<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Arabic-L: Mon 30 Jun 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To post messages to the list, send them to <a href="mailto:arabic-l@byu.edu">arabic-l@byu.edu</a>]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> unsubscribe arabic-l ]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Directory------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1) Subject:mozza response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">2) Subject:mozza response</div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">3) Subject:mozza response</div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">4) Subject:mozza response</div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 30 Jun 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Mustafa Mughazy <<a href="mailto:mustafa.mughazy@wmich.edu">mustafa.mughazy@wmich.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:mozza response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "> hope this will not offend anybody<br><br>mozza is a case of true word coinage. It has nothing to do with mooza (banana/a meat cut) or yimazmiz (to nibble). <br><br>Just like there are many “inappropriate” words in English that refer to women (e.g., broad, chick, and doll), Egyptian Arabic has its share of these words (e.g., mara, farda, waZwooZa, oTTa, mihallabiyya, balooZa, and mozza). Typically, these are lexical extensions of words for animals and food items. It is important to note here that there are similar terms for men, and they are equally offensive, e.g., faHl, helf, and ge3err. There is nothing unique about the existence of such lexical items. Those who are interested in a complete list can check out qaamoos riwish TaHan. The stigma associated with mozza has nothing to do with being a borrowing from a stigmatized dialect, as is the case with niswaan and mara), and it is no longer a teenage slang word.<br><br>I was fortunate enough to witness the development of mozza, since it came about when I was in high school (perfect sociolinguistic environment for slang). Naturally, every generation of adolescent boys has to come up with their vocabularies that separate them from other age and gender groups. In my days, the new lexicon included mozza (girl friend), nafkh biDaan (lit. inflating the testicles, i.e., to be boring), and raafi9 el-iryal (lit. raising the antenna, i.e., to be a pimp). Of course, these were considered inappropriate, and only adolescent males at the time understood what they really meant.<br><br>Here is the sociolinguistically interesting part. These words, unlike their predecessors in former generations, quickly changed their meaning/form and became part of the lexicon of teenage girls as well. The new meanings are: mozza (a broad/chick), nafkh (uncool) with the rest of the expression deleted, and raafi9 el-iryal (turning a blind eye to corruption). A few years later, adults started using these words, and now they are commonly used in the media, of course with new meanings. I think the rapid spread of these linguistic innovations across sociolinguistic divides can be attributed to the fact that these words were not associated with a particular social classes or communities. Describing a woman as a mozza has no connotations of her social background, whereas mara suggests a low class background. <br><br>What is even more interesting is that there is a new masculine form, e.g., waad mozz, which refers to a “pretty boy” with no connotations about sexual orientation.<br><br>Hope that helps<br><br>ps. I never used mozza in my life<br><br>Mustafa Mughazy<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">2)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 30 Jun 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Alexander Stein <<a href="mailto:alharaka@gmail.com">alharaka@gmail.com</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:mozza response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Mr. Parkinson,<br><br>This does not surprise me at all. I had a good many friends in Cairo, and almost all of them were college students and male. Several of them frequently used this word (mozza, with the ironic plural of mozzaz/mozzas with the AUC crowd), to the point where non-native speakers in the group, myself included, quickly learned its meaning without being told. When I used it with male college students, many were impressed to hear an American say it. Notice the demographic. I would never have used this word in the street with a male outside of this age range (maybe barring high school students) and certainly never in front of elder male or female Egyptians. It became quickly apparent that this word is demeaning as referring to a woman in the street as "babe" or "chick" in a most unwelcome way in English. Addressing a woman with "hey, chick" or "hey, sexy" would get me in an equal amount of trouble in the streets of America.<br><br>I would love to know how recent this word is in the ever-popular Egyptian lexicon. I do not know how many generations it spans.<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">3)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 30 Jun 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Farouk Mustafa <<a href="mailto:f-mustafa@uchicago.edu">f-mustafa@uchicago.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:mozza response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Mozza=babe</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">4)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 30 Jun 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Marwa Hussein <<a href="mailto:marwahsn@hotmail.com">marwahsn@hotmail.com</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:mozza response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13px; ">Hello, <br>I am not sure about how this word came to be part of the language, but I do know it is quite offensive. It's a word that some guys would use among themselves to talk about girls ..I do not know its exact meaning, but I think it is referring to women as some sort of sex object. And I haven't heard a (self- respecting ) guy telling a girl to her face " I think you are a 'mozza'", as some sort of praise statement. I am a bit curious, though, is this term also used in other Arabic dialects, or is only in the Egyptian one?<br>Hope this helps.<br>Marwa Hussein.<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">End of Arabic-L: 30 Jun 2008</div></div></div></div></div></body></html>