عن كثب is a program on Al Jazeera about science and technology. The first 10 minutes of the program, which was shown in October 2007, is about climate change and the Arctic. The second part is about bacteria, but I’m focusing on the first part here.
Keywords to know for understanding the first segment include:
جو (jaw) - weather, atmosphere
مناخ (munaakh) - climate
صيف (sayf) - summer
شتاء (shitaa’) - winter
بارد (barid) - cold
حرارة (harrara) - heat
درجة الحرارة (darajat al-harrara) - temperature
ثلج (thalj) - ice, snow
أرض (ard) - Earth, land
شمال (shamal) - north
القطب الشمالي (al-qutib al-shamali) - the North Pole
In December, scientists announced the discovery of fossils of a species believed to be the ancestor of the whale. It is a deer-like creature, the size of a raccoon, that lived in the Kashmir region. The discovery was reported in numerous news articles, including BBC News:
The title of this article begins with the phrase “scientific discovery” (كتشاف علمي). This is an example of how adjectives are used. Adjectives follow the noun that they describe or modify. In this case, the noun is إكتشاف (iktashafa) - discovery. The adjective is علمي (a’lmee) - scientific, which is a variation of the word علم (a’lm) - science. Turning nouns such as “science” into adjectives (”scientific”) is a nisba (relative noun). Forming a nisba involves adding ي (ee) for nouns ending in a consonant.
Other words in the title here include:
حيوان (hayawan) - animal
اصل (asl) - original
حوت (huut) - whale
شبه (shibh) - resemblance; شابه (shabaha) - resemble
غزال (ghazal) - gazelle
The title of the article translates as “scientific discovery: origins of the whale, an animal resembling the gazelle”.
The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage has funded a project that will to start with, translate 100 seminal works in science, philosophy, and other areas into Arabic. That includes works by Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Stephen Jay Gould, and James Watson. The project will encourage higher quality translations and support marketing and distribution of the books. Kalima (كلمة) means “word” in Arabic. Science in Arabic - Jascha Hoffman Kalima project - Abu Dhabi Culture and Heritage
I am studying Arabic at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, and will be in Egypt in the summer. This site covers Arabic grammar, vocabulary, and other aspects of the Arabic language, and makes frequent use of YouTube videos, news, and other Arabic language resources on the Internet.
In December, scientists announced the discovery of fossils of a species believed to be the ancestor of the whale. It is a deer-like creature, the size of a raccoon, that lived in the Kashmir region. The discovery was reported in numerous news articles, including BBC News:
