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@ Mohamed

Saudi Arabia is not on the equator.

@Desmond,

Thanks for the correction. I'm not sure why I actually said that as I knew it wasn't on the equator but 'closer' to it than the uk etc.

We actually just edited that part so as to not give the wrong information to listeners, particularly to those who don't read these comments.

@ Mohamed

I think some post-editing is necessary in such cases. When I first listened to the podcast I couldn't believe my ears.

Desmond, I just bought and read my first book on linguistics while I was in Dubai, and was thinking of you as I read it... lot's of interesting material about language and colors... it was called, Through the Language Glass, by Guy Deutscher. Very interesting stuff regarding how some languages (especially ancient languages) had less words for colors and therefore made strange comparisons of the sea color to wine... BTW. please don't laugh at my new Avatar

@ jenkki

You're probably alluding to a phrase in Homer's "Iliad". In English this phrase is generally rendered as "the wine-dark sea". I think I know what Homer had in mind. When I was in Carthage many years ago I noticed that the sea sometimes takes on a purple hue.

A great deal has been written about colour adjectives. If you consult Vinay & Darbelnet, Stylistique comparée du francais et de l'anglais, you'll find an interesting section about colour adjectives in Welsh, English and French (p. 261). The Welsh adjective "llwyd" can mean "grey" or "brown", while "glas" may be "blue" or "green".

Latin colour adjectives are also quite fascinating. "Caeruleus", for instance, can mean "dark blue" or "blackish".

Some languages have more colour adjectives than others. The French, for instance, use more colour adjectives than their English or German neighbours, and in everyday speech they make distinctions which would be considered bizarre in a German-speaking country (except in highly specialised works about painting). When I speak French I make a lot of distinctions which I would never make in German or English.

When you have a native command of several languages you find that your thought processes are strongly influenced by the language you employ. When I write research papers in French or German I express ideas that would never have occurred to me if I had chosen to write in English. A Ukranian linguist once asked me to translate one of my German articles into English. The translation work was extremely difficult because my text was so typically German. There were hundreds of words and phrases that have no direct equivalents in other languages, and in many cases I would have expressed completely different ideas if I had conceived the text in English.

نعم تماماً...
كان هذا من الكتاب إلياد وأودسي من هومر!


It takes the history of William Gladstone and Geiger (can't recall the first name) who thought that the reason that the ancient Greeks were missing the color blue from all descriptions was that they were color blind, and perhaps color vision has evolved since their time... but it turned out that it was the language that was color blind and was the thing that did the evolving (not the human race).

What you described is exactly the point of that book. There were a lot of things that I'd never heard of before, in addition to colors. There's also spatial adjectives (like left, right, front, back, etc...)... There was an interesting chapter about how some of the languages of aboriginal tribes of Australia (as well as some others around the world) use cardinal coordinates (i.e. east, west, north, south which don't rotate with the observer) instead of egocentric coordinates (i.e. right, left, front and back, which do rotate with the speaker). Very funny that in Aboriginal Aus. you could say something like "now take two steps to the west and raise your north arm".

@jenkki

أحب الصورة الجديدة، القطرة والعقال تناسبك

Since this comment is under a beginner lesson, let me clarify the above

U7ebbu a9oorah ajadeedah, alqu6rah wal3iqaal tunaasebak
I like the new picture, the white garment (alqu6rah) and the headband (3iqaal) suits you

@ jenkki

The subject we are discussing is inexhaustible. Have you heard of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? If not, you should have a look at the article on linguistic relativity in the English version of Wikipedia.

Most language learners are unaware of the extent to which thought processes are determined by language. This is because they never become completely immersed in a foreign culture. They continue to think in their mother tongue and merely replace L1 words by L2 words. (L1 and L2 are linguistic terms for first language and second language.)

A friend of mine (himself a brilliant linguist) recently sent me a copy of an English text written by a well-known German scholar who teaches English at a German university. The text was riddled with errors since it was merely a literal translation of a German text.

Incidentally, I'm not surprised by your latest avatar. Moving from one culture to another has become second nature to me. I hope you enjoyed your sojourn in Dubai.

Best wishes
Desmond

@Desmond, If you had asked me last week, I would have had to respond that I hadn't heard of "Sapir-Whorf", but Guy Deutscher rips and deplores that particular "hypothesis", aka linguistic relativity. In short, per Deutscher, because it makes a lot of vague BS claims about tribal Amer Indian languages... he tells about a linguist named Ekkehart Malotki who did extensive fieldwork on the Hopi language (which Whorf made claims about) and wrote a book called "Hopi Time"... the first page of the book is mostly blank with two short sentences...

First a quote by Whorf:

"After long and careful study and analysis, the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time'."

Then the following sentence in Hopi:
"pu' antsa pay qavongvaqw pay su'its talavay kuyvansat, páasatham pu' pam piw maanat taatayna" - Then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time then, he woke up the girl again

@ jenkki

Although the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has often been called in question, I think it ought to be taken seriously. When I first read about the research carried out by Sapir and Whorf I was fascinated because their findings confirmed some of my own intuitions about language.

David Crystal says that the fact of successful bilingual translation weakens the force of the claims made by Sapir and Whorf, but I disagree with Crystal for several reasons:

First, Crystal’s ideas about language are Anglocentric.

Second, he is not a translator and, like most English-speaking linguists, he knows very little about foreign languages.

Third, successful bilingual translation frequently results in gains and losses of information, and most of these gains and losses are due to differences between language-specific conceptual patterns.

Fourth, Crystal fails to draw a distinction between two types of situation in which thought processes are determined by language: (1) situations where a language user’s thoughts are influenced by the world-view of a specific language community, (2) situations where words and phrases trigger chain reactions.

@ Moshaya

In your comment to jenkki,
أحب الصورة الجديدة، القطرة والعقال تناسبك

Is it
قطرة
or
غترة

Or, are they synonymous?
قطرة means 'drop'. Can it be used insted of غترة also?

@desmond

I do appreciate the field of linguistics, but this discussion is going way over my head. I think we should just stick to trying to learn Arabic for now

By the way, back on the topic of cold weather and the middle east. While I was in Dubai we actually got a small amount of rain, and afterwards for the next several days, the temperature dipped down into the 20Cs, cold for Dubai Even I (who live in Finland) felt cold... but probably because I was wearing shorts and expecting to get a sun tan the whole time... but fortunately the warmth went back up to normal ~30C for the last several days. By the way in my Avatar where I'm wearing the القطرة والعقال
I was visiting the gorgeous Sheik Zayed mosque in Abu Dhabi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Zayed_Mosque

I recommend a visit there to all.

@ Jenkki

Sorry, Jon. Linguistics is a very difficult subject, and my comments on linguistic problems are often very technical. Perhaps I'm over-fond of juggling with abstractions.

I see you've been reading my questions and comments about the preposition "fawq". Have you ever seen a saw hanging over a table, or have you any idea why anyone would hang a saw above a table?

@desmond

Nope, can't say I have. In Abu Dhabi, I went to the "UAE heritage village" where they had a lot of old museum displays of various common things that people used to do in the UAE back before oil. Anyway, I have a picture of النجارة
but no says in sight. By the way, I think that the Arabic word for "saw" is "منشار"
Not sure if I spelled it right... I'm too lazy to go to verify it.

@ jemkki

That's right, Jon. The word for "saw" is pronounced "minschaar" (stressed on the second syllable). The plural is pronounced "manashiir".

Perhaps Ehab can elucidate the mystery of the hanging saw. It sounds rather like something you might find in a torture chamber.

@vinod, Sorry I only just saw your comment. قطرة as in 'Qotra' can mean the white garment that goes on the head with the عقال (The headband), and قطرة as in 'Qatra' means drop. The vowel on the first letter changes the meaning.

However, غترة is used more and it means the same thing, a quick search on google proves this. I used qutra instead because that was what I personally used when I was in Saudi although it might not have been the better word.

@Moshaya
Thanks a lot for the clarification

How can ı say Guys
# you're the best teacher...


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مفيد جدا

For those eager to do their homework! Here's the final translated convo:

هل تشعر باالبرد؟ لا أشعر باالبرد اليوم

Do you feel cold? No, I do not feel cold today.

is shubak also window? Is it classical?

@jamalbinti14, yes (shubbaak شبّاك) is (window), and it is used in classical Arabic as well as colloquial.

تقبضة رباطة جأشك Is this how to tell someone to"keep cool" in a self composure kind of way? This is my first post. Thanks guys I really appreciate what you do.

Well, to say (keep cool, i.e calm down) then you better say (هدئ نفسك) which is literally (calm yourself down). The phrase you used (رباطة جأش) means (control yourself) so it gives the same meaning but it is not used as a verb to order someone to keep cool.

Hope that helps, and ahlan (welcome) to ArabicPod by the way