How to become a fulltime Arabic Student

Worsening Situation in Syria

2011-06-14T01:01:00.000+08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BpOfw9lVL50#at=11

Arabic (unicode) support on the Kindle 3 -- not on the DX

2011-04-27T22:27:00.002+08:00

I've been using a Kindle 2 since July 2010 and been highly impressed with this product.

It allows a massive library collection on the go and free unlimited internet access virtually anywhere on the Amazon Whispernet network. The Kindle has network access across Australia using the mobile phone network even in remote locations, though it doesn't seem to be fully operating on Telstra Next G. The International version is meant to work across the world as well but I've not yet verified that.

On the Arabic support side of things, I've been somewhat disappointed. I've saved a few pdfs that have Arabic stored as images which is a big drain on battery life and is tedious to navigate, but still somewhat useful. Opening Arabic text directly displays only big ugly squares.

Unfortunately I got the Kindle 2 right before the price drop and release of the Kindle 3 in July 2010 which brought a faster, higher contrast screen, is slightly slimmed down size and has unicode support.

Today, after reading about Kindle 3's unicode support, I grabbed a friend's Kindle 3 and was pleasantly surprised to find it opens aljazeera.net (arabic) perfectly.

Currently the Kindle Store has fairly limited Arabic learning resources - the Arabic support only being done by text stored as images, but with the Kindle 3 unicode support there shouldn't be anything stopping publishers from releasing searchable, resizeable, battery friendly Arabic unicode texts. The only potential road blocks I can see is backwards compatibility with the older Kindles and the lack of international keyboard layouts on the Kindle.

So if you'd googled, as I had, and been under the impression the Kindle does not support Arabic, take a look at the Kindle 3rd gen.

I went and ordered a new Kindle DX and expected it to have the same 3rd gen features as the Kindle 3. But it doesn't!

The DX Graphite (DXG) is generally accepted to be of the 3rd generation, yet it is a mix of 3rd generation hardware and 2nd generation software. The CPU is of the same speed as Kindle 3 but it is of a different revision. Even though DX Graphite has a larger case, it has only a half of system memory (128MB) than Kindle 3 (256MB). Due to these hardware differences, DXG runs the same firmware as Kindle 2 (currently at version 2.5.8). Therefore, DXG cannot display international fonts such as the Cyrillic font (Chinese or any other non-Latin font), PDF and the web browser are limited to Kindle 2 features.

I'm very unimpressed to find this out after buying the DXG for $400. I'll be weighing up now whether to return it and wait for the DX model refresh.

Arabising Nokia N8 PR1.1 Update - Arabic V13.16

2011-02-13T19:59:00.000+08:00

Nokia have just released a much needed update for the Nokia N8 and this update is not yet available for Australian customers yet. Meantime, the integrated GPS hasn't been working on my N8 for months and months so I returned it to Nokia Care. They very promptly replaced my phone with a brand newy last week so I was keen to try the new Firmware. Using Phoenix Slayer it's a piece of cake to reflash it to the new version. See this previous post for the procedure for this.19/2/2011 Update: a couple of warnings about using the Syrian pack. It seems to disable the integrated GPS and the Social Network app is not present. I installed the APAC version and replaced the two rops2 and 3 files with the Syrian ones and got the GPS back with the Arabic. Still without the Social Networking app though. I'll do some more testing.
I used MEA6_DG_SYRIA (0599393)

The log for a successful flash should look a lot like this:
Flashing started
Creating product data items list
Product data items list created
Backup not required
Flashing phone
Initializing
Asic CMT: Verifying communication to device...
Scanning image files...
Loading secondary boot code: 14912 bytes
Secondary boot loaded
Loading update server code: 520994 bytes
Update server loaded
Partitioning....
Partitioning complete
Erasing....
Erasing complete
Asic CMT: Start programming 169477 KB...
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 0%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 10%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 20%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 30%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 40%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 50%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 60%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 70%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 80%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 90%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 100%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 100%
Asic CMT: Programming data sent: 100%
Programming complete
WARNING: Asic CMT: NAND status reported bad blocks
Asic CMT: programming succeeded
Asic CMT: Verifying communication to device...
Phone flashing completed. Waiting for phone to boot up
Bootup successful
Verifying communication to product (before flash finalizing)
Communication verified
Product code changed
Doing factorysets
Factorysets complete
Loading default data to phone
Loading default data to phone
Getting Data Package
Reading product state
Starting backup/restore sub-procedure: data item pre-delay
data item pre-delay
data item pre-delay
Sub-procedure completed: Succeeded., result code: 0
Starting to backup/restore data item: ProductProfile, version: 1.1
Data Item backup/restore completed: Succeeded., result code: 0
Starting backup/restore sub-procedure: data item post-delay
data item post-delay
data item post-delay
Sub-procedure completed: Succeeded., result code: 0
Backup/restore result: 0 out of 1 items were not backed up
Default data loading complete
Stopping all operations, returning phone to default mode
All operations completed
Product flashing succeeded.

Arabising Nokia N8

2010-11-29T22:21:00.000+08:00

I just received my new Nokia N8 early last week and so far have been fairly well impressed.

The interface isn't as smooth as the iPhone 3GS, particularly when it's multi-tasking a few apps but the features rock. Flash, high quality camera, JAVA apps support and integrated FM transmitter are some of my favourite features. Plus micro SD support now up to 32gb, 16gb internal memory, USB flash drive / external hard drive support and pentband compatibility make this phone almost the perfect fit for me. I miss having physical QWERTY keyboard as with the E71, E72 but the on-screen keyboard isn't too bad and the tactile vibration feedback when a key is pressed is a nice addition.

Tonight I Arabised the phone. Here's how to do it.

0. BACKUP your phone! I missed this step :) but you can skip it if you don't want to keep any data.

1. Download and run Navifirm. The full list of Nokia products will load, then select the N8. Go to RM-596 and select the product code Syria 0599460. Download all the files.

2. Grab the Phoenix Flash Program

3. Copy all the files you downloaded in step 1 to c:\program files\Nokia\Phoenix\Products\RM-596. Phoenix will flash your phone with these files.

4. Shutdown Ovi Suite or PC Suite if you have them running.

5. Open Phoenix. Click File -> Scan Product and then click on Flashing -> Firmware Update.

6. On the right of the Product Code section click the three full stops "…"

7. The files you put in the RM-596 should show up. Click ok.

8. Click Refurbish.

9. A warning will pop up about a "16G" file being missing. This doesn't matter. Click continue anyway.

10. Your phone will restart a couple of times and Windows may end up installing a few extra devices. After a couple of minutes the flashing will complete and your phone will start up all shiny and new. Now you have an Arabic keyboard and you put the phone language into Arabic.

Arabising E72 .. Success!

2010-04-14T22:50:00.000+08:00

Last week I finally managed to Arabise my E72-2. The basic steps were

Used NSS to change product code to a standard product code for E72-2 in Australia
Downloaded the latest firmware version of RM-529 Australia using NaviFirm
Downloaded the two fops firmware files from the RM-530 Arabic QW which are the language pack files
Removed all Nokia programs PC Suite etc.
Installed Phoenix Slayer release. Free to download
Copied RM-529 firmware files to c:\progra~1\Nokia\Phoenix\Products\RM-529
Replaced the fops files in the RM-529 with the language pack files from the RM-530 Arabic
Selected the language pack files in Phoenix and then installed the custom patch.

Those are the basic steps but I'll post more details and screenshots shortly. Now my E72-2 has an all Arabic interface and Arabic, English, French, Portuguese input languages. Appropriately modified steps of those above will work for Chinese and probably any other language.

Arabic becoming unfashionable amongst youth in Lebanon

2010-03-15T01:28:00.000+08:00

In polyglot Lebanon, one language falls behind: Arabic

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/culture/30-in-polyglot-lebanon-one-language-falls-behind-arabic-so-01

This is quite sad I think. I hope not, but suspect, that within a generation or two Arabic will no longer be a primary language in Lebanon and could become a creole or something as it has in Morocco or dropped altogether. In Lebanon, my young cousin informs me, "Nobody says shukran. Say thank you or merci or people will laugh at you". On facebook Lebanese use latin script for Arabic almost exclusively. Yemenis on the other hand put the Lebs to shame in this area.

Language learning abilities of a child

2010-03-15T00:49:00.000+08:00

I came across an interesting hypothesis recently when reading The Loom of Language which appears to have been confirmed by a recent personal observation. I'll paraphrase it and leave you to read the book if this topic is of interest to you.

Essentially we all accept the notion that as infants we had incredible abilities to pick up and master a language, and this idea is reinforced by the fact that we don't remember much about the difficulties we had with acquiring our mother tongue, or that native speakers tend to be a lot more patient and helpful to the youngin's. I'm not supposing that children don't have a superior ability to learn in some respects, but I'm supposing that as adults we exaggerate the abilities of a child in this area. In the book Bodmer adds that the solidarity in focus gives an adult somewhat of an advantage over the child.

Here's my observation: my Arabic teacher was born in Lebanon and is the mother to a 5 year old boy and her husband, the boy's father, is an Australian. The mother speaks regularly to the boy in Lebanese Arabic and she recently took him to Lebanon for a couple of months. The boy understands a good amount of what his mother says in Arabic but I'm not sure it's even 50% of what he understands of English. Before he went to Lebanon I never heard him say a word in Arabic. Since coming back he says a couple of words but his pronunciation is not correct and he can't construct a grammatically correct sentence by any means. His mother used the word gha-lees today. He first repeated that word as ha-lees and then after a few tries changed to kha-lees.

To this day I can recall how I learnt to count in Arabic when I was about his age and my pronunciation was in no way superior to what an adult could have learnt in the same amount of time, and most probably it is worse than what I could learn in the same time today at my age. I'd be really interested to see if someone has attempted to quantify language learning ability versus age in the short, medium and long term.

The Green Zone

2010-03-13T22:06:00.000+08:00

I watched the Green Zone last night and was very pleasantly surprised. It's the best war movie set in Iraq so far in my opinion. I really enjoyed the Hurt Locker as well. It was suspenseful, had some great action and I cared about the characters. In fact that movie was going along brilliantly until

SPOILER...

the main guy headed back to the US, got bored with the mundane life of suburbia in 15 seconds of movie time and then valiantly decided to return to Iraq for another tour so that "he could save lives".

The script didn't get too complicated. There were bad Hajis and good Hajis and the US guys had to stop the bombs from blowing up the good Hajis and the US people.

The Green Zone on the other hand took on something more ambitious with the so called reason the war started in the first place - the now quite widely accepted as non-existent WMDs.

From a language point of view Green Zone had much more Arabic dialogue and much of it wasn't subtitled. There were a couple of Iraqi phrases I would like to listen to again on a rewatch and try to learn. One definite plus was that the movie actually shows the layout of Baghdad quite well - well as much as was necessary to convince me (keeping in mind I'm not someone who has been there before). Other movies show you a sand dune or a dusty street with some Arabic graffiti and you're meant to believe it's Baghdad. This movie actually showed aerial shots, named lots of locations and flew over the monument of the two swords touching and Saddam's palace and airport. At one point in the movie a couple of Iraqi guys were reading from a notebook and all the Arabic was in isolated form. Not sure why that was....... but I'm guessing it was because the prop guy didn't know how to write Arabic.. unless it was some kind of a code book.. Anyway..

The action was great and it was refreshing to have Matt Damon getting his butt kicked a lot more than he did as Jason Bourne. My only gripes was

the shaky hand-held camera - this is just dumb and was over done. We don't need that sort of thing to fabricate realism
Some of the speeches were way too prophetic sounding with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Body of Lies was another similar movie I enjoyed albeit that Leo was able to put a bit of dirt on his face, grow a lousy beard and then was able to convince Iraqis that he was a local... other than that it was good.

Today I tried to find the novel the Green Zone is based on: "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" here in Perth. No where in the city has it but they can order it. This pretty much sums up my free time in Perth these days - looking for anything Arabic in the media, eating at Lebanese restaurants, have a couple of Arabic classes and going to a Melkite Mass on a Sunday. It's safe to say I'm quite obsessed at this point but this realisation has got me wondering if instead of looking for small samples of these sorts of things and trying to fill up my life with them, perhaps instead I need to focus more on how to get back there and then the chasing, gathering, searching and obsessing will stop

Arabising an E72

2010-03-03T23:12:00.000+08:00

Refer to E72 Arabising Success

Last year I purchased an E71 and was pleased to able fully Arabise that phone. I did this by changing the product code using a utility called Nemesis Service Suite (NSS) and then I simply ran Nokia Software Update to reinstall the firmware on the phone with the Arabic version. I did the same on an E51 after some effort and on the very first try with a Nokia 6600 Classic Slide.

Then, just before Christmas last year I purchased an E72 from 3 Telecomm Australia. The E72 is supposed to be the natural progression from the E71 boasting a faster processor, better email support and a 5MP camera. Instead of the standard Australian version, which is an E71-1, I opted for the E72-2 which supports UTMS 850MHz which is compatible with Telstra Next-G and also UTMS 2100MHz (I think). This means that I can have full speed 3G internet in Australian cities and in the remote area that I'm working at now.

It seemed like I'd found a totally improved phone but have since found that my E72-2 RM-529 is only released in regions including North America, Australia, South America and since these regions do not have Arabic as a primary language, there is no Arabic firmware for my particular hardware version.

So now I'm forced to choose between an English E72 that has fast net access everywhere and superior mobile coverage or, an Arabic/English E72 with poor mobile coverage and internet access speeds outside of major cities.

I may just revert back to my E71. Surprisingly my iPhone 32G 3GS has better Arabic support than my E71.

Anyway, to capture what I've tried, the phone product code for the 3 Mobile was 0591918. Despite months of trying, there are no updates for this product code. Since the E72 has quite a lot of annoying bugs I decided to change the product code to the generic Australian code 0587847 to both debrand the 3 rubbish and improve stability.. hopefully.

Navifirm is a great utility that lets you download firmware directly from Nokia and it shows you what is available. Much better than clicking update and waiting and waiting and then getting told there are no updates. I used this program to find the product codes for my E72-2. The product codes for E72-2 which can run the latest version firmware 23.2 are

0587847: AUSTRALIA_QW_BLACK
0590307: AUSTRALIA_QW_BROWN
0590311: AUSTRALIA_QW_GREY
0587848: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_BLACK
0590309: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_BROWN
0590312: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_GREY
0587846: PHILIPPINES_QW_BLACK
0590304: PHILIPPINES_QW_BROWN
0590310: PHILIPPINES_QW_GREY

My 3 mobile has no updates and is included in the list of product codes that support the original firmware 21.24

0590307: AUSTRALIA_QW_BROWN
0590311: AUSTRALIA_QW_GREY
0584212: BRAZIL_QW_BLACK
0584212: BRAZIL_QW_BLACK
0584226: BRAZIL_QW_BROWN
0586711: BRAZIL_QW_GREY
0586714: BRAZIL_QW_WHITE
0591918: E72 RM-529 3 AU AU Black V1
0591918: E72 RM-529 3 AU AU Black V1
0598017: E72 RM-529 3 AU AU Metal Grey V1_COLOR
0593421: E72 RM-529 Claro Brasil BR Metal Grey V1
0593421: E72 RM-529 Claro Brasil BR Metal Grey V1
0594389: E72 RM-529 LTA Region HN Argentina CV V1
0593360: E72 RM-529 Nokia do Brasil (NDB) BR Metal Gray V2
0593360: E72 RM-529 Nokia do Brasil (NDB) BR Metal Grey V1
0591928: E72 RM-529 North America US Black
0594814: E72 RM-529 North America US NAM Default Black SMB
0592758: E72 RM-529 Smart Communications - Philippines PH Z. Black Sim Lock V1
0592758: E72 RM-529 Smart Communications - Philippines PH Z. Black Sim Lock V1
0595514: E72 RM-529 Tigo CA GT Grey V1
0593361: E72 RM-529 VIVO BR Metal Grey V1
0591071: ISRAEL QW BLACK
0591074: ISRAEL QW BROWN
0591069: ISRAEL QW GREY
0584213: LTA_QW_BLACK
0584228: LTA_QW_BROWN
0586712: LTA_QW_GREY
0586715: LTA_QW_WHITE
0573646: NAM_QW_BLACK
0573646: NAM_QW_BLACK
0584225: NAM_QW_BROWN
0586710: NAM_QW_GREY
0587848: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_BLACK
0587848: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_BLACK
0590309: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_BROWN
0590312: NEW_ZEALAND_QW_GREY
0587846: PHILIPPINES_QW_BLACK
0590304: PHILIPPINES_QW_BROWN
0590310: PHILIPPINES_QW_GREY

Once before I could have sworn I found a product code for Arabic that led NSU to find an update but lately I haven't been able to find one. I believe both the RM version AND the product code must match to find an update. As I write this I just noticed the NSU restarted the firmware download after it had reached 80mg... Urgh. This saga never seems to end. Failing this I'll try flashing the phone using JAF and download the firmware using Navifirm.

Arabic subtitles garbled when displayed in Media Player

2009-05-03T14:26:00.001+08:00

I have Alladin in Arabic as an avi file and today I watched it to try and understand the Egyptian Arabic. A lot goes past me except that I know the story and what they're probably saying. Anyhow, naturally I wanted to add subtitles to the movie so I can understand and learn from the dialogue better.

I searched for Alladin Arabic subtitles and found some as one single srt file. I renamed the srt to have exactly the same filename (sans extension) as the avi and loaded the avi using Media Player. However, all the text came out as strange garbled characters.

To fix this problem, the subtitle file need only be opened with Word and then saved as UTF-8 which is Unicode. In other words, the original file was Arabic however Media Player didn't know that it was and it tried to use a different set of characters to match the codes it found. So, by changing to Unicode which apparently contains almost all languages, Media Player knows exactly what to display (or technically I should say it's DirectVobSub that's using the inappropriate format until I gave it Unicode to use)

The only hitch now seems to be that the subtitles are a fair bit slower than the movie i.e. they're in unison at first but as the movies goes along they begin to trail more and more. There are all sorts of subtitle manipulators to fix that up and then after that I'll be all set.

So now I have Alladin with Egyptian Arabic sound and Formal Arabic subtitles - a learning environment I feel is much better than using English subtitles with Egyptian Arabic track.

The Motorcycle Diaries

2009-04-27T17:57:00.000+08:00

A certain revolutionary by the name of Che Guevara started out in life as doctor specialising in leprosy. He travelled from his town in Brazil right up to the north tip of South America and the plight of the poor in his continent massively influenced the direction his life would take. Admittedly the movie, the Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de motocicleta) taught me most of that information.

I'd very much like to go on a similar journey in the very near future however it's not going to be easy. The biggest hurdle I can forsee is getting visas to travel through the countries. Saudi Arabia especially hasn't be at all accessible to me in my past attempts. As an Australia citizen I think the whole gulf portion of the Arab countries would be inaccesible to me by motorbike however, if I can get citizenship to an Arab country I think all I'm hoping will be made possible.

Now Iraq is obviously a very volatitle place. I may not be able to visit there for many more years to come so I'll exclude that for the moment, saving perhaps a quick and cowardly incursion from the border with Syria. My journey will be in an order something like this (possibly in reverse) Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, The Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Saudi, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania.

I've tried, many times to get Lebanese citizenship because, in theory, it should be very easy for me to get it as my father was born in Lebanon. In practice it's been much more difficult because as anyone with Middle East experience knows, paperwork is long and tedious process in the Middle East - often requiring a bit of bribery to grease the cogs of the process. Esentially my task is something like this... Dad's birth certificate is old and needs to be verified in Lebanon by either him going to the town where his birth was registered or by getting a copy of the 'Family Extract' of our family, then my parents' marriage has to be officially registered, my birth certificate provided and a fee for registration and then I can become a Lebanese citizen and entitled to virtually free and painless entry to any Arab country for the rest of my life. Or so I hope.

The dilema now seems to be that the town in Lebanon my Dad is from will not provide the Family Extract unless they see my Dad in person (or receive a bribe) so I can either get my Dad over there or this whole plan probably won't materialise.

Lebanese Mismar

2009-04-27T17:48:00.000+08:00

A couple of weeks ago my language partner and friend from Lebanon sent me an early birthday present which was a Lebanese Mismar! My partner wasn't able to give me too many tips on how to play this as it seems it's simply mastered by experimenting.

So far all I've learnt is

Both of the two mouth pieces including the vibrating reed parts must be put entirely in the mouth and then blown in order to make a sound. I've placed the reed under my top lip but this may be wrong
Each one the fingers should can be used to cover up to 2 holes at once
the sound is none too sweet when played by me

No idea if the notes match the 8 notes in the regular Western Octave. I'll write more if I manage to get any better at this or find more information. So far none of my ability with playing the saxophone seems readily useful.

Update on my study

2009-04-27T15:41:00.000+08:00

Since returning from Syria/Yemen and joining the Australian workforce again I have been making concerted efforts to continue at least with sustaining my Arabic level and probably trying in vain to make improvements. I believe I've certainly lost fluency since not being able to take part in Arabic conversations everyday as I did in Yemen, however, I think my reading abilities (i.e. in recognising meaning) has improved.

While in Brisbane I continued studies with an Egyptian teacher who introduced me to alif ba' ta' way back in the beginning (something like 5 years ago) and I made some decent progress with her. Since then though, my 'career' led to me to relocate to WA at a location with no chance of getting tuitition with a native speaker. I'm saving money quickly here and hoping to visit the Middle East at the completion of my time here. I'm hoping to return to Syria to complete all the levels at the University of Damacus.

I've been splashing money out on Arabic materials which I have not been making proper time to study. Actually I've been accumulating materials faster than I can study them ever since I read a motivational book on learning foreign languages probably about 4 years ago. I have approximately 20 kgs of materials in Yemen - including the full 1001 Arabian Nights, (~3 kgs) and plenty more. I had hoped to ship them back to Australia before I left Yemen but ran out of time to do so. Travelling light/not nesting/accumulating and studying lots of books seems to be a major conflict in my life.

Anyway, the recent additions to my collection are

ACE my language ARABIC 9780976840411
This book is basically a Defence Force language exam. 200 pages of half page Arabic texts with mutiple choice answers about the texts. It comes with a CD with all the texts read out-loud.

Focus on Contemporary Arabic 9780300109481
I haven't fully got my teeth into this text yet but it seems to be really useful. Finally a book with the MSA that is actually spoken between Arab speakers. It's much simpler than the language used in Al-Kitaab or on the News. All of the conversations are provided in the form of video interviews with no prepared responses to the questions, complete transcripts which include the mistakes and the ums and ahhs.

al-Kitaab Supplement 9781591095651
Just a supplement for Book 1. I might get into this to strengthen up my grammar but otherwise Book 1 Al-Kitaab is too easy for me now.

Advanced Media Arabic 9780748632732
I eagerly awaited the release of this book. News articles are available for free download from the publishers website. I haven't yet really looked at this book as my teacher advised me it was difficult and I focused on a simpler media Arabic book first.

Media Arabic 9789774161087
This book seems great and I've studied a couple of chapters so far. Lots of good stuff seems to be coming from AUC including this book, Contemporary Arabic (mentioned above), an Arabic/English reader and lots of other things.

My problem seems to be I'm more interested in studying the living language i.e. finding sources online and translating them as I find them. I'm sure though that returning to book study would be a great benefit to me.

Lastly, the following little gem I've resisted buying because it was published back in 1951 and the price seems quite steep. Instead I borrowed it for free through my state library.

Writing Arabic T.F. Mitchell 197135668
This book will be of great benefit to anyone intending to write a lot less like a foreigner. I find I cannot read standard handwriting a.k.a. the ruqu'ah taught in this book. The author rightly states that generally learners of a language ignore learning to write as a native and in the case of Arabic, most learners learn to write the type written form (naskh). If nothing else I hope to vastly improve my handwriting recognition and maybe learn a faster and less foreign handwriting style. I remember the Taiwanese students at my high school always had an obvious foreign look to their handwriting. I must admit it was easy to read however I'd gladly trade ease of reading for writing like a native in which case natives can read what I write too.

I've raved a number of times about my BAS-1595. I use it everyday. I resisted getting a BAS-1875 because there were no real feature benefits in getting one. Now I've noticed there is now a PMA-5000 Colour Almawrid, made by Adawliah just like the others. Most likely it still has the exact same content and lacking what I'd really like to have i.e. Arabic plurals, Arabic pronunciation and Arabic/Arabic dictionary. Still, it does look like a snazzy bit of gear and the keyboard on my BAS-1595 is getting a little stiff.

IBM are doing some research into Arabic Text to Speech (TTS) which would be great to have an electronic dictionary one day. Here's a sample

Discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, the tomb of Tutankhamun contained the most extensive royal treasure of ancient Egypt. The collection consisted of over 3850 artifacts including everything from toys and games for the young king to furniture, weapons, chariots, a golden mask and a golden sarcophagus. Many statues and symbols of deities to protect and help the king in the afterlife were also found in the tomb.

http://www.research.ibm.com/tts/samples/arabic/ar_male.wav
http://www.research.ibm.com/tts/samples/arabic/ar_female.wav

Endangered and extinct species

2009-04-27T15:26:00.000+08:00

How can a post about the environment have anything to do with Arabic? Well, wait a minute, I'll get there.

A while ago I searched without success to find an actual real life photo or video of a Blue Whale. I searched pretty hard too but couldn't find anything better than an illustration of a blue whale next to a man for size comparison. Now though, I found a website called arkive.org with a few videos of the blue whale and the tasmanian tiger.

Unfortunately there's nothing really in the videos to get a proper impression of the size of the whales however I think the size of the waves in the videos gives some perspective.

Blue whale- overviewBBC Natural History Unit

The principal sponsor of this wonderful website is the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi. The Arabic writing in their logo was beyond my abilities to decipher so I delved a little deeper and found

http://www.ead.ae/ar/?T=2&ID=114
with the title of the organisation written much more legibly for me

هيئة البيئة - أبوظبي

Thankfully too the website is available in Arabic and English so there's an good opportunity to study. Nice to see funding from the World's largest oil producers for the environment

Free Arabic language resources

2008-06-04T14:15:00.000+08:00

While searching for the Saudi Arabic: Urban Hijazi Dialect course which is highly recommended on Amazon.com I discovered this book and the tapes are legally and freely available for download at http://fsi-language-courses.com/Arabic.aspx

The reason being:

This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. This site is not affiliated in any way with any government entity; it is an independent, non-profit effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages. Courses here are made available through the private efforts of individuals who are donating their time and resources to provide quality materials for language learning.

The other books on the site are

Levantine and Egyptian Arabic Comparative Study
Levantine Arabic: Introduction to Pronunciation
From Eastern To Western Arabic
Classical Arabic: The Writing System

Another handy site is myhappyplanet.com where you can find a language exchange partner for Arabic. I find it really handy now that I'm no longer in regular contact with Arabic speakers to answer any questions that arise from the self study I've been doing since returning from Yemen. Also it's interesting to answer my language partner's queries about English because it reveals grammatical rules that never previously occured to me.

SP3 fixes EVERYTHING

2008-06-02T13:06:00.000+08:00

A few years ago when the second service pack for Windows XP (SP2) came out I had just purchased my first iPod. It was a 40 gig 3rd gen with a black and white screen. That purchase was soon followed by a USB 2.0 card expansion card for my PC which was necessary to connect to the iPod at the proper speed.

However, the drivers that came with the USB 2.0 card didn't work and no amount of hacking around or reinstalling resolved the issue. And then I installed SP2 for Windows XP and the included drivers worked like a dream with the new expansion card.

The story is often the same for Wifi. Pre SP2 WPA enryption won't work. Post SP2 everything works flawlessly, or at least it was the easy fix in many of the cases I fixed in Yemen.

Fast forward to 1 week ago and I had the most bizarre and hard to track down fault with XP which is difficult to describe. Basically I clean installed XP including SP2 and many online forms would not submit. I was trying to search according to a criteria on a job search website and when I clicked "Search" the connection always timed out. It was a similar story on facebook too. I'd write a large message, hit send and it would always timeout and not send.

Then I installed Vista on my PC, which totally beyond my PC, but it proved that I could submit data from forms without an issue.

Then I formatted and went back to XP and again the forms were timing out. I installed .Net Framework, Office 2003 including Access but none of those upgrades got the forms work.

Then today I installed SP3 by downloading it from majorgeeks.com and now everything works again. I can search the job website and submit messages on facebook. No clue what aspect of SP3 fixed the fault. It turns out those 1000s of windows updates do something useful after all.

Western Culture's view of the right of women to be violent

2008-05-14T18:59:00.000+08:00

As you can see I haven't made an entry in quite a while and in that time I finished up in Yemen and spent 2 months in Lebanon and Syria. For the moment at least I'm not going to elaborate further on my time since my last entry because they'd be lots to write. Instead, I'll write about a cultural value I noticed clearly due to a partly outsiders perspective I have as a result of my time spent in Yemen.

Women in the western world are almost at full liberty to be violent to men and damage their property in certain circumstances and such actions are generally viewed positively.

For example, suppose a man is unfaithful in a relationship, finds a new partner, ends a relationship in an inconsiderate way or does something similarly unfair to his female partner. Now suppose the ex-girlfriend/wife in this situation destroyed his prized car, slashed his tyres, threw all his things out onto the street and/or punched him in the nose. Western society would generally see such actions as acceptable or deserved although there are legal avenues of accountability for the woman. "Beware of woman's wrath" and so forth. I saw examples of this in an episode of "Two and Half Men", tonight, saw virtually the same situation in a film clip by the band, "the Veronicas", John McClaine's wife in Die Hard punched a reported in the nose at the end of the movie, and there's plenty of other examples frequently present in the media.

Whereas a man who responded to a bad break up in any of those ways would be undoubtedly vilified and increasingly, violent responses to disputes are view more negatively. Why then the disparity I wonder? Because society still thinks of women as the weaker sex? Why does society see women as deserving a higher status in this area? Maybe it's just a often used punched line in the media that doesn't translate into actual society.

I honestly don't have an answer.

Arabic palindrome

2007-10-20T02:24:00.000+08:00

Last week one of the teachers at my school introduced me to an Arabic palindrome. Like me, you mightn't remember exactly what a palindrome is, and if you do, then maybe you mix it up with an anagram. But really a palindrome is harder to make than an anagram because a palindrome is one strict type of an anagram. The easiest English palindrome I can think of is "Madam" and from that you can probably guess what palindromes are all about. A palindrome is a word or sentence (or more) that it is the same word or sentence when read right-left or left-right.

My favourite website has a few more English examples

But the Arabic example this teacher gave me was -

بلح تعلق تحت قلعة حلب

Even if you've never learnt any Arabic before you can probably make out that the letters of that phrase form a palindrome.

The new Microsoft Word 2007 now translates English/Arabic (or many other languages) when you hover the mouse over a word. It's quite a cool new feature. Just to show it off and to translate this palindrome - here's a screenshot from Word 2007.

I put all the hover over translations onto the same picture for display simplicity.

Reading from right to left (or left to right if you prefer :) ) the first word is date, as in the fruit that grows on date palms. In this case it's actually the plural.

The second word means hang - as in the the dates hang

The third word is a palindrome itself and it means below, underneath

The forth word means castle

and finally, the fifth word is the name of a city in Syria.

All together it means dates hang underneath a castle in Halab.

Quite elegant isn't it? Because of the 3 letter root system of Arabic it makes the language better suited to palindromes than Latin languages. But despite that there doesn't seem to be a single word for palindrome in Arabic. English seems to have more depth in having a single word to describe things, coming from its Latin roots I guess.

I found a longer list of Arabic palindromes at the forum of Arabic Translators International

(القلب المستوى) أو (ما لا يستحيل بالإنعكاس)

(Symmetry by Characters) (Palindrome)

مصطلح (القلب المستوى) أو (ما لا يستحيل بالإنعكاس) هو نوع من البيان والتلاعب البديع بالكلمات أو بالحروف، يكون في الغالب على صورة جمل متناظرة الأحرف أو الكلمات، وقد يكون أحيانا على شكل كلمات متناظرة الأحرف تقرأ في الاتجاهين من اليمين ومن اليسار فلا يتغير معناها مثل كلمة نون.

أمثلة من اللغة العربية على القلب المستوى:

النص القرآني: (كل في فلك) 33 سورة الأنبياء

النص القرآني: (ربك فكبر) 3 سورة المدثر

وقول العماد للقاضي الفاضل: (سر فلا كبا بك الفرس)

ورد القاضي الفاضل عليه: (دام علا العماد)

وقول القاضي الأرجاني: مودته تدوم لكل هول - وهل كل مودته تدوم

وقول الحريري صاحب المقامات: أسى أرملاً إذا عرا - وارع إذا المرء أسا

كمالك تحت كلامك

سور حماه بربها محروس

بلح تعلق تحت قلعة حلب

بلح تعلق بقلعة حلب

بكر معلق بقلع مركب

أرض خضراء

زوج عجوز

ساكب كاس

حوت فمه مفتوح

حصان ناصح

While I'm on the topic, most Yemenis believe Arabic has more vocabulary than English but according to the Internet research I've done English has the greatest vocabulary of any language. I'm not sure which is true. Arabic I've heard has approximately 7 different words for "love" compared to our single one and at least two words for date (as in the fruit). But the question arises as to what counts as a single word because in Arabic one single root can have up to 10 different verb patterns, so does that count as one word or 10? And then each of these verb patterns can be conjugated into past/present, singular/dual/plural, 1st/2nd/3rd person. I think it'd be an interesting comparison to make and also to compare what number of unique Arabic words a native Arabic speaker uses in their everyday lives compared to the number of English words a native English speaker uses. As well as the number of words speakers of the respective languages are familiar with on average. My curiousity in this comes from wanting to know how many words a learner needs to learn.

Shilal Wadi Bana'

2007-10-18T06:59:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, a friend and I returned from our trip to see Yemen's most notable waterfall - Wadi Bana'a, near Ib. The waterfall itself was a little bit challenging to find and not as impressive as the waterfalls I've seen in Australia, but still it was a fun adventure and as always, the trip was a great way to practice Arabic conversation.

We left at about midday on Sunday and took a service taxi from the Farza (service taxi station) just up the street from Bab Al-Yemen. We paid for 3 places, instead of just 2, because the taxi drivers like to pack 4 people into the 3 seats of the middle row of the Peugeot and that tends to get really uncomfortable after 5 hours. When we arrived in Ta'iz one of the guys from our taxi, who happened to be a Checkpoint soldier on his holiday break, took as to the Shareef Hotel which we planned to stay at. He also offered to take us to his house for dinner but I declined because I didn't want to miss the South Africa v Argentina game which was going to be on tv that night.

I stayed at the same hotel last time I was in Ta'iz and as I remembered it's reasonably priced and comfortable. Initially they asked for 5,000 riyals for a two bed room but we managed to talk them down to 3,000 riyals. Note: If you ever happen to want to visit that hotel make sure you say "Funduq Ashreef" and not "Ashraf" because you'll be directed to the Ashraf area of the city which is about 5 kms from the hotel. (that was a mistake I made last time during my second trip to Ta'iz).

For me the real purpose of visiting Ta'iz again was to see to the waterfall at Wadi Bana'a. So on Tuesday morning we decided to try and find that waterfall and it turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I anticipated. First we caught a service taxi to Ib. We stopped there for lunch and then asked a taxi driver how we could get to the waterfall. He told us he would take us to a taxi which could take us to Kitaab and then we could catch another taxi to Wadi Bana'a. I'm pretty sure Kitaab was on the main road between Sana'a and Ta'iz so we could have just caught a taxi from Ta'iz to Sana'a and opted to get out at Kitaab but anyway... we took a taxi to Kitaab and saw some really impressive mountain scenery along the way. Our taxi struggled a few times and broke down twice like the timing was off in the engine but we still arrived in Kitaab 1 hour later.

At Kitaab we found a second taxi, a Hilux, which was going to Sadda and we were told the Shilal (waterfall) at Wadi Bana'a was located at hiking distance shortly before the town of Sadda. From the road we were told the Shilal was located 'down' from where we were and a boy from the Hilux acted as a bit of a guide for the start of the journey. After a few minutes he left us so we continued as instructed in a 'down' the mountain kind of direction. We asked an old man where the Shilal was but like our previous taxi he didn't really seem to firing on all cylinders. 15 minutes later or so we followed the sounds of rushing water to a small water fall which appeared to be man-made. Channels had been constructed to irrigate the fields of corn and wheat we were walking through and the channels led to this small man-made water fall.

The mini water fall was nice but I was convinced it was the same waterfall I'd seen in the buffet restaurant at the Mövenpick in Sana'a and so we followed the channel upstream. Further upstream the channel led us to the backyard of an older Yemeni lady who seem quite frustrated that an Australian had wandered into her backyard. She was there with something like 10 children and although she talked to us with a harsh tone I'm pretty sure she just wanted to know what we wanted. Once she understood what we were looking for she ordered about 5 of her kids to escort us in the correct direction. The kids led us in between cacti and thousands of pickly bushes and more channels and when they seemed sick of directed us they told us just to head 'down' and we'd find the waterfall. Shortly after we were abandoned we hit a fork in the road - cacti to the right and pickles to the left. My fellow explorer opted for the right so we headed down the path amongst the cacti. Not long into our new direction the boys yelled at us from above to tell us we had taken a wrong turn. So we headed back through the cacti back towards to the prickles.

The boys thought we having too easy of a time with the cacti so they spiced up our adventure by throwing large rocks at us. My friend claims one large rock almost hit his head but there wasn't much we could do from our position - those kids were too quick for us to catch for a talking to. A little further down the prickle path we met some Yemeni women walking in the opposition direction and they told us to follow the path to the waterfall. The women were young and seemed quite scared of us so I wasn't instill with much confidence in the accuracy of their directions. A few minutes later we arrived at a river bed and followed it upstream. Not long later I could faintly hear some falling water and a few corners later there it was - Shalal Wadi Bana'a. It wasn't huge, the volume of water wasn't all that great and it wasn't quite as free from rubbish I had hoped but at the time we were really glad to see it. We climbed up the waterfall with our backpacks and made it up the main face but the second face was much too steep and slippery to climb so we had to turn back.

It was about 5pm by that time so we hurried back up to the main road to find a taxi back to Sana'a. When we reached the road a Nissan Patrol stopped to pick us up with Kuwaiti number plates. The driver was super generous. He stopped to give us a ride to the village of Sadda without hesitation and then when in Sadda he drove around asking for a taxi for us to return to Sana'a in. After he found us a Hilux and we said our goodbyes he did a U turn and was asking us about money. We both thought he was asking for a bit of money for giving us a lift to Sadda and helping us and we were both happy to give him something. But when he repeated himself we realised he was asking us if we needed money to pay for the Hilux!! I don't think I'll ever find a finer example of generousity and hospitality than that.

Volcano Erupts in Yemen

2007-10-01T22:17:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was a regular Ramadan afternoon and I was expecting to eat dinner at the centre as usual. But then my bestest friend in the whole wide world right now invited me to go along to the Movenpick for dinner with her husband -- her shout! I said no a few times but eventually gave in because I figured I'll pay her back one day soon when I have some money again. During the trip by taxi to the Movenpick Hotel I noticed a vertical cloud in the sky line and mentioned to my friends I thought it was strange. I never expected it was a cloud from a volcanic eruption until one of my friends emailed me today to ask me if I'd heard about the eruption in Yemen. It turns out the eruption was on an island in the Red Sea between Sudan and Yemen at a totally safe distance from Sana'a.

By the way Yemen has numerous volcanoes, except up until yesterday they were all considered extinct I think . There's also some hot springs in a few places which are hot due to volcanic heating.

Below are the news stories from Yahoo in English and from Saba news in Arabic.

I also would like to mention that I've added a podcast and a new blog. You can get all the details at http://ArabicNewsWithAudio.blogspot.com. The idea being to add a current newspaper article every week with an accompanying Podcast with the audio of one of the teachers from YLC reading the article in Arabic. I think it will be a really useful resource for learners.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071001/ap_on_re_mi_ea/yemen_volcano

SAN'A, Yemen - A volcanic explosion rocked a tiny Yemeni island in the Red Sea, spewing lava and ash hundreds of feet into the air and forcing Yemeni authorities to evacuate a military base. NATO and Yemeni ships Monday were searching for eight missing soldiers.
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The eruption Sunday evening caused a landslide that collapsed the western part of Jabal al-Tair island, the Yemeni news agency SABA reported. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

The tiny oval island, about two miles wide, lacks a settled population but includes military installations used for naval control and observation because large cargo ships pass nearby.

It was not clear how many people were stationed on the island, and SABA reported that Yemeni ships had evacuated all personnel and were searching for eight missing military personnel.

A NATO fleet passing nearby reported seeing a "catastrophic volcanic eruption" at 7 p.m. local time Sunday on the island, about 70 miles off the Yemeni coast, said Ken Allan, a Navy Public Affairs with the Canadian Armed Forces.

"At this time, the entire island is aglow with lava and magma as it pours down into the sea," Allan said in an e-mail Sunday evening. "The lava is spewing hundreds of feet into the air, with the volcanic ash also (rising) a thousand feet in the air."

The NATO fleet was sailing toward the Suez Canal when it spotted the eruption. The government of Yemen asked NATO to assist in the search for survivors and the closet ship, the HMCS Toronto, was heading toward the island. The Canadian Armed Forces said they are trying to locate nine people believed to be at sea after the Yemen coast guard requested help. It is unclear why there was a discrepancy with the SABA report on the number of missing.

Jabal al-Tair — meaning "Bird Mountain" — is one of a number of volcanos at the southern end of the Red Sea in the narrows betwen Yemen and Sudan. The island last saw an explosive eruption in 1883, according to the Washington-based Smithsonian Institute's Global Volcanism Program.

Over the past two weeks, the area around the island had seen light earthquakes between magnitude 2-3.6, with three larger ones Sunday afternoon reaching magnitude 4.3, the Yemeni Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources said, according to SABA. Fishermen and other boats had been warned from approaching the area, it said.

Yemen is a poor tribal Sunni Muslim country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

http://www.sabanews.net/ar/news138885.htm

الحمم البركانية تغمر جزيرة جبل الطير
الحمم البركانية تطمر جزيرة جبل الطير والعثور على ثلاث جثث وناج واحد
[01/أكتوبر/2007] صنعاء – سبانت : رضوان فارع
قالت مصادر في إدارة عمليات القاعدة البحرية بالحديدة انه تم العثور على ثلاث جثث وناج واحد من اصل ثمانية مفقودين في جزيرة جبل الطير اثر الانفجار البركاني في الجزيرة.
وأكد عبالباري شسمان في تصريح لـ سبانت ان الناجي حالته جيدة وهو في طريقة على متن زورق الى المستشفى العسكري في الحديدة.
وقال شمسان انه تم اخلاء 47 شخصاً من الجزيرة حالة احدهم خطيرة والباقين حالتهم جيدة ويتلقون العلاج في المستشفى العسكري بالمدينة.
وأوضح شمسان" ان جزيرة جبل الطير طمرت بالكامل اثر انفجار بركاني حاصل فيها وان فرق الإنقاذ تقوم بالبحث عن المفقودين .
وكانت جزيرة جبل الطير قد تعرضت لنشاط زلزالي صاحبة بركان يوم امس الاحد .

سبأنت
المزيد من (محلي)
غدا بالرياض ..الاجتماع الثالث للجنة اليمنية السعودية لمكافحة تهريب الأطفال
القربي يلتقى نظيريه الايسلندي والاوزباكستاني بنيويورك
تراجع النشاط البركاني في جزيرة جبل الطير
وفاة أربعة من أبناء قائد مدرسة الحرس الجمهوري في حادث مروري بالمحويت
مهرجان جماهيري بذمار بمناسبة مرور عام على الانتخابات الرئاسية والمحلية
إصابة عشرة أشخاص إثر انفجار قاطرة غاز بقرية بيت القرماني
مؤشرات نشاط بركاني في جزيرة جبل الطير في البحر الاحمر
رئيس الجمهورية يطلع على عمليات الإخلاء والإنقاذ في جزيرة جبل الطير بالحديدة
حفل استقبال فىالذكرى الـ 58لتأسيس جمهورية الصين الشعبية
اللجنة العليا للسجون تصادق على 586 حالة إفراج

Stranger danger cartoons

2007-09-30T01:26:00.001+08:00

Here's a couple of cartoons I picked up in the office today which happen to be quite easy to read.

The other sex

2007-09-03T21:11:00.000+08:00

Today I was learning the new words in a chapter of Al-Kitaab with my teacher and one of the words was "to be equal". My teacher gave me the example sentence "in Islam men and women are equal". I asked her about the example of inheritance, for example a man with no wife and two children - a son and a daughter, dies. Is their inheritance equal? She told me no, the son gets twice what the woman gets but that's ok because the man has to look after a wife and a family so he should get more money. That doesn't seem equal to me but apparently it's better than pre-Islamic times so I thought that was a good thing.

Then a few new words later we came across the word for sex - jins جنس, which is used as a verb "to have sex" but just like in English, it is also used for the sex of a person ie. male or female. In this case we were talking about the sex of a person type rather than the verb. So when my teacher gave me the example - "the other sex" I knew from the context she wasn't talking about alternative sexual practices, she was talking about "the other sex" ie. female! I found that totally hilarious. How sexist!! Men are the main sex, women are the other sex. It reminded me of "the other white meat" advertising campaign and Fat Bastard from Austin Powers 2 --- Baby, the other white meat. I probably shouldn't have explained the latter part of why I was laughing because my teacher didn't find it funny at all.

http://www.videocaffe.com/video/dYOinpV2REQ/Austin-Powers--Chicken-In-Bed

Starting to miss Australia

2007-09-03T19:05:00.000+08:00

My job searching really hasn't panned out as I expected. I'm pretty discouraged by it now and have little hope left I'll be able to get the Gulf engineering I was really hoping for. I guess now I'm at that point 98% of people get to where they have to compromise because they weren't able to realise their dream. Perhaps it'll just be a detour or perhaps I'll just be unfulfilled; living like that writer who took on teaching temporarily and ended up teaching right up till his retirement.

As much as I enjoy learning Arabic it's not really going to take me too far in a career sense. No matter how much a foreigner studies Arabic, someone who is bi-lingual in Arabic since childhood is always going to have a major advantage. And if I don't return to engineering soon that door is going to slam shut and Arabic won't be enough to fall back on. So with those things in mind, I should return to Australia while the door to engineering is still opened for me.

I think I value what I'm doing here more because of everything I've lost to come here. Had I just come here straight after high school and given up only a little, maybe then I wouldn't feel like returning to Australia is such a defeat. I know that's a dangerous character trait though. If every time I make a mistake I feel like I have to stick with it until it turns to gold then I'm going to waste a lifetime.

Now that my 12 month contract is officially over I've begun to miss Australia much more than before. I just found out the NRL (Rugby League) website has all of their games online in a non-streaming format. This is great because before I was never able to watch games on the school's internet line other than at 4am in the morning. But now it's not streaming, I can leave the game to download and watch it later without any undesirable pauses.

Plurals in Arabic

2007-08-18T22:52:00.000+08:00

While English only has one way to make a word a plural, Arabic has several. To learners of the language this just adds another challenge and often an area for complaint, but the sweet thing about the plurals is that some of the plurals sound so cool you can't forget them and they add to the richness of the language. So feel free to take this facet of the language as a deterrent from learning Arabic or as an incentive.

I could look up the plural patterns and list them for you but almost any Arabic Language textbook will do that but I'd like to list the plurals I really like the sound of. The simplest style of plural is the simple feminine plural. Many of the words ending in a teh marboota ة are feminine and the great majority of them are made plural simply by dropping the teh marboota and adding ات -- "at". How boring would the whole language be if they only use this plural pattern! Anyhow, most of the borrowed words from English to Arabic get pluralised by this plural pattern eg. see-dee (CD) see-dee-at

I'm one of the groups of plurals that sound cool to me are classified as broken plurals, because they are made by inserting long vowels between the root letters. Ok down to the examples...

store = dukan - دكّان ---> dukakiin - دكاكين
key = miftaaH - مفتاح ---> mafaatiH - مفاتيح
dictionary = qaamoos - قاموس --> qawamiis - قواميس

The other plural pattern I like the sound of is the one used from masculine job titles. Words like ambasador, minister, prince, president, all get pluralised in the same pattern, which is nice since all these words are in the same type of word ie. masculine job titles.

prince = amiir - امير ---> umara' - أمراء
key = ra'iis - رئيس ---> roasa' - رؤساء

All of these plurals rhyme together so once you've learnt one or two it comes really naturally to pronounce other plurals with the same pattern.

I knew about the complexities of plurals quite early into studying Arabic and was happy enough to accept them as part of the challenge but there was one hairy extra detail I didn't discover until about 10 months into Yemen - the imperative.

An imperative is just an instruction so like in English when we command someone to do something we just say the verb on it's own, unconjugated eg. sit!, eat!, run!, leave! and so on. At the beginners level of Arabic we're taught the simplest imperative which is simply adding an alif / e sound at the start of verbs. So to say "sit!" the verb is jalasa (for he sat) and you just change that to ijlas. The imperative for walk is just imshee. Nothing to scary yet right? But then later they tell you there are 10 different patterns for making the imperative.

Actually now that I look at the 10 patterns they're not quite as complicated as I first thought. Patterns I, VII - X are all actually made with an initial alif and variations of the short internal vowels. So that bit's okay. Pattern II imperative is the same letters as the pattern II verb except two of the short vowels are different. Pattern III follows the same rules for the change to imperative as II and Patterns V, and VI are also similar to II. So really, with the exception of needing to learn the short vowels, the imperatives aren't too bad. If you make a mistake with the short vowels you will still be understood.

One further warning if you're considering learning Arabic - almost all words in Arabic are built up from 3 letters, called the root letters. From the root letters there are 10 different patterns for contorting the word to mean different but very similar things. So for example d-r-s means to study and this is pattern I. But if the r is lengthened to twice its length to d-rr-s (a longer trill on the r) the word means to teach, and this is pattern II. Pattern II always (in my experience) means to cause Pattern I to happen. Nice system don't you think? Then the the remaining 8 patterns are made by adding "T"s, "S"s and the long aa sound (alif) to make other meanings related to the word.

After 1 year I still have my training wheels on and I have to look up those 10 patterns from a chart but one day I hope to memorise them. The benefit being that the Hans Wehr lists the definitions by root form. So if you wanted to look up to teach, you'd look up d-r-s and then see pattern II = to teach. That's a trivial example because the other patterns aren't quite as easy to remember. I usually look up more complicated words by finding which verb pattern it has then I look up the root and look for the pattern with the appropriate number.

It sounds more complicated to describe than it really is. Here's another example. استعمل - ista3mala as I said before the patterns are usually made by adding alifs, "t"s and "s"s so I disregard them for now and that reveals the root letters. عمل - .3mala. .3mala. is a really common word and it takes up about 2 and half pages in the Hans Wehr. .3mala. means to work, as in "he worked". Then I check my verb patterns chart and it reveals the initial "ista.." prefix is added to pattern X words. Back in the Hans Wehr it says pattern X means to use, to employ.

If that last example sounds interesting to you then I think you'll probably enjoy learning Arabic. If not then you'll need to have some other motivations for studying it.

Madness at Pizza Hut

2007-08-18T20:32:00.000+08:00

Last week as I was heading to Pizza Hut for dinner and about 5 minutes walk from arriving, it started pouring down rain. 2 minutes of running later I arrived at Pizza Hut pretty wet and all of the tables were occupied - this was the most packed I'd ever seen Pizza Hut. So I ordered a take-away Pizza and sat down on the waiting bench while trying not to offend any women by making eye contact with them. Then 5 minutes into my wait something quite out of the ordinary happened.

I stood up and looked into the eating area behind me and there appeared to be two patrons trying to fight each other while two groups were holding each of them back. Neither group had much success with holding back the two fighters and the fight began to spread as other people were caught in the cross-fire of thrown plates, glasses and then chairs and tables. It was total madness. Then the staff were also involved and they too were throwing furniture at the patrons and plates. People were climbing up on top of tables to attack other people with the sort of anger you'd expect at a riot. Other staff members ran in from the kitchen to join the brawl and began punching and throwing things too. A few seconds later the violence reached it's peak when one of the older patrons in a thoub drew out a pistol and held it up in the air. There was a collective groan of "shame on him" made by the crowd, rather than cries of fear. A small group of Russians escaped from the restaurant at that point and then many of the fighters and most of the staff crowded around the man with the gun. The group were arguing with the man with the gun and led him up to the salad bar and cornered him there as they continued to argue. They continued to argue for at least another 5 minutes and then my waiter at the counter yelled out at that my pizza was ready. I grabbed it and left.

While I was never frightened of any real danger I was really disappointed about the madness of the whole event. If these guys can see a reason to draw a gun over such a small issue how can there ever be peace in the middle east? I have almost no doubt that initial issue was something as minor a discrepancy on the bill. I couldn't help thinking that this sort of thing would absolutely never happen in Australia. Except at a nightclub where alcohol and drugs were involved. In the rare case of this kind of thing ever happening in Australia generally you can depend on the staff to be involved only to stop the violence, because in Australia any staff member involved in a fight would likely be fired and probably even taken to court.

A few weeks earlier than that there was a similar event at the school. Some young guys arrived wanting to fight with our young 16 year old guard and our guard responded by getting a baseball bat sized club to fight them with. Thankfully other people stopped him from using the club and nothing serious happened. But this whole mentality, which I'm sure is a result of cultural and legal (or lack of) influences, all explains why people are killed in this country and region over trivial matters. During the presidential election last year I heard several people died during riots near election offices. And I just found out back in 2005 many people, possibly up to a hundred according to some people, were killed during riots after the government removed their fuel subsidy which led to the doubling of the petrol price in Yemen. While Yemenis are about as friendly a people as you'll find anywhere in the world it's incredible that as people they also have this extraordinary potential for barely restrained violence.