Arabic-L:LING:Borrowing Verbs

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 08 Apr  2004
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Borrowing Verbs
1) Subject:Borrowing Verbs

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1)
Date: 08 Apr 2004
From:"A. Ferhadi" <af3 at nyu.edu>
Subject:Borrowing Verbs

It has been suggested that "English "shoot, shot" (a ball toward a
goal) has become thoroughly  naturalized in Egyptian Arabic ..." To
that, I would like to add that shawwaT (Form II) is also used in Iraqi
Arabic. It seems that it has penetrated Fusha as well. A soccer game
has two half-times of 45 minutes each. In Standard Arabic, they are
called ashwaaT (and the singular is shawT) e.g. fii ash-shawT al-awwal
min al-mubaarat ... "In the first half time of the game/match ..."
shawT is a loan with no productive derivation that I know of in Arabic.

On the same subject of borrowed verbs in Arabic outside computerese,
Iraqi Arabic also uses chayyak/yichayyik "to check or look into" and
parrak/yiparrik "to park" ( both From II). By the way, Iraqi Arabic
does not substitute /b/ for /p/ because it does have the latter phoneme
as in paacha (loan from Turkish) which is a dish known as kawaari9 in
Egyptian Arabic or parda "curtain," which is also a loan word from
Turkish.

I also remember how Detroit Arabs used to say: iSTakket fi-thalij "I
was stuck in the snow."

In Gulf Arabic, to shift the transmission of the car and put it "in
reverse," the verb is rewis (this NOT Form II). The second vowel in the
word is pronounced more like a schwa. I heard this word for the first
time in Oman a couple of years ago. To my chagrin, a Pakistani car
mechanic with no knowledge of English struggled to explain to me what
it meant in his broken Arabic.

Finally, Arabic Sifr and English cipher (spelled cypher in British
English) both mean zero. Which language borrowed from the other?


Ahmed Ferhadi
New York University

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2)
Date: 08 Apr 2004
From:srpkole at EUnet.yu
Subject:Borrowing Verbs

Dear colleagues,

Although Sattar asked for a "direct borrowing of a verb in standard
Arabic"
only and though I am a little late, yet I think I simply have to report
on
this candy of a quadriliteral colloquial verb (I & II): baznas-ybaznis,
and
tbaznas-yitbaznas. As it is obvious, both are derived from English
"business". The first one means to make business deals in a way that
usually
has not much to do with the sincerity and being honest. The second one
means
(as is pretty obvious, too) to start to behave in that "businesslike"
manner, or to pretend to make business (with the intention of cheating).

I've picked it up from Libya first, in mideighties, and used to throw it
here and there in Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Gulf, and it worked smoothly
every
time.

Cheers,
Srpko Lestaric

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End of Arabic-L:  08 Apr  2004