don't recall feeling this with French which is closer to English although, perhaps, a little with classical Tibetan. With practice, the mind becomes more supple and it should diminish!

علقت في مطار كوبنهاجن بسبب الرماد البركاني

"I got stuck in Copenhagen Airport because of the volcanic ash".

What a magnificent phrase. I plan to use it at my work (in New Zealand) one morning, as my excuse for being late.

(Not that anyone else speaks Arabic there, but still.)

But the real reason for the delay at Copenhagen airport has to do with the return of the team to Denmark after the loss to Croatia in the World Cup: "نأمل أن يؤدي ذلك إلى تعزيزنا ، وقد أثبتنا أنه يجب أخذنا على محمل الجد على هذا المستوى. يجب أن نفخر بما قمنا به - الدنمارك لم تكن هنا (في مرحلة خروج المغلوب) لمدة 16 عاما ، ”قال.

كان المدافع ماثياس يورجينسين أحد اللاعبين القلائل الذين تحدثوا إلى الصحفيين بعد أن هبط الفريق في كوبنهاجن لاستقبال 200 جماهير في مطار كاستروب.

وقال يورجنسن "يمكننا أن ننظر إلى هذا الفريق ، الذي سيظل أفضل في العامين المقبلين ، وهذا هو ما يمكن أن نأخذه معنا الآن".

!مرة كول

Very cool!

(Had to use google translate to read it, though.)

Such delays have taken place all over the world; for example, in Bogata, Columbia:

لنأخذ مثال مطار الدورادو الدولي في بوغوتا ، كولومبيا

تشير تقارير وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي إلى أن المطار أوقف مؤقتًا جميع الرحلات الجوية ، حيث ذهبت مباراة كولومبيا وإنجلترا إلى وقت إضافي.

الحمدلله على سلامة الفريق التايلاندي

Thank god for the safety of the Thai team!