Religion is definitely important in Middle East countries, with Islam overwhelmingly dominant. Though, in Egypt, there is a minority Coptic Christian population. The word for “church” in Arabic is كنيسة (kanisa).

This video clip comes from BBC Arabic, which talks about the Roman Catholic Church, which has built a church in Doha, Qatar:

I was recently at a conference in Boston, which was about geography (جغرافي). It’s because I have been traveling a lot and very busy, that I haven’t been able to post.

Anyway, while walking around the conference center, I noticed someone left a box on a table which had Arabic writing on the outside. This was completely unexpected, so I went to take a look. The box was full of books and journals, with a sign saying “free, please take these”. The books belonged to someone associated with the Kuwait Geographical Society, but they wanted to get rid of them. Of course, I didn’t think many people at the conference knew Arabic, yet alone would want the books. So, I took a bunch and came back a while later, and the rest of them were still there. So, I took all of them.

(If the person who left them reads this, THANK YOU! شكرا)

I’m working on one of the books, which is entitled العالم الثالث - مشكلات و فضايا, which translates as “Third World: Problems and Issues”. I’m getting so far as reading the preface which talks about the purpose of the book.

Some of the words that I am learning, as I read include:

مؤتمر (mu’tamar) - conference, convention

حضور (hudur) - attendance

لقاء (liqa’) - meeting

تنمية (tanmiya) - development

اقتصاد (iqtasad) - economy

زراعة (zira’a) - agriculture

حاجة (haja) - need

نشر (nashara) - to publish

مسلسل (musalsal) - series

As helpful as it is to learn the vocabulary, especially vocabulary related to a topic I’m involved in, it is also helpful to see the writing style used. The author writes in the past tense, using كان (kan) and كانت (kana), which means “was”. For example, كان جميع or “everyone was …”.