Don't be such a turtle!

In Tanzania or Tanganyika as it is called in Swahili, a large population of Muslims live. Being almost half of the country's population, Ramadan of course does not go unnoticed.

Not every Muslim Tanzanian fasts, and for those that pretend to be fasting while secretly eating anyway, the Swahili speaking Tanzanians have given the name of Kasa which means Turtle. Perhaps because the turtle is both on land an in water and has a shell to hide under?

Rambo, Apples & Sweden

Ever wondered where Sylvester Stallone's character Rambo got his name?

Me neither... However I stumbled upon some interesting information in correlation to Sweden celebrating the 300 year jubilee of our Botanist, Physician and Zoologist Carl Von Linné (also known as Carolus Linnaeus), the man who organized and gave names to the world's plants, animals and gave us the name of Homo Sapiens.

In 1639, a swedish family living in Ramberga left for America, like a lot of Swedes have done for centuries. With them they brought the seeds of swedish apples. Upon arrival they took the last name of Rambo. Most likely a referral to their original home in Ramberga.

They planted the seeds and the apples were subsequently named Rambo. Carl Von Linnés student, Pehr Kalm travelled to America in the mid 1700's and found the tree and spoke to a descendent of the Rambo family who described the apple as very suitable for the making of cider.

A couple of centuries later in America, the scriptwriter of the movie Rambo was trying to come up with a last name to his character. His wife walks in the door with apples and a bottle of cider made of Rambo apples.

The rest is, unfortunately, history.

How Greek became Bosnian

Bosnian singer Amira performed last night at Södra Teatern in Stockholm to a small intimate crowd. The singer who is not yet 30 years old, has the soul of an old woman in her young voice and with a clear tune sings the traditional Balkan Sevdah whose songs are called sevdalinke. I particularly enjoyed the song Sambaranfil (which is a samba version of the song Karanfil meaning carnation).

The word travels
Sevdalinke can be described as songs of yearning, love and heartache. The word sevdah which comes from the Turkish word sevdah meaning amorous yearning, which in turn comes from the Arabic word sawdha meaning black gall. It was believed by ancient Arab and Greek doctors that the black gall in the human body was responsible for creating a sense of melancholy and irritable mood. Thus in Greek the word for melancholy is the word for black gall, melan hôlos.

In her latest album Rosa, Amira sings traditional Sevdah from Macedonia, Bosnia and Serbia. Listen to the first song of her CD here.

To read about Sevdalinke and listen to other songs click here. I recommend U Trebinju gradu.

Fhear A Bhata (The Boatsmen)

I'm often hunting, the highest hilltops
I scan the oceans, I sail the seas
Will come tonight love?
Will come tommorow?
Wilt ever come, love, to comfort me?

(Chorus)
Fhear A Bhata
Na horo eile*
Fhear A Bhata
Na horo eile
Fhear A Bhata
Na horo eile
Oh, fare ye well, love
Where 'ere ye be

They call thee fickle, they call thee false one
and seek to change me, but all in vain
for thou art my dream, yet through the dark night
and every morning I watch the main

(Chorus)

Theres not a hamlet do well I know it
where you go wandrin or sit awhile.
but all its old folk, you win with talkin
and charm its maidens with song and smile.

(Chorus)

Dost thou remember the promise made me
The tartan plaide, the silken gown
that ring of gold with thy head in portrait
that golden ring I shall never now own

(Chorus)

*Note: Na horo eile, doesn't mean anything in gaelic. It is the gaelic equivalent of "yeah, yeah, yeah" in the song "she loves me yeah, yeah, yeah". Words used as fill in lyrics in verse.

Hindi in the American Ghetto?

Globalisation and all, word etymology can be an interesting phenomenon at times.

The Brits in India during the time of the Raj (colonial times), had encountered a practice known as thagi. This was in no way representative for Indians nor was it a widespread "phenomenon" yet the Brits used the occurence of thagi in their campaign to stress the difference between themselves and their Indian subjects in order to justify a need to stay on and "civilize" a nation they sought out to declare uncivilized at all costs*.

The thags were a group of people who worshipped the goddess Kali and they would steal from and strangle their victims, as a sort of offering. Thus during the 19th century in Britain a thug came to be knows as a particularly nasty kind of ruffian.

From 19th century Britain to 21st century Brooklyn, where one is "positively" self-declared as a "thug for life". Ironic.

*Ideologies of the Raj by Thomas R. Metcalf

Quote of the day

Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
-Byrd Bagget

*Picture taken in a taxi in Cairo.

Proverb in the sand

-Man ya3eesh yara; he who lives shall see

I was flying back to Sweden from Alexandria when we got the news at 1 am that no plane had landed or taken off from Alexandria's Burg el Arab airport in more than 3 days. Off to the Hilton courtesy of Lufthansa for a 3 hour nap. At 9 am our bus was to take us to Cairo Airport and subsequently home. No bus arrived and no word from Lufthansa. I did what any sane person would do; ran out at the back of the hotel to the amazing beach and played around in the water. The sand was like soft cake so I decided to cover as much of it in Arabic writing as I could.

Arabic=Latin=English

A testimony to a people, language or culture's influence in another language or culture, can be found in the world of linguistics.

We all know that the Muslim and Arab contribution to science, philosophy, medecine and more, has been majorly ignored by all of our western school curriculums. The dark ages in western history were the ages of light somewhere else.

The Renaissance was aided by the fact that Muslim scholars translated and reinterpreted the old works of Aristoteles, Socrates and others into Arabic, which became the language of intellect in many parts of Europe (Spain), Africa (Mali to Morocco) and Asia (Iraq). These texts were later translated into other european languages thus paved way for The Renaissance, or re-birth of the ancient philosophies.

Back to linguistics. The english word Carmine, meaning crimson red, has an interesting etymology. It dates back to Medieval Latin (1712), and is a mix of the Latin word minium and the Arabic word qirmiz.

It does somehow speak volumes about the influence of the Arabic language and Muslim contribution to our western heritage and highlights that there in fact can be no "western" void of the mention of Islam. The two are united.

1001 Inventions Exhibition in Cardiff, Wales

Czech Wisdom

It's time for some Czech wisdom of the more pragmatic kind:

Do not always expect good to happen, but don't let evil take you by surprise.

Anger is the only thing to put off until tomorrow.

The big thieves hang the little ones.

When you go to buy, use your eyes, not your ears.

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.

Pluto had to go & The origin of "eskimo"

As of today, after a vote made with Astronomers earlier this afternoon in Prague, Pluto has lost its status as a planet. A status it has had since its discovery in 1930. And then there were 8...

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The word eskimo was given by colonialists to all people living on the coasts from East Greenland to The Bering Strait, and is today concidered demeaning in both Canada and Greenland and thus has been replaced by the word inuit, meaning the people. (The singular of inuit is enuk.)

Why eskimo is concidered demeaning I do not know. Perhaps because of the meaning of the word; those who eat raw flesh.

The "i" in Pakistan

This year (as often is the case) I forgot the Pakistani Independance Day, August 14th. It celebrated 59 years and is now the 6th most populous country in the world.

I read a bit about the etymology or word origin of Pakistan and found the following:

The name "Pakistan" (IPA: /paːkɪst̪aːn/) means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu and Persian. It was coined in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never[5] as an acronym of the names of the "Muslim homelands" of western India — P for Punjab, A for Afghania (the Afghan areas in the Northwest Frontier Province), K for Kashmir, S for Sindh and tan for Balochistan. An "i" was later added to the English rendition of the name to ease pronunciation.

-Wikipedia

Introducing a useful word

Do you know anyone who is a milquetoast? I heard of this fabulous word today, and decided to add it permanently to my vocabulary. A milquetoasty person or thing is someone/something that is of a timid or meek disposition, the opposite to another pole, being macho.

The story goes, in 1924 Harold Tucker Webster created a comic strip figuring the character of a timid and meek man by the name of Caspar Milquetoast.

Apparently Peter Cetera (see pic) has been described as a Milquetoasty person when Blender Magazine named the 'Top 25 Biggest Wusses Ever'.

(Information courtesy of Vocab Vitamins)

The Ostrich

In Arabic poetry since the pre-Islamic era, mention of the ostrich would spark different thoughts to the reader well versed in the contemporary linguistic context of that time. The early Bedouins regarded the ostrich as being related to the camel (it is also interesting to note the scientific name for ostrich being Struthio Camelus- sparrow camel), and at that time ostriches were ridden by desert ogres.

The Arabic saying to ride the wing of an ostrich meant to devote yourself wholeheartedly to something (perhaps inspired from the way one rides on ostrich, by holding on to its wings, and the fact that ostriches are difficult to saddle and have an ill temper thus riding them would have required dedication). At the same time, the ostrich symbolized cowardice (the popular myth about sticking its head in the sand when sensing danger). That analogy was used likening the retreat of the Byzantine emperor to an ostrich by the famous Arab poet al-Mutanabbi.

In the English language Ostrich is also the noun for a person who tries to avoid disagreeable situations by refusing to face them.

I find there to be something extremely profound over the ostrich. Its eyes are larger than its brain. It's a bird created with wings, yet it cannot fly...

Opposites Explain

I often get the question why young people who once had no religion, or very little of it could go from that to an extreme interpretation of religion like we see across the world more and more these days. It is seldom youth who are brought up in a balanced home in terms of religious identity who fall for extremism. It is often young men and women who have no reference at home in terms of religious identity (besides the five pillar talk they got when they were 8 in Quran school) who fall for the simplistic and twisted interpretations of religion.

How one could go from being "Mo" who hadn't prayed his whole life and would do everything to fit into the host culture he was born into but parents did not come from, to suddenly one day being Mohamad, shunning all non-Muslim company, quoting hadith to every question he gets, whether it had any relevance or not. A world that suddenly went from one black and white, to another.

An Arabic proverb comes to mind and it in my opinion explains today's "extremist" phenomena:

Al shayy min al Dodd yofham

Roughly meaning, through the opposite a thing is understood (explained).

Whale Vision

Is it not curious, that so vast a

being as the whale should see the world

through so small an eye?

-Moby Dick

God in Bosnia

One of my all time favourite songs, Marta's Song by Deep Forest, an old folk song in ancient Hungarian led me to look into the meaning of a word that was sung: Istenem, Istenem, and after seaching for its meaning I found that it meant My God/Lord.

I pondered on the word a while, for I recognized it from somewhere; Bosnia. I remembered hearing a Bosnian song and hearing a similar word mentioned in Bosnian.

Today over coffee, at the same café where I saw Tweezer Woman, I asked my Bosnian friend if she recognized the word istenem, and if it meant anything in her language.

Apparently the word for truth, is istina. I asked her if there was any word close to istina or istinem that in Bosnian meant God, just like it does in ancient Hungarian. She explained that the word for God in Bosnian (and Serbian) was bog (very similar to Russian & Ukrainian Боr and боr) , however in everyday slang God is referred to as Istina.

Apparently there is a Bosnian saying that goes:

Istina je samo jedna
tr: The truth is only "one"

Being a Muslim country as such, it must have incorporated the spirit of this meaning in everyday slang thus translating Truth into being synonimical to God. For just as there is only one truth, there is only one God.

Another interesting Holy Linguistics fact.

Publius Syrus

You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.

The way we talk and reason today, a lot of times started somewhere, by someone at one point in time. We often use sayings that were coined more than two millennia ago without knowing it, thinking it's a very contemporary and "fresh" way to look at things.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

I guess people have always been people, and thus sayings will always have some sort of bearing in our everyday life, even a millennium from now.

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

Publius Syrus, a Syrian man who lived during the 1st century BC and was later taken to Italy as a slave, is one of those silent figures whose thoughts remain with us in our languages. His masters freed him though and educated him after being struck by his wit and talent.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

What remains of his works in Latin today are a series of sentences and moral maxims. What brought me to read a bit more about him was a saying in French I heard from a friend, that to me was what one would call a verbal slap:

Amitié qui finit n'avait point commencé
tr: Friendship that ends had no point in beginning

Arabic? I don't think so.

I can't get enough of the Paris Mosque. It's simply a European gem few people know of. You take the Metro to station Place Monge and from there it's a short walk. If you ever visit Paris don't miss it. They have Hammams, Turkish baths, and a restaurant worth visiting as well.

The Muslims of Paris interest me a lot. They are mainly of North African descent or from West Africa, and what's striking is how French they are. True, few of them spoke a word English and those who did, truly "zoundid lajk zis". But what's even more interesting is that their Arabic was more or less hard to understand. We couldn't communicate with each other (with few exceptions) at all unless I used my broken French and they their broken English.

What effect this must have on the people of France, and Muslims of France in general. They are more or less linguistically isolated from large parts of the world. I noticed people from the Middle East having trouble understanding the Moroccan or Tunisian Arabic.

Actually there were a lot of funny examples. In Arabic, fish is called samak. But no, the Moroccans wanted to eat hoot, which means whale in classical and mainstream Arabic! They even call small sardines hoot!

One of the girls we met at the Media Seminar I attended kept repeating a word all the time. At first I thought she was just slow on the uptake because she had asked me in Arabic once when my flight was back to Sweden, flight being in Arabic Tayyarah. I told her "7 o'clock".

So during the whole day she kept saying "tayyarah tayyarah" in the most weird times and totally out of place. So I kept telling her "It's 7 o'clock!"

She just looked at me like I was the weird one. "What are you talking about?" she asked me. "My flight of course", I replied. "I didn't ask you about your flight?" she continued. "Yeah you did, you said tayyarah."

Apparently, in Tunisian Arabic, tayyarah means excellent... (something so good that it's high up in the sky like a plane)

We were at a restaurant and a Tunisian guy says he's thirsty. Fair enough, give the guy something. So he asks in Arabic for a dabbousa. In classical and mainstream Arabic dabbousa means needle. After the tayyarah incident, I'm ready for anything. Apparently bottle in Tunisian Arabic is called dabbousa.

Last but not least... let us not forget our fellow Moroccans. In the Middle East, and among Arab Muslims in general, the expression Allah yateek el aafiyeh (May God give you health or goodness) is used a lot, either as a thank you or a well wishing good bye.

Me, I wanted to be polite of course, so I wished Aafiyeh on many of the North African participants at the seminar. In return I only got cold stares of shock.

Apparently, I wished hell fire on all of them...

The Bahá'í and Esperanto

Reading about the constructed language, Esperanto, created by L.L Zamenhof and first published in 1877, really opened many other doors of thought for me. It is today the most widely spoken constructed international language, and it is thought that up to 2 million speakers in mainly Russia, China, Japan and Eastern Europe speak the language either as native speakers or as a second language.

The objective of L.L. Zamenhof was basically to create a language, that happened to be influenced by Polish, German, French and Russian, that would work as a unifying force and international second language. The thought is inspiring, for indeed often lack of communication is the basis of unsolved differences.

However reading on, one is automatically lead to the Bahá'í faith founded by Baha'ullah in the early 1800's in Iran. The idea of unity of humanity being of great importance to Baha'ullah, he speaks of an international auxiliary language, basically one language that will work as a second unifying language learnt by everyone in addititon to their native tongue, as a means to create peace and understanding.

Could L.L. Zamenhof have been influenced directly by the Bahá'í faith whilst developing the Esperanto language? After all, his daughter Lidia Zamenhof later became a member of the Bahá'í faith.

Baha'ullah himself names three languages that could work as that one unifying language, and Esperanto is one of them, along with English and Arabic. Today however mainly Persian and English is used as a means of communication on a wider basis among the Bahá'í followers.

Zamenhof wrote a poem called "La Espero" (The Hope), and it is today often referred to as the anthem of Esperanto. A verse from it leads:

Sur neŭtrala lingva fundamento, ---On a neutral language basis,
komprenante unu la alian, ---understanding one another.
la popoloj faros en konsento ---the people will make in agreement
unu grandan rondon familian. ---one great family circle.

It is interesting, this idea of one language unifying the world. One could argue that English already works as such a language, being very often taught as a second language at schools all over the world.

When it comes to Arabic, it can't be equated to the standing of English in terms of being a language that has the same demographic stretch. Yet, on the other hand, many Arabic terms that were derived from the religious connotations that they held, such as alhamdolillah, insha'Allah and masha'Allah, are used from Bosnia to China to Mexico and Kenya, by Muslims (practicing or non practicing), and native Arabic speakers of whatever ideological affiliation.

This function of Arabic (for more than a billion people), is something that is unprecedented, linguistically, anywhere in the world even though many might argue that English has achieved a similar function. The Bahá'í followers however, are yet to announce the unifying language of their choice that will work as the second language of the world however I have my bets on Esperanto.

For those of you who wish to see the language used in an everyday fashion, there is an interesting blog by an Arab Emirati called Samawel, who learnt the language by studying it online.

Holy linguistics!

Religion often colours the language in the countries where it has played an integral part in society. The Bible itself contains many proverbs that are today integrated in e.g. both the English and Swedish language. "There is nothing new under the sun", is a proverb used today that has its origin in the Bible.

Wether you adhere to a certain faith or not, it is interesting to see how religious texts become an integrated part of society and language, and thus further forms new proverbs based on those very same religious ideas or texts. In "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce, a new saying is coined based on the old Biblical one; "There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know".

Same is the case with Arabic and Islam. A very descriptive example lies in a saying commonly used in the Levant area; "yesoom yesoom wa yefter 3ala basale" which means "he fasts and fasts and breaks it with an onion".

Usually this saying is used in the case of a man (or indeed woman) wanting to get married to someone who is, in the eyes of the mother or anyone else, not good-looking enough, or simply not good enough. To understand the context of this saying, and indeed, to have a good laugh at it, one can look to Islamic traditions for an answer.

Men and women, in general, who are not married have been recommended by the Prophet Mohammad* to fast every now and then, in order to avert ones focus from desire of the opposite sex. Thus, in this case, the man fasted and fasted, and when time came for him to be able to marry, he chose someone not "worthy enough", or metaphorically, opened his fast with an onion instead of choosing something else from all fruits and vegetables and foods available.

Think about your own language (or indeed languages), do you find any similar examples?
What are some of your favourite expressions or proverbs?

Ps. Don't hold back...


*May peace and blessings be upon him