Tag: arabic (last 300)
Muqabla, muqabla
(NewSci) ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was also a parody of modern mathematics. Carroll’s day job was Oxford math prof, and Arabic’s ‘al jebr e al mokabla’ describes Alice’s shrinking and growing.
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(Philly) The TSA will detain you if you’re carrying flash cards for learning Arabic. Agent: ‘Do you know what language bin Laden spoke?’ [Does she know what language the Unabomber spoke?]
Shukran, shukriya, thank you
(Vid) In Cairo, Obama said ‘shukran’ and pronounced ‘Muslim’ correctly. Reiterated AfPak policy. Transcript: [via]
Greek to me
(Strangemaps) Arabic speakers’ expression for an untelligible language, like ‘it’s all Greek to me,’ uses Hindi. [Hindi speakers’ is Tamil.]
$240K settlement for Arabic tee
(Wired) The TSA and JetBlue are paying a $240K settlement to a man asked to sit in the back of a plane and change out of a t-shirt with Arabic writing on it. (ht: Kerim)
Arabic in the WSJ
(WSJ) That conservative bastion the Wall St. Journal uses the word ‘kismet’ (fate) in a story about white-bread Indiana pol Evan Bayh. ‘Backers see kismet in that Birch Bayh’s slogan in 1976 was Change We Can Believe In.’