menu Podcast

The first verse is a palindrome, and the Arabic equivalent of “palindrome” is qalb (ﻗﻠﺐ mustawen (ﻤﺴﺗﻮ.

A sentence in English, which uses the technique similar to that in the third verse is - "a NOTABLE surgeon was NOT ABLE to do the operation because there was NO TABLE."

@ vinod

Your example would be perfect if the sentence constituents you have capitalised were pronounced in exactly the same way. It isn’t easy to imitate the verbal acrobatics of Arabic poets.

In the PLC Ehab enumerates Arabic synonyms which can be assigned to two major conceptual fields: “love” and “disaster”. Since amourous entanglements frequently end in disaster, the connections between love and disaster are abundantly evident in extralinguistic reality although there are no linguistic links between the words which denote concepts like “love”, “passion”, “calamity” or “catastrophe”.

In Arabic, however, there are subterranean linguistic links between conceptual fields which in other languages are completely separate. “Subterranean” is an appropriate metaphorical epithet here because roots are normally hidden beneath the earth’s surface and because the links in question have something to do with the Arabic root system.

Under normal circumstances a European would never associate rain with love, yet in Arabic there are links between conceptual fields like “rain” and “love”. One of the Arabic words for love is “wudd” (ﻮﺪ; in the sura al-buruj Allah is described as “the All-Loving” – “al-waduud” (ﺍﻠﻮﺪﻮﺪ; and in classical Arabic rain is sometimes denoted by the word “wadq” (ﻮﺪﻖ. All these words contain the radicals “waaw” and “daal”. The connection between “wudd” (ﻮﺪ and “al-waduud” (ﺍﻠﻮﺪﻮﺪ is evident, but the connection between “wudd” (ﻮﺪ and “wadq” (ﻮﺪﻖ only becomes apparent if we are aware that in arid Middle Eastern countries rain is considered as a gift of God, i.e. a token of God’s love.

Desmond...your comments are very precise and helpful... May God bless you!!