Arabic-L:TRANS:'common sense'

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 14 Apr 2010
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:'common sense'
2) Subject:'common sense'
3) Subject:'common sense'
4) Subject:'common sense'
5) Subject:'common sense'

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1)
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From:Alaa Elgibali <elgibali at umd.edu>
Subject:'common sense'


Does the word المفهومية as used in Egypt do the trick?

With best wishes,

Alaa Elgibali


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2)
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From:Robert Ricks <rsricks at gmail.com>
Subject:'common sense'


Hi Dil,

I think your analysis on "common sense" is correct. One further twist …For "common sense," Dar El-Ilm's Dictionary of Collocations gives:

• الفطرة السليمة 
• الحس الفطري
• الحس السليم

The second (الحس الفطري) has only two occurrences in arabiCorpus, but the other two are approximately equally frequent. Clearly, neither expression patterns with quite the same range of meanings as the English "common sense" (many of the examples seem closer to "sound thinking/clear thinking"), but there is certainly overlap. 

Interestingly, though, there is an unequal regional distribution of the terms. Al-Ahram has 10 occurrences of الفطرة السليمة but none of الحس السليم; Al-Hayat favors الحس السليم by a ratio of 3:1; and Thawra (Syria) has approximately equal distribution. 

Hope all is well,

Robert


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3)
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From:John Joseph Colangelo <colangelomutarjim at gmail.com>
Subject:'common sense'


I believe one of the posters said من المنطق and the Arabs use it often 
for conveying the concept of "common sense." Why not use what the Arabs 
use when expressing themselves?
Regarding the two examples Ben uses, I think the variant which is most 
common, especially in spoken English, is the one from sentence (a).
بطبيعة الحال، يا بُنَيَّ، إن لم تجتهدْ لن تنجَحَ. هذا أمْر منطقي
John

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4)
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From:"Schulte-Nafeh, Martha" <marthas at austin.utexas.edu>
Subject:'common sense'

I vote for الفطرة السليمة  too. And thanks to Dil for doing that corpus work for us!
 
Peace,
Martha

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5)
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From:dil parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:'common sense'


For me, 'logical', 'obvious', 'self-evident', (the normally accepted meanings of منطقي، بديهي) and the like are not unreasonable synonyms for 'common sense' when it is used as an adjective.  But 'logic' and whatever the nominal versions of the other two are don't work very well for me when the phrase is used as a noun.  Some nominal uses from the NPR site (searched today):

anyone who drinks Washington water loses their common sense
the difference between classical and quantum physics is the difference between common sense and something else entirely
let's try something new.  let's try common sense

من البديهي، من المنطق and the like might work well for some uses of common sense but not for the nominal ones‪.‬  It is possible that there simply is no adequate equivalent in Arabic that really expresses the sense of the phrase in the above sentences‪.‬

I don't know how مفهومية is used in Egyptian Arabic. In the press represented in arabiCorpus it usually seems to mean 'conceptual' when an adjective and 'concept' when a noun:

المفهومية وراء الألفاظ المختلفة

There is one article that uses it consistently as a noun.  I'll copy the paragraph here if anyone wants to see if it could possibly mean common sense:

يقرر مالك في بداية المحاضرة أهمية مشكلة المفهومية - العقيدة فيقول: «ان مشكلة المفهومية - الايديولوجيا تثار على المستوى الوطني داخل كل بلد فرضت فيها شروطها الخاصة ضمن طور معين من أطوار تاريخها»(12). ثم يدرس دور المفهومية في تنظيم النشاط الفردي وتركيبه بالتالي مع النشاط الجماعي: «حينما تفتقد المفهومية فأن الآلة الاجتماعية تظل فاقدة لاحدى الحزقات»، ويقول: «الا ان نشاط المجتمع المشترك لا يتكون في بساطة من مجرد مجموع النشاطات الفردية، حتى ولو كانت هذه الأخيرة من نفس الجنس، حتى ولو كانت متحدة كلها في نفس الاتحاد، اذ يجب ان يتم تنظيمها في كنف النشاط الاجمالي حسب «مخطط تنظيمي» يتولى تحديد فعالية هذا النشاط. فهذا «التنظيم» للنشاطات الفردية بالذات في كنف نشاط اجمالي مشترك هو الذي يضع على وجه الدقة مشكلة المفهومية». ويبين دور المفهومية في ترويض النفس الانسانية فيقول: «ومن ناحية اخرى فالمفهومية التي يجب ان تحمل الانطلاقة يتعين كذلك ان تحمل مبدأ نظامياً، فقبل ان يروض المجتمع الطبيعة يتعين عليه ان يروض نفسه، حيث ينصاع الى القاعدة، وينضبط مع المع__يار الضروري للعمل المشترك». 

One interesting and perhaps telling thing about these forms for me is that of the 105 instances of مفهومية that show up in the press in arabiCorpus, not a single one is from the Ahram (the only Egyptian newspaper represented). All are from Hayat, or Syrian, or Kuwaiti or Moroccan papers.  Would Egyptians be avoiding it because of this colloquial usage?

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End of Arabic-L:  14 Apr 2010


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