Sunday, December 04, 2005

Arabic language primer

.
.
Abu Khaleel explains how Arabic is constructed. The alphabet, together with an elaborate permutation of mood, tense and gender possibilities makes for a very descriptive language. Poetry flows naturally from this stream.
There are indeed more than a hundred words in the Arabic language for the word “love”. Now I hope you know why. There are also hundreds of words for things like walking, running, smiling, crying, the camel, the horse, the sword, rain, clouds and many other items and feelings. The greatest benefactor has naturally been Poetry. It has to be mentioned though that some of those subtle differences in meaning are being lost, perhaps forever, in these times of utility, speed, junk food and junk words.

Nothing political here, folks. Just one culture reaching out to another. (I have copied the calligraphy example above hoping that the meaning isn't controversial. When I see Chinese characters used to decorate shirt fabrics or napkins I also wonder what they might be saying.)

1 comment:

Abu Khaleel said...

Dear Hoots,

Thank you.

The calligraphy example is just that, an example that I found on the net. It is a quote from the Koran (as is most frequently the case with these things!) and says something like: “Blessed be He who owns ‘everything’ and who is capable of everything.” Unofficial translation, of course :)