Usage examples you wouldn't expect to find in a dictionary

[pauamma]

Comments

[marnanel]

A friend shares example sentences in a 1920s Arabic manual. ("They practise female infanticide."; "Both of them squint and three of their children are deaf mutes.")

[pauamma]

*blink* Female infanticide is expressly forbidden by the Koran, so I'm really wondering who "they" is referring to in that sentence.

[jesuslovesbono]

maybe non-Muslims?
still...disturbing.

[pauamma]

*nod* This being Egypt, I'm wondering whether it might be (inspired by) a slur aimed at Jews or Copts (or perhaps other flavors of Christians).

[flamingophoenix]

I could easily see this being blood libel (is that the right term?).

[panjomin]

Hi everyone. None of these suggestions make sense to me. The verb "to bury unwanted baby girls" appears in the Qur'an, which condemns the pre-Islamic Arabs (the pagans, not the Jews or Christians) for doing it. I suspect it appears in the phrase book because the author found it colorful. Also, the verb itself (وأد) is irregular in two interesting ways, so maybe it was included for that. Same with "squint-eyed," etc: those illustrate the anomalous agreement of bodily-defect adjectives.

[pauamma]

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz_blood_libel">Maybe.

[panjomin]

The action condemned in the Qur'an is not blood libel but the burial of newborn girls by pagan parents who wanted sons instead.

I am assuming that this is what the sentence refers to, but since we don't have it in Arabic I can't be sure.

Whatever the case, the sentence was made up by a British phrasebook author in Egypt, not by a Muslim in Shiraz.

*sporfle!*

[runa27]

My favorite out of those is surely "I am determined to buy this monkey."

I am going to try an experiment to see if I can say that with a straight face to my roommate. I doubt I will succeed, but it will be fun to try XD

Re: *sporfle!*

[pauamma]

If your roommate replies "My nipples explose with delight", don't punch them in the face.

Re: *sporfle!*

[runa27]

They just got really confused XD

Re: *sporfle!*

[pauamma]

My work here is done.

[ubykhlives]

The scary thing is that not all of those sentences are not useful. I'd damn sure like to know what the Egyptian Arabic is for "These scarabs are all faked." :)

And on a more serious note there's a place or two I'd be sorely tempted to use "Call this a horse? It's nothing but a skeleton," too.

[pne]

I'd damn sure like to know what the Egyptian Arabic is for "These scarabs are all faked." :)

See here: http://pm215.livejournal.com/18237.html?thread=25149#t25149

(I make his answer, in Unicode: al-ja`ārīn dōl kullu-hum ṣan`it īd.)