Arabic-L:LING:Mother of ...

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 20 Mar 2003
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject:Mother of ...
2) Subject:Mother of ...
3) Subject:Mother of ...
4) Subject:Mother of ...

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1)
Date: 20 Mar 2003
From:Mutarjm at aol.com
Subject:Mother of ...

Greetings.
May one observe that that adopted usage is an apparent sign of
flippancy on the part of the person who coined that expression and of
mental laziness by those in the media who use it.
One might hope that responsible journalists would have more sense and
resist adopting such facile attempts at "linguistic cuteness."
Bombs are not trivial objects (having seen their effects in Vietnam and
later in Iraq, both times as a member of US military units), nor do
their descriptions deserve trivialization so they sound "neat and
spiffy."
All best regards,
Stephen H. Franke
Los Angeles

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2)
Date: 20 Mar 2003
From: "Schub, Michael" <Michael.Schub at trincoll.edu>
Subject:Mother of ...

This is a clear case of mother-gate.                Mike Schub

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3)
Date: 20 Mar 2003
From: Jan Hoogland <j.hoogland at let.kun.nl>
Subject:Mother of ...

In addition to my earlier reply:
BBC Arabic now has a special link on their Arabic Main page:
'umm al-qanabil:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/news/newsid_2841000/2841891.stm

Jan

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4)
Date: 20 Mar 2003
From: Aly Farghaly <farghaly at systransoft.com>
Subject:Mother of ...

I received several responses to my inquiry about the United States
military circles borrowing a phrase that was koined by Saddam Hussein
about the 1991 Gulf war which he called the Mother of All Battles
meaning the greatest battle of all.

Yaser Onaizan says that Saudi Papers referred to that battle using
Saddam's koinage calling it "umm al-mahalik" or "the mother of all
disasters"

Aziz Abbassi  concluded a paper he was writing  about the reforms needed
in the educational system saying calling such reform as 'Mother of all
Reforms'.

Mike Schub  describes this phenomenon as "This is a clear case of
mother-gate."

Regards,
Ali Farghaly

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