Five Arabic Terms for the Bedouins

وَبَر

root: و-ب-ر / noun / plural: أَوْبار / definition: the fur of camels and goats

Throughout my twenties, I’ve carried a sort of sign-up-and-see-what-happens attitude.

I’ll sign up to lead a workshop or run a marathon or join a summer school abroad, etcetera, and then just follow the path of fate.

Sometimes, though, I run into little problems. Like how I offered to speak at an academic roundtable a while back and—now that my name is actually on the program—I’ve completely forgotten what the topic of the conversation is meant to be.

I can’t find the sign up link or poster. I didn’t save my response to the online form calling for speakers. And the program provides no details. So, how do I go about asking the organiser without sounding coo-coo?

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Arabic-Akkadian Roots: ء-ك-ل ,ع-ل-و, and ب-ك-ي

دَجاج

root: د-ج-ج / collective noun / definition: chicken

Have you ever roasted a chicken upside down? Well I have. Twice. Well, it was one time—but two chickens.

No questions, please. This was a cathartic confession, blurted out in a fluster of shame, and no more than that.

Thank God for the antidote of blushing: distraction. And that’s why I’m launching into another post about Arabic-Akkadian roots. This time, we’re looking at these three Semitic roots which are present in both languages: ʿ-l-w, ʾ-k-l, and b-k-y.

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Around the Knot in Ten Blinks

غَمْضة

root: غ-م-ض / noun / definition: a blink

Can you believe it’s been ten years since I enrolled in my Arabic and Linguistics bachelor’s degree?

No way! scream the imaginary crowd in my head. But yes, yes indeed.

I’d stepped into university, fresh off of A-Level stress, printed timetable in hand—and then, in just ten blinks: a graduation, launching my blog, a pandemic, enrolling in an MA, another graduation, travelling, lecturing, my PhD, marriage, a work placement…

Ten whooshes around the Sun seems about right for all of that, but I’m sure that orbit has been speeding up.

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Exploring Time in the Arabic Dictionary: “the Present”

ذِكْرى

root: ذ-ك-ر / noun / plural: ذِكرَيات / definition: a memory

Sometimes, we spend so long immersed in thoughts of the future and memories of the past that we forget that we’re floating in the present.

I remember writing about floating, and then I think about how every all-consuming present of mine—well, all of ours—has become a past, and how every future feels like a horizon when—in fact—it’s just another present.

And with those thoughts stirred up, we tumble back into our Exploring Time series. This time, we’re meditating on the present, الحاضر.

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Dictionary Finds: مراح

شَلّال

root: ش-ل-ل / noun / plural: شَلّالات / definition: waterfall

It’s been a beautifully busy long weekend. Beach walks, waterfalls, countryside drives—oh, and still stealing some minutes here and there to upload videos to my YouTube channel.

But it’s back to my laptop now and a return to the Dictionary Finds series…

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Arabic-Akkadian Roots: q-b-l, k-l-m, and m-l-k

كَلام

root: ك-ل-م / noun / definition: speech

Since I stopped attending Akkadian evening classes, I’ve been feeling a little detached from this language I’d started falling in love with. And I miss learning and writing about the connections between Arabic and Akkadian—so here we are today.

I’ve previously explored some lexical similarities between the two languages, but this week I’m reflecting on Semitic roots that Arabic and Akkadian share. In particular: q-b-l, k-l-m, and m-l-k.

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Root Exploration: ء-ر-ب

مُسْتَشْفى

root: ش-ف-ي / form X passive participle / plural: مُستَشفَيات / definition: hospital

Four hours is how long we spent in A&E yesterday. And it’s interesting how the brain keeps itself busy during those drawn-out periods of waiting on seemingly uncomfortable-by-design chairs.

My mind, for example, kept wandering between Subway sandwiches and the spacing of the wall decor while my eyes scanned the ECG results in my hand every now and then, as if anything new would have made its way onto the paper since I’d last checked.

I didn’t get a Subway sandwich in the end, if you were wondering. Nor did I work out why the wall decor was laid out as it was.

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Between Observations and Wishful Thinking

حالِمة

root: ح-ل-م / form I active participle, feminine form / definition: dreamer, dreaming

Maybe, from my writings on this blog, you get the impression that I’m always floating between thoughts. An observation here, a dictionary find there, multiple pivots per post…

And you’d be right to think so, of course. My mind is always laden with: fifteen mental screenshots of dictionary entries; thirty-two unwritten notes for my PhD; two pages of projects I want to launch or pick up again; twenty-four recipes to try; and a long list of extinct languages I’d love to revive.

And that’s before I’ve even rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

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Arabic Observations: ذانِكَ

بُرْهان

root: ب-ر-ه-ن / noun / plural: بَراهين / definition: proof

It seems that I’ve unintentionally created a new series of posts this Ramadan, and now I can’t help but add to it.

We’ve been looking at variations of ذلك/تلك in the Qur’an—specifically, how these demonstratives are modified with pronoun suffixes:

But things don’t end there. Twenty-eight chapters (سُوَر) in, we find another related particle-plus-pronoun-suffix: ذانِكَ.

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Arabic Observations: تِلكَ and تِلكُما and تِلكُم

Artwork by Devrim Erbil, which was displayed at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan

التَّوْطين

root: و-ط-ن / form II verbal noun / definition: to grant citizenship

Ten-thousand-and-something days after my birth, Cyprus has finally acknowledged my existence. I can’t blame them for not granting me citizenship earlier though, as—well, how could they have known me? I was born in a London borough and have, since then, spent a cumulative total of 192 hours in my “homeland”—little enough to invite quotation marks around that term.

But, glad tidings to me: I now have a piece of paper corroborating my Cypriot-ness. My looming late-20s identity crisis can breathe a sigh of relief. (On this front, at least.)

I’ll refrain from browsing suitable frames to display the evidence of my newly-acknowledged existence because, today, I need to fill in some gaps I left open with last week’s post.

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