Intermingling Languages

Sima Q. American University of Beriut. Englsih 229.

[befitzgeraldwriting]

I swear to every heaven ever imagined, if I hear one more dead-eyed hipster tell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare from the grave so he can tell them every reason why he wishes he were born in a time where he could have a damn Gmail account. The day after I taught my mother how to send pictures over Iphone she texted me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row. Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful. But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay in your backwards-hoping-all-inclusive club while the rest of us fall in love over Skype. Send angry letters to state representatives, as we record the years first sunrise so we can remember what beginning feels like when we are inches away from the trigger. Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castle while we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did. Hashtag you’re a pretentious ass hole. Van Gogh would have taken 20 selflies a day. Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers nothing but heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words. Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest Vine account, and we all would have checked it every morning while we Snap Chat our coffee orders to the people we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes. This life is spilling over with 85 year olds rewatching JFK’s assassination and 7 year olds teaching themselves guitar over Youtube videos. Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting what my fathers voice sounds like. No longer must we sneak into our families phonebook to look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend. No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like or how grasshoppers procreate. I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulips in public parks on my cellphone and you will continue to scoff and that is okay. But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed you are to be alive in a moment where you can google search how to say I love you in 164 different languages.

b.e.fitzgerald (Art is a Facebook status about your winter break.)

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

This is the Zaatar w Zeit menu in Amman. Other than the fact that the title of the restaurant itself is an example of languages in contact, the menu itself provides an interesting view onto the topic. In seems that, in order to maintain the theme of the restaurant, the menu is written using primarily the Arabic words for the dishes, and the small descriptions below use the English words. For example, Aarouss Labneh is in Arabic, but the description "traditional creamy yogurt" is in English. 

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

This picture is currently circulating on facebook among Jordanians, because apparently the man who plays the well-known character "Mr. Bean", aka Rowan Atkinson, visited Jordan. The funny thing is that his character has become so well-known that the caption uses his character name instead of his actual name, saying, "Mr. Bean visits Petra!" with Mr. Bean written using Arabic letters.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

This is one of my favorite translations-gone-wrong. Since the word leaves can have two meanings (it can either refer to the part of a plant, or it can mean the present tense of the verb leave), the translator must have mixed up between the two definitions and the result is that the translation uses the Arabic equivalent of the verb "to leave".

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Club sandwich, hot dog, peanut butter, crab, etc, can all be fairly translated into Arabic, but whoever wrote this menu preferred to keep the English pronunciation and write them in Arabic.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

If you translate the word "hotel" into Arabic on Google translate, the first result you get is فندق, but the word أوتيل also appears down the list although it is not officially an actual Arabic word. It only appears because of how widely the word "hotel" has been used among Arabic speakers that it finally became an unofficial Arabic word itself.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Using English letters and numbers (arabeezy) to  accurately display the equivalent of the Arabic store name.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Boucherie is originally a French word, while Halal is originally Arabic.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Bull's, when written with Arabic letters, can be pronounced in two different ways: either as Bull's or Balls, depending on how much stress you place on the letter و.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

The point of using the word "residence" in Arabic letters instead of writing its Arabic equivalent "سكن" completely defies me.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

The use of English letters to represent words that are originally Arabic can be justified in this situation considering that Deek Duke is a well-known restaurant and the result of the switch in alphabets does not sound as ridiculous as some of the other examples I have posted before.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

In this sign, there was an attempt to recreate the pronunciation of mixed nuts using Arabic letters, only to result with what will sound like "mix nut". Some letters were omitted in the Arabic version, probably because it would ruin the flow of the phrase considering that the letters do not normally appear after each other than often. The result would have sounded weirder than it does now.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

As with the previous example, Rock Inn is a phrase that is translated only by pronunciation to Arabic so that the letters maintain the same sound as Rock Inn. Below the Arabic version of Rock Inn, it reads Night Club in Arabic, but because of the difference in alphabets it sounds more like "clob" instead of "club".

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

This particular sign made me laugh a lot. It is advertising a men's clothing store that is called Top Rank, and these words are written exactly as they are using Arabic letters. The ironic thing is that they wrote "top" as "توب" which in casual Arabic means robe or dress and in fusha means "repent" . 

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

The word "market" translates directly into souk (سوق) in Arabic, but we never see the word "souk" used in supermarket signs on the streets. The phrase "supermarket" has long passed the point where people might register it as an English phrase, it has now been changed to accommodate the gaps we have in our Arabic language.

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Menus continue to be the ultimate source of arabeezy (Arabic words written with english letters and numbers) when it comes to Arabic countries. My friend sent me this picture from Amman and while I can see why they would write 3adas (lentil) and sa7lab (not sure what it is called in English) using Arabeezy, I think Mooz B 7aleeb (Banana milkshake?) is entirely pointless. It seems to rely more on which phrase (English vs. Arabic) is used more popularly. 

[madethisforenglclass-blog]

Charlie's Hot Dog in Hamra uses English letters to display the word Halal (حلال) referring to the meat that the restaurant uses.