Beginner - Traffic Lights

I was rather surprised when Sierra talked about “yellow traffic lights”, for in the UK the normal expression is “amber traffic lights”. When I ran a few Google searches I found “yellow traffic lights” on American websites and “amber traffic lights” on British websites. These results highlight an interesting difference between British and American English.

This brings me to another subject which is even more intriguing, viz. the manner in which colours are perceived and described in various linguistic communities. Since Arabic and English belong to different language families, it is rather surprising that there are fairly close correspondences between English and Arabic colour adjectives, but there may be differences which have gone unnoticed.

Let’s consider the word “red”. When someone turns red in the UK the colour of his / her face is often described as “crimson” or “scarlet”, and similar adjectives are used in French-speaking countries. “Cramoisi” corresponds to “crimson”, and “écarlate” to “scarlet”. In German-speaking countries, however, the situation is quite different. There are German colour adjectives for “scarlet” and “crimson” (“scharlachrot” and “karmesinrot”), but these words are rarely used, except by painters, art historians, fashion experts or poets. If I were to tell my German colleagues that somebody turned “karmesinrot” when he was asked an embarrassing question, they would probably laugh and wonder why I’d chosen such an outlandish adjective.

How do native speakers of Arabic describe blushing? Do they say that somebody’s face is ﺃﺤﻤﺮ, or do they use words that would correspond to “crimson” or “scarlet”?

Now let’s consider another colour adjective: “off-white”. This is quite common in English. Agatha Christie fans may recall the “off-white rugs on the gleaming parquet floor” in the fifth chapter of “And Then There were None” (originally published as “Ten Little Niggers” in 1939). The German equivalent is “gebrochen weiß”, but “gebrochen weiß” is much much less common in German than “off-white” is in English. I’ve noticed that very few German men know this term, though most German women seem to know it. This is probably because women tend to be more fashion-conscious or colour-sensitive than men.

Several months ago I found an Egyptian word for “off-white” in a glossary compiled by a Russian linguist. The word is ﺴﻤﻨﻲ. Is there a standard Arabic equivalent, and if so, is it widely used in the Middle East?

Finally, I’d like to ask a question about the blue traffic light mentioned at the end of the dialogue. I’ve never seen a blue traffic light. Is this an optical illusion?

I've just discovered some articles about new blue traffic lights in Florida, so it seems likely that the blue signal mentioned at the end of the dialogue is not a mere figment of the speaker's imagination.

great lesson again- very practical and very well presented -you'r way of doing does facilitate the learning process significantly -

Since it’s very difficult to memorise irregular feminine forms such as ﺼﻓﺮﺍﺀ, learners have to develop all kinds of memorisation strategies. One of the most effective strategies consists in establishing relationships between words belonging to different languages. ﺼﻓﺮﺍﺀ can be associated with Engl. “saffron”, Fr. “safran”, Ger. “Safran”, etc. These European words were all derived from a medieval Latin noun (“safranum”), which in turn was derived from the Arabic noun ﺰﻋﻓﺮﺍﻦ or a similar-looking Persian word. It’s not clear whether the Arabic word was borrowed from Persian or vice versa, but that doesn’t really matter here. We just want to learn Arabic with a minimum expenditure of effort.

Dear Sierra and Elias,

Of course, I learned something from this lesson, as from all your lessons.

Nevertheless, frankly, there is much room for improvement in the detail explanation of the sentences.

As I wrote earlier, beginning the explaining of an Arabic structure or word with a lengthy explanation in English before the listener even knows what you are aiming at, leaves me with the question: What is you rationale?

This method, not starting with the Arabic term, not only reduces the listener’s exposure to the Arabic meaning to the absolute minimum since he/she is, immediately after the revelation of what you were aiming at, exposed to and distracted by another lengthy English sermon on another, new term or topic. Thus, the just explained Arabic structure or word is immediately eradicated from memory since no time was given to transfer it from short term memory to the long term memory.

Why don’t you start with the Arabic term first?

Another thing: You do not repeat sentences, neither in part or in full. You are talking to beginners. Do you assume they remember several complete Arabic sentences – in detail – after only 2 or 3 exposures before?

You seem to assume, the listener has the transcript before him or her. But not only I listen while driving long distances on the Autobahn. While driving, many occasions do occur that are more important than listening. It will, thus, be important to repeat part of the phrases or sentences to re-sync the listener and to keep him/her in sync.

And another topic: There are hints to other possible uses of a structure, like ‘How beautiful!’, but you miss the opportunity to give the Arabic example. Thus, these hints are just a waste of time, yours, and mine.

If you wish, dear Sierra and Elias, I will send you an edited podcast No. 298 by e-mail.

Dear Desmond,

In German, we say ‘weiß, (comma!) gebrochen’, or ‘gebrochenes Weiß’.

Regards, Tau

Lieber Tau,

Gegen “gebrochenes Weiß” und “weiß, gebrochen” ist nichts einzuwenden. Wenn Sie eine Google-Suche durchführen, werden Sie jedoch zahlreiche Belege für „gebrochen weiß“ (mit und ohne Bindestrich) entdecken.

Herzliche Grüße
Desmond

Dear Tau,
Sorry for providing yet another hint, but perhaps you won't find this one a waste of time: Sierra and Elias translated "how beautiful" for us not too long ago. Look up lesson 284 of 21st May 2010 ("Class Elections"), last sentence: "ما أجمل"
The context may not be the same, but the structure sure is.
Cheers,
Karen

form 9 of abgeleitete Verbal forms (DERIVED FORMS) covers going red......however, I7mrr when I used it with native north africans was taken to mean angry , rather than embarrassed.perhaps one of our teachers could throw some light on the real meaning?Thanks for the explanation of yanni....it is hard to grasp without such clear explanations in english.

Hi all, I'm traveling until tomorrow, but I'll be back then with answers to all your questions. Hope you're enjoying the weekend!

Thank you, DESMOND, for your interesting comments re: the differences between Arabic, English and German. In Levantine Arabic, we do use أحمر to mean, to blush.

It is certainly possible that it could mean "to be angry" in Moroccan dialect, BERRY, as North African dialects are quite different from their Middle Eastern counterparts. I myself have not studied Moroccan at all, so I'm afraid I can't help you there.

Thank you also TAU for the feedback. Elias and I will try to repeat the Arabic phrases more in the lesson. We generally try to vary which terms we employ first - either English or Arabic - so as to make the podcasts less robotic-sounding, but we will try to be more mindful about doing so.

The podcasts are designed to be relatively short (typically between 8 to 12 mins) for the listener's convenience. Therefore, there is limited time to repeat phrases ad infinitum. That said, there is nothing to stop you from listening to the podcast again and getting more out of it. (FYI: it may take a little while for your feedback to register as several already recorded podcasts are waiting in the queue.)

Lastly, thank you, KAREN, for the useful hint and message and also you, PLOP, for the kind words. Glad to hear that you're all benefitting from the lessons.

Dear Sierra,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I liked your podcast very much, and I hope you had a pleasant week-end journey.

Colours play an important role in football terminology. Perhaps you might include the Arabic expressions for red and yellow cards in one of your podcasts about colours:

bitaaqa (ﺒﻂﺎﻗﺔ) hamraa' (ﺤﻤﺮﺍﺀ): red card
bitaaqa (ﺒﻂﺎﻗﺔ) safraa' (ﺼﻓﺮﺍﺀ): yellow card

The more often we hear these irregular feminine adjectives, the better.

Since the symbolic significance of the colour green was mentioned in the podcast, it may be appropriate to add a brief comment on Arabic words for "green".

In the Sura Al-Rahman green is associated with the lush verdure of Paradise. The inhabitants of this celestial abode are said to recline upon green cushions, and there is a brief description of four gardens. Two of these gardens are described as "blackish green" (mudhaammataan)"Mudhaamatan" is the dual of a feminine active participle. I assume that the masculine singular of this word is ﻤﺬﻫﺎﻢ, and I wonder whether it is ever used in modern Arabic texts.

There is another expression for “dark green”: “'akdar (ﺃﺨﺿﺮ) ghaamaq (ﻏﺎﻤﻖ)”. I wonder whether ﻏﺎﻤﻖ might be replaced by another adjective, for “dark brown” can be rendered as “bunniyy (ﺒﻨﻲ) daakin (ﺪﺍﻜﻦ)”.

Desmond - in the U.S., traffic ordinances and the engineering documentation supporting them refer to "amber" lights, not to yellow lights. In conversation and in news articles however people almost uniformly refer to them as "yellow" lights. You might get a strange look from someone if you used the term "amber" for a light - he might not understand your reference!
Charles

Sierra - you mention that the podcasts are designed to be short for our convenience. I think however there is definitely leeway to add a few minutes just for additional repetition of phrases as you go through them. I agree that they should be kept short, but would not want to lose either your brilliant explanations or the additional repetitions we are seeking.

Charles

what dialect is this??sham or saudi??

Hi NISHA, this is standard Arabic, so it's not a dialect.

CHAZYOUWIN, Elias and I are going to do our best to add more repetition to future podcasts. (You won't see a real change immediately, because we have a backlog of recorded podcasts, so I hope it will be okay in the meantime, to listen to them more than once if necessary.) I started out with audio lessons myself and I always listened to them twice - it made a great deal of difference in my pronunciation and memory retention over time.

Thank you, DESMOND, for the more detailed comments on colors. As I can tell you already know, Arabic has wonderfully precise words for various shades of color. What we have focused on is the most widely used varieties.

Thanks again all for the feedback and interest ;-)

thank you guys for the feedback and thank you sierra for being in contact with all the listeners

thanks sierra

Thanks Sierra and Elias. I do listen to the lessons, actually at least ten times each. I think your lessons are more challenging than Ehab's/Mohammed's, but I hasten to add that they are also more rewarding for the listening work in that they delve more deeply into the grammar at the more basic levels. Thanks for the notes.