Intermediate - Babar the elephant

What a surprise to know Babar also speaks Arabic :) My Babar memories however go back to books vs. seeing him on TV! ;-)
Although I have to admit intermediate is as usual still a little bit difficult, it is a nice little lesson with some real nice vocabulary! Thanks Mohamed and Ehab! Cheers from Na7la

Both the adjective ﻨﺒﻴﻞ (noble) and the noun ﻨﺒﻞ (nobility) are probably of French origin. The English adjective “noble” also comes from French (“noble”), and the French word comes from the Latin adjective “nobilis”, which is a derivative of the verb “noscere” (to know).

I was very surprised when Mohamed asserted that word combinations like “the world of children” and “the world of insects” are not possible in English. Nothing could be further from the truth. I could quote thousands of examples of these word combinations. Here are two quotations from the website of the BBC World Service:

Quentin Blake’s work doesn’t simply introduce children to the world of adults, but draws adults into the world of children. (BBC 10.5.1999)

Their inspiration came from the world of insects. (BBC 11.4.2001)

What a lovely song and equally lovelier line of Thought...only thing I don't like about it is the C word in the lesson. How I wish it was A or B...Beginner or Lower Intermediate.

Thanks otherwise for a wonderful lesson.

Hey guys,

Desmond, actually while I was re-listening to the lesson before it went up I realised that remark I made was not completely true. What I probably should have said was that the phase “world of something” was not as common in English. I can recall reading world of insects somewhere, but I can’t recall seeing world of animals or world of plants etc.

Doing a quick test in google shows this, if you search for “world of animals” (in quotes) you will get only 273,000 whereas the Arabic equivalent phrase عالم الحيوان"” returns 1,920,000 results

Dear Mohamed,

Thank you for your prompt response. I can explain why word combinations like “world of animals” and “world of plants” are so rare in texts written by competent native speakers of English. In English we normally say “the animal world” and “the plant world” (not “the world of animals” or “the world of plants”). Here are some examples from my private collection (you won’t find them on the Internet):

Thze unfolding BSE disaster will give added impetus to the pillage of the animal world (…). (The Guardian 27.3.1996: 25)

The cycle of death and annual renewal in the plant world continues to exert a powerful symbolic appeal. (The Observer 8.12.1996: 17)

I could cite thousands of other examples like this, but that would only clutter up your website.

“The world of children” and “the world of insects”, by contrast, are very common in English, and you will also find word combinations like “the world of finance”, “the world of marketing” and “the world of children’s TV”.

We can draw at least four conclusions from our observations:

First, students of English as a foreign language have to memorise thousands of fixed word combinations in order to be able to speak and write English correctly.

Second, anyone who wishes to translate from Arabic to English will have to make a careful study of the “idaafa” structure and its English counterparts.

Third, the “idaafa” structure can be rendered in at least four different ways: (1) an “s”-genitive (e.g. “the boy’s book”), (2) a postmodifying “of”-phrase (e.g. “the world of insects”), (3) a syntagma consisting of two juxtaposed nouns which function like a German compound (e.g. “blood pressure” (Ger. “Blutdruck”)), (4) a syntagma consisting of an adjective and a noun (“the literary world”).

Fourth, a complex “idaafa” may have to be rendered by two word-groups connected by a preposition like “in”. Thus “a rise in blood pressure” will correspond in Arabic to “irtifaa'u (ﺍﺮﺘﻓﺎﻉ) daghti (ﻀﻐﻁ) al-dam (ﺍﻠﺪﻢ)”. You can also say “rising blood pressure”, but you can’t say *“rise OF blood pressure”. Most non-native speakers of English use “of” here, but “of” is incorrect. There are rules for every word in the language, and the rules are much stricter than most people imagine.

I've just detected a typo. The first word in the first quotation should be "The".

EID MUBARAK TO THE TEAM AT ARABICPOD.NET LISTENERS AND ITS LISTENERS

khatavkar_rajan's comment has just reminded me of the Eid ul-Fitr. This festival was mentioned a couple of days ago in an English news bulletin broadcast by the BBC, and it was also mentioned in a video on the Arabic website of the BBC.

In their podcasts Ehab and Mohamed have already talked about Ramadan, but the Eid ul-Fitr hasn't yet been mentioned. Perhaps a reference to this important festival might be included in another podcast devoted to Arabic culture.

كل عام وأنتم بخير

A lesson on eid ul-fitr would be very fitting for an AP podcast. At the moment we’re not doing that well with releasing podcasts along with current events but we hope to change that

Dear Mohamed,

I’m pleased that you’ve accepted my proposal. It doesn’t really matter if your lessons are out of phase with current events. That doesn’t detract from the value of the podcasts.

Perhaps you might also deal with subjects like earthquakes, floods and forest fires. There have been lots of reports about such events in the Arabic media, but words like ﺰﻠﺰﺍﻞ and ﻓﻴﻀﺎﻦ have never been mentioned in your podcasts.

When I listened to the reports about the floods in Pakistan I noticed that the word ﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪﺍﺖ was used again and again. I found this particularly interesting since the English noun “help” is never used in the plural. If the reports about Pakistan had to be translated into English ﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪﺍﺖ would probably have to be rendered as “relief efforts”.

There are quite a lot of Arabic plurals which pose similar problems because their direct English equivalents have no plural. Typical examples are provided by words like ﻤﻌﻠﻮﻤﺎﺖ (information) and ﻨﺼﺎﺌﺢ (advice). It would be useful to discuss such grammatical problems in the podcasts.

Hi Desmond, these are all very useful topics you mentioned and we'll try our best to cover all of them in future podcasts, thanks

This is a great lesson. The repetition of the song and the clarity and near completeness of the explanations/translations make it accessible and useful for the ambitious "lower intermediate" crowd. I've listened to it about ten times and probably could listen to it another twenty. Charles

Dear Charles,

I’m glad you like the song. I’m the listener who is mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. I drew Ehab’s attention to the Babar video shortly after I discovered it on YouTube.

Songs and videos can play a major role in language learning. I’ve picked up thousands of Arabic words and phrases by listening to the numerous Arabic videos which have been uploaded on YouTube. Some videos are available in several languages, so if you don’t understand a sentence in an Arabic video you can listen to the relevant section of the same video in Italian, French, Spanish or English, then go back to the Arabic video, identify the unknown Arabic words and look them up in the Lessan dictionaries.

Unfortunately, the Lessan website is unaccessible at the moment. Yesterday morning everything was OK, but I haven’t been able to gain access to the site since then. Every time I click on “Lessan” I receive a error message (“Verbindung fehlgeschlagen”).

We’ve already had two Arabic adjectives for “cute”: ﻜﺘﻜﻮﺖ and ﻈﺮﻴﻒ. I think I’ve now discovered a third synonym. What about ﻤﺛﻴﺮ? I’ve seen Arabic newspaper articles where this adjective is used to describe sexy men, and I’ve found websites where translators say that “sexy” is often the best English equivalent for ﻤﺛﻴﺮ. However, I’ve just discovered a new Egyptian video where ﻤﺛﻴﺮ is applied to a a very sweet looking little monkey (ﻗﺮﺪ). I think that in this instance “cute” would be the only acceptable English translation equivalent. Is this standard Arabic usage? Could the word be used to describe a baby or a small elephant?

The adjective ﻤﺛﻴﺮ. seems to have a very broad semantic range. I’ve just examined some more example sentences. In one case ﻤﺛﻴﺮ refers to a book and seems to mean “interesting”; in another it refers to a small animal and seems to mean “interested” or “curious”. The idea of interest apparently constitutes the semantic core of the adjective. Anything that arouses or betrays sexual, intellectual or emotional interest is ﻤﺛﻴﺮ. Perhaps “cute” isn’t necessarily a good translation after all.

Desmond - thanks for the direction to the YouTube postings and for bringing this particular one to Ehab's attention. I am a fan of these songs - one of my favorite is the "Boy and the Sea," one of the early lower intermediate lessons. Salaam.

In the transcription of the first sentence, should there be a tanween at the end of "feel"? A tanween seems to be pronounced, making it sound like "feeloon", but the transcript reads:
مرّةً في حيّنا زارنا فيل ظريف .

Actually, it looks like the tanween is not written anywhere. There are three or four other places where it seems to be pronounced but not transcribed in the Arabic (but normally is written in the English transcription).

Yes @chazyouwin , harakaat (short vowels) are normally not written in newspapers and books so we really try to imitate that. But I have to say tanween and shaddah are important ones, that is why in recent podcasts we tend to put them on.