Life was good this evening. I left the office, located in “The Area Of” Wadi Saqra. As I drove through the wet streets of “The City Of” Amman, I listened to the “Radio Station Of” the BBC, looking forward to have something to eat for “The Meal Of” dinner.
Soon enough I was home. I parked the car and entered the house. The kids where already sleeping and my wife was working on “The Device Of” the computer.
I opened the refrigerator, took out two eggs and put them into a frying pan. As the eggs were cooking I opened the freezer and took out two pieces of “The Substance Of” bread…
Huh?
The “Substance Of” bread?
Yes. Of course. As they have written in the “Newspaper Of” Al-Ghad, and as as they write in all Jordanian newspapers.
It’s the “Substance Of” bread, which apparently people where buying in large quantities in the past few days in preparation for the snow blizzard that was approaching the kingdom.
And who can forget “The Substance Of” Kerosene (Arabic: Madet Al-Kaz) in these cold days of winter.
And who remembers when the government ordered the closure of many restaurants after a number of citizens got poisoned after eating, you guessed it, “The Substance Of Shawema” (Arabic: Natijat tanawulihim madet al shawerma).
Then we had that other incident of food poisoning, when the some school kids drank “The Substance Of” milk (Arabic: Madet Al 7aleeb).
Anyway, don’t get me started on the price of “The Substance of” tomatoes.. (Madet Al Bandora).
Let’s talk about sports..
Why do Arab sport commentators say: “and now the ball is with the “Player” Ronaldo (Arabic: Al-la3eb Ronaldo)”. Maybe because the viewers might think that the “Dentist” Ronaldo has the ball. They look alike, you know. Thank you Mr Commentator for making it clear to us.
In the article above there are references to “flour” and the “substance of flour”.
I’ve been noticing this phenomena for years and it truly amuses me. Is it more official sounding to talk about “The Substance” of Bread than just to talk about “Bread”. Again, the article above has both!
Is the Arab audience too dumb to understand, implicitly, the Ronaldo is a player.
Is there any linguist or anthropologist out there who can help explain this?
Comments
5 responses to “Bread and other “substances””
Very interesting and good blog post!
Here’s one possible explanation based on what one of our high school Arabic language teachers once told us. He said if you go back and read Arabic literature you’ll notice that older material more closely adhered to the saying “khairo al kalam ma qalla wa dall.” He said writers became so infatuated with the notion of putting their poetry skills on display that their text started getting redundant. What people wrote started being judged not only on its content, but on its “beauty” as well. In addition, he cited that letters or speeches used to be short and concise, but now when you read somebody’s speech (be it a Friday prayer speech or a speech in parliament), you’ll notice that it starts with some long template in the beginning (the “deebajeh”). People use these things to demonstrate the “beauty” of the Arabic language and it also demonstrates their ability or knowledge of the language to others.
None of this exists to the same extent in modern English, and I think that’s why you see so many redundancies in our use of Arabic.
I’m sure I haven’t done justice to what my high school teacher said or portrayed, but I hope you get the idea.
p.s. You can probably go back and read your post and still be able to eliminate some redundancies in its English as well.
Hmm I never noticed this :s. Maybe cause i usually skip stupid articles min asaso lol.
Although off topic, but somehow funny.
Nothing compares to “Al M3aidi” when he commentates on local games and says “Ghaba men al seeqan” which means “forest of legs”
!!
‘tabet football / tabet kurat qadam’?
!- a football ball!!
but what really is funny is ‘commestair’-which translates into come and stare
or aim pain sifti pain- which happens to be A pin saftey pin
hahaa dentist ronaldo…that cracked me up. yes i do notice these things. never thought to mention it though…thank god for this blog..a bit of intelligence in the soo dumb media we are being showered with everyday. please mr homaid talk about arabic satellite channels and its effects on our youth.that would be a hot topic i think.