Arabic anecdotes
Mar. 20th, 2007 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatarperegrineMy coworker Mohamed told me a story yesterday that I think illustrates the regional dialects of Arabic quite well.
In classical Arabic, the word khiashim (خياشيم) means "gills." In Sudan, where Mohamed is from, the derived word khashm (خشم) is used to mean "mouth." So, Mohamed said, a Sudanese dentist who had recently moved to the Gulf region told his first patient "Iftah khashmka" -- "Open your mouth." The patient got agitated and said, "What do you mean? How am I supposed to do that?" Here in the Gulf, it turns out, khashm means not "mouth" but "nose."
So, there you go: regional dialects of Arabic in a nutshell. Arabic is diglossic, which means that the formal (usu. written) and colloquial (usu. spoken) forms are only tangentially related. There is, for example, a formal Arabic word for mouth, but people would never actually use it in conversation. The word they'd actually use differs from region to region, and although one can often see how those vernacular words are derived from classical forms (as with khashm and khiashim), that's not enough to make the various dialects of Arabic mutually intelligible.
In other Arabic news, today in class I stupidly mistook a ن for a ب and said that the main character in our story urinated (تباول) before bed instead of that he took (تناول) his medicine. Oops. One of my classmates helpfully said, "Well, he probably did that, too."
In classical Arabic, the word khiashim (خياشيم) means "gills." In Sudan, where Mohamed is from, the derived word khashm (خشم) is used to mean "mouth." So, Mohamed said, a Sudanese dentist who had recently moved to the Gulf region told his first patient "Iftah khashmka" -- "Open your mouth." The patient got agitated and said, "What do you mean? How am I supposed to do that?" Here in the Gulf, it turns out, khashm means not "mouth" but "nose."
So, there you go: regional dialects of Arabic in a nutshell. Arabic is diglossic, which means that the formal (usu. written) and colloquial (usu. spoken) forms are only tangentially related. There is, for example, a formal Arabic word for mouth, but people would never actually use it in conversation. The word they'd actually use differs from region to region, and although one can often see how those vernacular words are derived from classical forms (as with khashm and khiashim), that's not enough to make the various dialects of Arabic mutually intelligible.
In other Arabic news, today in class I stupidly mistook a ن for a ب and said that the main character in our story urinated (تباول) before bed instead of that he took (تناول) his medicine. Oops. One of my classmates helpfully said, "Well, he probably did that, too."
