مَزْرَعَة
root: ز-ر-ع / noun / plural: مَزارِع / definition: farm, plantation
In Medina, the week before last, we’d wandered off-path and through-open-gate into someone’s land. Unknowing trespassers, our eyes took in the palm trees, running water, greenery.
And then—oops—the someone whose land it was walked over and asked how we got in.
It was fine; he kindly let us stay, wander, and video, but asked us to close the gate behind us when we left so that the بزران don’t enter.
“Did you get what he meant?”
“Yeah, he was talking about the schoolchildren.”
“Did you notice what word he used?”
It was بِزران. Singular form: بِزر.
بِزر (which forms the plural بُزور in MSA) literally means “seed“. In the Saudi dialect, it means “child“.
It’s not hard to see the derivation, but it’s definitely an interesting one.
I’m sure I must have absorbed some more Saudi dialect words on the two-and-a-half-week trip I returned from yesterday, but let my body and mind recover first. Riyadh, Mecca, Jeddah, Yanbu’, Medina, Riyadh… I’m still working out how to place my feet firmly on the ground.
And as I’m finding my footing, I have a list of emails in my head that I need to send—three of them urgent and the rest subject to a timeline thrown to the wind. I know now that it’s January, I need to urgently stop wandering off-path and get back to my studies and work.
… But what can I do if I see an open gate inviting me to a lush garden? What (word) might I discover there?
.مع السلامة
Need advice with Arabic? Book a consultation with me.
If you’d like to receive email notifications whenever a new post is published on The Arabic Pages, enter your email below and click “Subscribe”:
The Arabic Pages 