This video is of an Al Jazeera program, nearly an hour-long, where they interview Syrian Prosecutor-General Ghada Murad. She was the first woman to enter the judiciary in Syria and is now in the position, equivalent of “Attorney General” in Syria. She is involved in “investigating” the killing of former Lebanese premier Rafik Harari and is expected to cooperate with the United Nations on their investigation.
I was able to pick out numerous words in the program that I understand and get the gist of it. Some key words here include:
محام (muhaamin) - lawyer
ولدت (waladat) - she was born
نساء (nisaa’) - woman (singular)
رجل (rajul) - man (singular); رجال (rijal) - men (plural)
مدرسة (madrassa) - school
جامعة (jami’ya) - university
كلية (kulia) - college
الجقوق (al haquq) - law
This video has a lot of good content to work with, so I will likely come back to it again later. It helps just to listen to it and see what you can understand and figure out from the context.
مقتل 100 شخص في تحطم طائرة ركاب تايلاندي
This Al Jazeera news clip is from September 2007, about a plane crash in Phuket in Thailand. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20800512/ مقتل (maqtal) - murder, death شخص (shakhs) - person حطم (hattama) - to wreck, smash, shatter, demolish ركب (rakiba) - to ride, travel طائرة (ta’ira) - airplane
تفاقم الازمة الدبلوماسية بين لندن وموسكو - BBC News (January 2, 2008)
The rest of the first paragraph is: ازدادت شدة التوتر في العلاقة الدبلوماسية بين موسكو ولندن عندما قام الروس بتحرك قضائي اضطر المجلس الثقافي البريطاني إلى اغلاق احد مكاتبه في سان بطرسبرج، ثاني المدن الروسية الكبرى. تحرك - move, instigate, set in motion, rouse, … قضائي (qada’i) - judicial, judiciary اضطر - to force مجلس - commission, council, board, court ثقافى (thaqafi) - cultural, educational أغلاق (i’ghlaq) - closing, shutting, locking, barring … مكاتبه (makatiba) - office ثاني (thani) - second مدن (mudun) - cities (pl) كبرى (kubra) - largest, greatest
Altogether, it translates as: “Tensions have intensified in the relations between Moscow and London, as the Russian judiciary moved to force the British cultural council to shut down its office in St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia.”
When learning a language, it is an enormous help to practice reading news articles and other things, and read a lot. BBC Arabic is a good source for news articles, in addition to their audio broadcasts. From time to time, I post excerpts from articles, look up words I don’t know, and practice reading. This article is about relations between the UK and Russia.
فقم (faqima) - to aggravate, escalate, become grave, serious, critical, dangerous, come to a head
أزمة (azma) - crisis
دبلوماسية (diblomasia) - diplomatic
بين (beyna) - between
The word order in the sentence is Verb-Subject (adjective)-Prepositional phrase. The verb فقم (faqima) is conjugated in the present tense, in the feminine-third person form by appending the “ت” to the beginning of the verb and it is pronounced with a damma (”u” sound) at the end of the word. The word also changes form here, with an added alif. The verb in this form, tense, and conjugation is pronounced “tafaaqimu”.
The word أزمة (azma) is a definite noun here, because it refers to a specific crisis. This is a feminine noun. The adjective دبلوماسية (diblomasia) must agree with the noun in gender and also be definite.
With these words, the headline translates as “The diplomatic crisis escalates between London and Moscow”.
The first sentence of this news article is ازدادت شدة التوتر في العلاقة الدبلوماسية بين موسكو ولندن عندما قام
Al Jazeera posts video clips and programs on YouTube. Watching these helps with learning vocabulary, pronunciation, and improving listening comprehension. This video is from last spring, about the Mahdi Army in Iraq. The word for “army” is جيس (jeish).
Lately, I have spent time learning vocabulary and focusing on adjectives. This includes words such as طيب (tayyib), which means “good”, مبسوت (mabsoot) which is “happy”, as well as adjectives to describe not so happy situations or conditions. The word for “awful” is فظيع (fathee). To reinforce these words, it helps to find examples where they are used on sites like YouTube.
Searching for فظيع, over 30 videos come up in the search. One of these is titled حادث قطار مصر. I already have seen the word حادث (hadath), which can translate as “event”, as well as “accident” or “incident”. مصر (misr) is the word for Egypt. قطار (qitar) is the word for “train”. In Arabic, adjectives will follow nouns that they describe or modify. In this case, it’s حادث (accident, event, …). What kind of accident? The word قطار (train) serves as an adjective, describing what kind of accident.
The video was posted to Google Video in October 2006. On English-language news sites, I quickly found out what this is.
I assume the video is of the August 2006 crash, though apparently train wrecks are not so unusual in Egypt, with the rail system very antiquated. When I’m in Egypt in the summer, I will need to travel around, beyond Cairo. This includes traveling to Alexandria. Traveling by train seemed like a good option, but now I don’t know. It’s probably still safe, but who knows?
Anyway, here is the video footage that I found. فظيع (awful) is indeed appropriate to describe it, so caution.
A new word for the day is الأمم المتحدة (al-omma al-mutaheeda), which is Arabic for “the United Nations”. Google is a good friend for learning a language. Searching الأمم المتحدة, I found a United Nations radio website (إذاعة الأمم المتحدة) that has Arabic-language news stories, along with audio. The audio stories tend to be the exact same thing that is written in the article text. Also, these clips are fairly short — just a few minutes, and can be replayed over and over again in case you missed something or want to stop and look up a word.
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.
