Arabic language: “Tasmeem” computer script uses the secrets of calligraphy

When I signed up for Google feedreader, I also subscribed to a couple of language websites. They tend to be peopled by linguists with their own special esoteric sense of humor and a penchant for delving into the arcane aspects of medieval Irish or Russian literature. But every time I think about removing the feed to simplify my display, I get caught up in whatever they are saying and forget to delete it.

This week they surprised me by talking about Arabic.

I was always taught that Arabic letters have four forms depending on whether they are in a word: at the beginning, middle, end, or standing alone. Thomas Milo, the inventor of the Arabic computer script Tasmeem, just made writing Arabic letters even more difficult. Above is an exhibition in Amsterdam using the computer script to write the Corsi Aya from the Koran. Below he shows how the letter “ha” can be written in various forms depending on what form of the letter is used and what letters are attached to it.

If you have ever been puzzled by Arabic calligraphy, much less the handwriting of ordinary Arabs, this is absolutely fascinating. There is also a powerpoint presentation of Milo with audio describing the challenges in making the script into a computer language. A few minutes into the presentation is Milo’s not-to-be-missed overview of the history of the Arabic script with the original letter order–he describes it as being originally a “numerical” alphabet.

If that isn’t enough, Languagehat this week has discovered that the word “barrio” meaning “Spanish-speaking neighborhood” comes into the English language from Arabic through the intermediate stage of Spanish. Probably something they forgot to sweep out after the Reconquista. There are supposed to be some one hundred English words derived from Arabic. The only other one I know about is “potato”–Spanish “patata”, Arabic “batata” البطاطا.

Look up Arab names

Ask Arab children to tell you their names, and they will probably add “and the meaning is…”

Here is a website to look up the meanings of names–including the meaning of Arab names and spelling in Arabic. This site has names in Arabic that are a little easier to access, but unfortunately without the Arabic script.

What is happening to Goodstorm?

A little over a year ago the internet fulfillment company Goodstorm announced it would start selling black t-shirts that were ethically produced in the United States. I was excited by the thought of offering tees that weren’t produced in sweatshops with child labor, so I started a little shop with some Arabic language tees.

Now Goodstorm has stopped paying out shopkeeper royalties. One blogger even reports he has never received a payment and can no longer access his shop in order to close it. He has discontinued working with Goodstorm and no longer recommends it. In fact, he even posts a link to the Better Business Bureau in case someone wants to file an official complaint.

I can still access my shop, but I have closed all the links to it. I have been promised more information about when I might receive a check within a few days. When a company has already received payment for items purchased, but can’t pay the royalty, that does not look good.

Still, people keep asking me for the products, especially the black “lan nesmit” (We will not be silenced) black t-shirt in Arabic.

I will try to work with Goodstorm a little longer.

In the meantime, I will be looking for another source for union or ethically produced black tees.

Ramadan Kareem: a Ramadan Dua

I’ve been looking for a little Ramadan Kareem symbol to put in my widgets for the month of Ramadan, but I’m having some sort of problem opening my widgets. The best I can gather from the blogosphere is that that latest version of Firefox 2.0.0.7 is doing something to Javascript, whatever that is.

So until I can figure out what that is, or more likely until they can figure it out, here is something called a Ramadan Dua. I’m not quite sure what a dua is, but this one seems to be a sort of prayer. I kind of like it, both for the Arabic and for the sentiments expressed.

Transcript

Dua is the following: Allah hooma inee auldubika

il hami, wa il hahden

wal agitee, wa kasal

wal toopamee, wa joobnahl

wal broohal, ghalabit il daimee al rijel

(repeat it)

Allah, by you from all the ways

from all sadness, from laziness

from being helpless, from being coward

from fear, from being stingy,

from the overwhelming of the national debt, and from the oppression of men

I know I don’t have the Arabic exactly right, but if your Arabic is good enough to tell that, you probably know what it says already.

Ramadan Kareem.

Online Arabic Translation Tool

Here is a quick translation tool mainly for speakers of other languages who want to look up a word in English, but you can also use it to get a quick spelling of a word in Arabic.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/

This link takes you to the home page. Type the word you want in the search box and click the search button.  Then scroll down the resulting page until you come to an entry for “Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary”. You will see your word displayed in several languages. The Arabic version is separated into discrete letters and fully voweled.

For example, if you type in “chocolate” and scroll down to the bottom, you will see the following display:

chocolate1 [ˈtʃokəlit] noun
a paste made from the seeds of the cacao tree

Arabic: شوكولاطه Chinese (Simplified): 巧克力 Chinese (Traditional): 巧克力 Czech: čokoláda Danish: chokolade Dutch: chocolade Estonian: šokolaad Finnish: suklaa French: chocolat German: die Schokolade Greek: σοκολάτα Hungarian: csokoládé Icelandic: súkkulaði Indonesian: coklat Italian: cioccolato

Japanese: チョコレート Korean: 초콜릿 Latvian: šokolāde Lithuanian: šokoladas Norwegian: sjokolade Polish: czekolada Portuguese (Brazil): chocolate Portuguese (Portugal): chocolate Romanian: ciocolată Russian: шоколад Slovak: čokoláda Slovenian: čokolada Spanish: chocolate Swedish: choklad Turkish: çikolata

If it’s too small to read, you can click on “view” in your toolbar and increase the text size until it’s legible.

I also have the free FoxLingo toolbar that can be added to the free Firefox browser. It is capable of translating an entire web page between English and Arabic, and fairly quickly too, but the accuracy and readability is about what you might expect from a mechanical translation tool. You also have to play with it a bit to get it to translate what you want. Still it’s worth having and using. For translating just one word, though, the first link above is by far the best.

Chicago’s first Arabesque Arab festival ends..Aaahhhhh, Arabs

Finally yesterday I was able to break away from work long enough to check out the last day of Chicago’s first Arab festival, the Arabesque. It was everything I had hoped for, mostly the opportunity to be in the presence of a lot of Arabs, hear the language, and as they say over there, breathe the air.

The first indication of the festival’s impending success was the weather. A cold front came in just in time for the large numbers of women who attended in modest but less than comfortable attire–scarves meant to cover the hair and jackets completely covering the arms. I myself went to work that morning in a long skirt with jacket so I could jump on a train and go straight to the festival dressed as conservatively as I would be in Jordan.

The second indication was the information derived from another traveler on the train. Was I going to the Taste, he asked, pouring whiskey from a small bottle into a cup of McDonalds coffee. The Taste of Chicago, which I saw in 1979 and have stayed away from ever since on account of the crowds, had already started on Navy Pier. The Arab festival would have a small, select Arab crowd and I would have them all to myself.

The festival had what festivals are supposed to have: booths with food, merchandise, and political information (Jimmy Carter’s latest book was much in evidence). There was free calligraphy–someone would write your name in Arabic with a bamboo brush and there was free henna–someone would draw floral patterns on your hand with henna tubes, not like the lo-tech palms and soles henna you can see at village weddings. One booth offered bread from the local pita bakery as well as Lebanese olives and that finely ground coffee (check out the music on their home page) with cardamom. On stage, an impromptu group of guys linked arms and joined the musicians in dancing a little bit of the traditional dubka.

The argila booth attracted a lot of attention, both with it’s water-cooled smoking pipes, and with its variety of tobaccos. Apple or double apple tobaccos are the most traditional along with strawberry, but they also had some peach, apricot, and melon that smelled pretty good, as well as some more esoteric flavors like banana, raspberry, cola, and jasmine.

The music booth also drew a brisk crowd. A Palestinian guy working the booth with his wife flipped CD’s in and out of a CD player as one hauntingly minor eastern tune after another poured out of the speakers. One CD was ten dollars, and two CD’s were twenty–no Arab-style price negotiations here. Iraqi singer and heartthrob Hossam al-Rassam they had never heard of, but were able to find two other Iraqi tapes out of their huge selection.

Mayor Daley came down earlier in the day, and there were lots of photos all around. The mayor wasn’t the one to suggest the festival, though–the Arab community came to him. About time, said the merchant at one booth. There has been enough publicity about one kind of Arab. The city needs to see the other kind.

Vocabulary:

قهوة –qahwa (coffee)

هال –hale (cardamom)

شمام –shamam (muskmelon)

مشمش –mish mish (apricot)

دراق –duraq (peach)

التفاح –tufah (apple)

التفاحتين –tufahtain (double apple)

زيتون–zaytoon (olives)

أخضر –akhdar (green)

ملح –milleh (salt)

Skreened.com offers Fair Trade tee shirt alternatives

Shopkeepers who don’t want to sell t-shirts produced in sweatshops or with child labor are still waiting to find out how the marketing department at Cafepress.com is going to supply information about the origins of their products. Fortunately Cafepress offers shopkeepers the option of choosing which products to offer for a given design, so I will continue to offer their products identified as either union made or made by American Apparel, whose fair labor practices are well documented.

In the meantime, I will start offering tee shirts through Skreened.com. Skreened uses only shirts made by American Apparel and donates 10% of its sales to a not-for-profit called Asia’s Hope. So when you wear one of their shirts, you know it was not made with inhuman labor practices or child labor.

Here are the same Arabic language tees I have been offering now in summer colors from Skreened:

The green shirt is based on the “T-shirt of mass destruction” that got Raed Jarrer thrown off of Jet Blue airlines. It says “We will not be silent”, in Arabic pronounced “lahn nesmitt”, and has the English translation underneath. The one pictured has dark blue letters, you can also get black letters.

The white shirt says “I heart New York”, also in Arabic. So far, you can also heart Chicago, Jordan, Amman, and Baghdad. If you want to heart something or someone I don’t have listed, post a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

The slogan on the yellow tee is from a sign I saw at an impromptu street demonstration while Christmas caroling at Daley Plaza. It says “Who would Jesus torture”. If you are fond of the Geneva Convention, there are several designs with this slogan.

You can check out the designs here.

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Related posts:

Make a difference on World Fair Trade Day–contact CafePress
Is CafePress.com hiding sweatshops?
CafePress responds to Fair Trade concerns with form letter, maintains holding pattern

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Terror Has No Religion-some interesting images

Some interesting images:

This one says “Terror has no religion”.

The next one says “No to violence”.

These are all from the website noterror.info. The website also has a series of startling black and white posters with an eerie film noir flavour to them.

The website appears to be still under construction, for example, no information is given on sponsorship, although it appears to be written by people who identify themselves as Moslem. It should be interesting to see how it develops.

What’s hot with Jordan bloggers: smilies, mansaf, numbers, and tagging

I’ve often wondered if Jordanians are more emotionally oriented than Americans. They certainly seem to value socializing more, as witnessed by their ability to drink tea under any circumstances, and by their legendary hospitality, typified by but not limited to their national dish, mansaf.

Mansaf consists of a bed of rice spread with sauteed pine nuts and meat. A sauce called jameed made from goat cheese is poured over a small section of rice. The rice is then scooped into a ball in the palm of the hand (eating with the right hand only) and popped into the mouth. Americans either love mansaf or hate mansaf; there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. I love mansaf. Americans who love mansaf sometimes find themselves eating in restaurants back in the states while their friends keep reminding them not to eat with their hands. Ah, mansaf.

I ran into this photo of mansaf posted on the Majoob blog by a Jordanian blogger. (See the icon at the lower right side of the page.) He blogs at typicalarab.blogspot.com, and identifies himself on the Mahjoob blog as a “certified woman hater”, but with a mensaf photo like that he must have something going for him. You can find even more Jordanian bloggers at Planet Jordan.

Jordanian bloggers seem to be able to converse endlessly without much to say. Much of their conversation is punctuated by emoticons.

These are a few of the most popular ones:

This one is a bit creepy:

They also like to line up several emoticons of the same type to make a comment:

Or:

Or:

One of the mysteries of Jordanian blogging is the use of numbers to represent sounds of the Arab alphabet. I only know a few of them. The number 3 is ein or ع. So the word I would write as “yani”, meaning “perhaps”, which functions almost as a vocalized pause would be written as “ya3ni”.

The word “al7amdulillah” gives us a clue for the sound for the number 7. The Arabic language has two letters for “H” and the seven clearly represents one of them. The word is “al-Hamdullilah” or “thanks be to Allah”.

So far we have a national food which evokes emotion in everyone who comes in contact with it, some smilies to express emotions, and some symbols for expressing Arabic sounds on the western keyboard. In order to blog we now need something to talk about. This is where the tagging comes in. Jordanian tagging is not like American tagging, which is meant for help with google searches and organizing information. This is more like a “Tag, you’re it” kind of game. To play, someone answers a set of questions and sends it to the blogger. The blogger can then post it on his blog. “Typical Arab” has several of these tags posted on his blog from other bloggers, but he makes a point of never returning them. I wonder how long that’s going to last. Here is one”tag” he posted from another blogger.

1. My name.
Mais
2. Where did we meet?
Mahjoob, but did not talk then, then MSN.
3. How well do you know me (a lot, not so much, not at all)?
Not so much.
4. When you first knew me what was your first impression?
on mahjoob, you were annoying, on MSN it was a very good impression.
5. Am I shy or outgoing?
Extremely Shy
6. Am I a rebel or do I follow the rules?
in between
7. Do you consider me a friend?
I think I do.
8. If there was one good nickname for me, what would it be?
Pesse does not suite you right, I don’t know, Um al.habal maybe.
9. What song(if any)reminds you of me?
No song in my mind.
10. Do I remind you of any characters on TV?
Marooco
11. A feature that you like about me.
Honest, Shy, Extremely nice and sometimes caring.
12. A feature that you dislike about me.
You trsut people too much.
13. If you could give me anything, what would it be?
I seriously don’t know, maybe a great job, high paid, 3 hours a day !
14. If we spent a day together…..where would we go and what would we do?
Lunch & Movies … 3ala 7sabik :smilie 6afran:
15. If you could describe me in one word, what would it be?
Nice.
16. What word do I say all the time?
Not a word, but that wierd laughing smilie
17. which of the posts I posted on my blog do you like the most?
My tag
18. which of the posts I posted on my blog do you like the least?
Nothing, you have a nice blog.

Some of the answers can be a bit surprising, something like the standardized test I once give my Jordanian students: “The parking lot was a)interesting b) interested c)boring d)bored.” The Jordanians without exception said the parking lot was “interesting”. For something like that, you just have to decide they know how to use participles and throw away the answer key.

Two Arab cartoons

Two cartoons from Hajjaj at Majoob.com. The first is Condoleeza Rice from 10-04-06 and was either censored or not published. I can’t make out what it says on the crescents, but I think the label on Condi says “Ra-ees” رايس or president. But what is she wearing? A properly long Arab shirt, or Western attire?

What I found most interesting about the drawing was the portayal of her legs. In the Arab world, women do not show their legs. Sometimes girls will even wear a thin long-john type garment under slacks so their ankles won’t show if the pant leg accidently rides up. Socks only come off in the middle of summer when temperatures reach 105 degrees.

The second picture is today’s cartoon and needs no comment. The two arms clearly arise from the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq, with the Kurdish areas untouched.

The political viewpoint of Hajjaj, which to me is very close to the Arab Street, reinforces the “civil war” theme rather than the “proxy war between Iran and the U.S.” theme that is gaining prominance here.