Arabic Cheat Sheet

[A.F. GUPTA]

Well, things don't change.

In 1939 my mother was an air-raid warden in the UK.   They learnt
German for special purposes, and the purpose was to establish the
identity of any wandering German they might encounter who had
bailed out from an enemy plane.  To this day she can ask for name
and number in German.

Things can improve though -- on holiday in Germany in the 1990s,
we rented a car and a driver who was an former Luftwaffe gunner.
At first to my embarrassment and later to my amusement I had to
translate the conversation of these two elderly people who wanted
to compare notes about their experiences ON OPPOSITE SIDES.

Anthea
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Anthea Fraser GUPTA : http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg/
School of English
University of Leeds
LEEDS LS2 9JT
UK

[NB: best email style is a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk.  Use REPLY -- do not paste from header.]
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