Posts from December 2009

Happy New Year

Posted by aziza 4 Comments
Dec 30 2009

Happy New Year

كل عام وأنتم بخير!

What is your new year’s resolution? Below are the top resolutions for Americans.

  • Lose Weight
  • Manage Debt
  • Save Money
  • Get a Better Job
  • Get Fit
  • Get a Better Education
  • Drink Less Alcohol
  • Quit Smoking Now
  • Reduce Stress Overall
  • Reduce Stress at Work
  • Take a Trip
  • Volunteer to Help Others

(Source: http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/New_Years_Resolutions.shtml)

In the Arab world, people talk about new year’s wishes (امنيات العام الجديد). My wish for the new year is peace, happiness and success (السلام والسعادة والنجاح) for the whole world. What is your wish for the new year?

ما أمنيتك للعام الجديد؟

Merry Christmas

Posted by aziza 1 Comment
Dec 25 2009

Merry Christmas

عيد ميلاد مجيد

Merry Christmas

Source: maktoob.com

Special words

Posted by aziza No Comments
Dec 23 2009

In Arabic, there is a limited number of words that are made up of one letter only, for example (و) ‘and’, and (ف) which is used to link sentences explaining each other. In addition, there are some prepositions, e.g. (ب) ‘with/by’, (ك) ‘as/like’, (ل) ‘to/for’.

What we should note about all these is that they cannot stand alone as separate words. Instead, they must join the words the follow them. For example,

محمد وأحمد صديقان.

“Mohammed and Ahmed are friends.”

سافرنا بالطائرة.

“We traveled by plane.”

هو شجاع كالأسد.

“He is as brave as a lion.”

It should also be noted that when we use (ل) before a noun that begins with (ال), we must delete the (ا) at the beginning of the definite article.

ذهب الولد للبيت. (= ل + البيت)

“The boy went home.”

توجهت للجامعة. (= ل + الجامعة)

“I headed to the university.”

The Arabian Nights

Posted by aziza 2 Comments
Dec 22 2009

The Arabian Nights (ألف ليلة وليلة) is a large collection of stories that are believed to be of Persian origin. They became prominent in the West in the eighteenth century when they were translated into French. The main characters of the story are king (شهريار) ‘Shahryar’ who kills his first wife after betraying him, and then he marries a girl every night and kills her in the morning in retaliation from all women. Then, he marries (شهرزاد) ‘Scheherazade’ who is a bright and eloquent young woman who starts telling the king interesting stories, and she survives one night after the other for a thousand and one nights (ألف ليلة وليلة). The stories include myths about people, animals, genies, kings, etc. Among the most famous characters of the Arabian Nights are Aladin (علاء الدين), Ali Baba (علي بابا), and Sinbad (السندباد).

The Arabian nights

Climate Summit

Posted by aziza No Comments
Dec 20 2009

Copenhagen Summit

The Copenhagen UN climate summit (مؤتمر الأمم المتحدة حول المناخ) has attracted a great deal of media and public attention. In this post, I provide some words and expressions related to the topic of the climate summit from news articles I read about the topic. I think these are timely, and I hope they would be interesting and useful to readers. I also provide a link to Arabic articles on the topic from bbcarabic.com website.

قِمّة

summit

مُؤتَمَر

conference

الأمَم المُتَّحِدَة

the UN

الدُّوَل الصِناعيّة

industrial countries

الدُّوَل النامية

developing countries

اِتِفاق

accord/deal/agreement

المُنَاخ

climate

ظَاهِرَة

phenomenon

التَّغَيُّر المُناخيّ

Climate change

الاِحْتِباس الحَرَاري

global warming

دَرَجَة حَرَارة

temperature

اِنبِعاث الغازات

gas emissions

مَخاطِر

threats

النَّشَاط البَشَري

human activities

كارِثَة

disaster

التَلَوث

pollution

التغيّر المناخي – تغطية خاصة

(Climate change – special coverage)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/indepth/cluster_climate_change_tc2.shtml

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