Learning Arabic in Jordan

I spent the entire summer in Jordan working with American students, who were studying Arabic at the University of Jordan. It was a wonderful experience. I really fell in love with Jordan. Living there gave me many opportunities to meet and speak with real Jordanians, who were really living in Jordan. Living in a country is an excellent way to become familiar with current thought, life, and language.

The University of Jordan has a generic program for foreign students that is quite similar to that found at Damascus University. I was quite surprised to see that there were many similarities between the two. The classrooms looked similar, the language center looked similar, the staff was similarly busy running to and fro being most helpful - usually.

I met quite a few American and foreign students while I was there. It seemed to me, as I might have expected, that the private programs at the language center took precedence over the normal in-house courses. They seemed to receive more support and attention from the administration.

I learned a great deal about how foreign language programs are run in the Arab world. It is great that there are so many native Arabic speakers out there interested in teaching Arabic to us gringos. Unfortunately, I witnessed an unpleasant amount of paralyzing bureaucracy and careerism during my stay in Jordan in the program. I suppose this is a problem all over the world, but there is something about the region that increases this. I am not a psychologist so I will stop the speculation.

On a more positive note, I also witnessed some of the best Arabic teaching I have ever seen and some of the most generous teachers and administrators one could hope to encounter.

And wow, the food was sooooo great!

More details about my experience to come…

I'm back

مرحباً بكم

I guess I still get quite a few hits everyday. I think I might emerge from the shadows and whisper sweet nothings, that are really somethings to some, into this blog. It seems that lots of people all over the world want to learn about learning and teaching Arabic. مبروك عليكم

جرمي

Bahraini Blogger Blocked!

One of Bahrain's most popular blogs, Mahmood's Den, has been blocked by the Bahraini Government. So much for freedom of speech under a democratically-elected Government.

UPDATE 2nd November: following a meeting between Mahmood and MinInf, and his agreement to pull 4 articles about the Bandergate scandal, the block has been lifted.

Mother, what can I give you?

After having reached the height of his career a man felt a duty to repay his mother back for all that she had done for him.He asked, "Mother, what can I give you? What can I do for you? I sincerely wish to repay you for the sacrifices you made for me and for all the love you have showered upon me."Mother looked surprised and said, "Why do you think about it? It was my duty so I did it, you don't

How to give orders in Angass

I'm researching Chadic imperatives at the moment, so I opened Angass Manual - written by H. D. Foulkes, Captain (late R. F. A.), Political Officer, Nigeria in 1915) to the appropriate section, and found it to consist solely of the following advice:

The Imperative is of the same form as the rest of the verbal forms, only uttered with the necessary tone of authority.

I suppose it's too much to expect an Edwardian captain to be able to transcribe tones, but I couldn't read that without bursting out laughing.

The book gets even better, with such cringeworthy gems as this "explanation" for phonological processes:

"The Angass, like most negroes, have a nice ear, and they endeavour to prevent harsh sounds coming together."

I particularly like how he explains that Angass grammar is really simple:

"The language is so simple in construction that I am hoping a study of it may help in elucidating the groundwork of more elaborated Negro languages."

since anything he can't get to grips with must not be part of its grammar:

"The only difficulty - but it is a very real one - in the colloquial is the apparently capricious employment of a large number of particles, the use of which, though immaterial from a grammatical point of view, is, however, necessary in practice, for without them the sentence certainly loses its flavour, and seemingly some of its sense, in that an ordinary man cannot understand a phrase unless it is enunciated exactly in the way he is accustomed to hearing it, and the omission or transposition of a word bothers him considerably."

هلللللللللللللللللللللللللللللللللللة ومية هلة Repeated Post:

الأخوات والإخوة ترى شلش كام ينشر كتاباته بنفسه على هذا الموقع، وأول ما نشره "اخاف احجي وعلي الناس .... وحدك بالساحة شلش، شد حيلك وروح بفالك

أخوك عماد خدوري

أو كما يقول, هذي "أحسن هدية للعيد"..

ثاني أحسن خبر سمعته اليوم, و..... لا ..... مراح اكللكم أول أحسن خبر
:p
عمركم خسارة أذا مقارين شي لشلش أو مراح تزورون البلوك مالته... ولو ما أعتقد بقة أحد عراقي شريف مقاريلة شي (عذرا من كل عراقي شريف ما قاري كتابات شلش, هذي فرصتكم, لكيتوا واحد قلبة محروك عالعراق مثلكم)
روحوا يلة بسرعة سلموا عليه, شكاعدين تتنظرون؟

rka and yya: from Arabic to Berber, or Berber to Arabic?

I had always assumed, with no particular evidence, that the frequent Algerian Arabic word rka ركا ("rot", v.) was of some obscure Arabic origin; it looks like a normal Arabic word, after all, with a triliteral root and a weak 3rd consonant and a regular conjugation (although that non-emphatic r is suspicious, in retrospect.) It even has a corresponding adjective, raki "rotten", and there is a verb ركا in Fusha, though its range of meanings ("dig", "fix", "slander"...) show no obvious similarity to "rot". So I was somewhat surprised to see, looking at Kossmann 1999:176, that it occurs throughout Northern and Southern Berber languages, with k shifting to sh in Zenati ones as expected, and can clearly be reconstructed for proto-Berber. A lot of common Algerian Arabic words of obscure origins that I had thought might be from Berber haven't held up to closer examination, but this one looks pretty solid.

So on that note, consider the irregular imperative of "come" in Algerian Arabic: not the impossible *ji, but ayya أيّا. I understand this word is also present as an irregular imperative of as ("come") in Kabyle, Chenoua, and Tumzabt; so does it come from Arabic or Berber? In Arabic, hayyaa هيّا "hurry!" seems a plausible-looking but not indisputable source for it; dropping the h would be irregular, but there are other examples (نوظ "get up", presumably from نهض). So the question hinges on how widely the word yya is distributed among Berber languages. Is it found in Chaoui, for example? Or Tamasheq, or Tashlhiyt, or even Siwa? I'm hoping some readers will be able to help answer these question... :)

The Big Adventure

Before embarking on the adventure of living abroad, we should ask ourselves some questions. As I've said before, being a foreigner in a different country is not for everyone. Understand that while of course there will be great times and new adventures there will also be times of loneliness and occasional feelings of isolation.

The first question we might ask ourselves is why do we want to leave our home country? There are many good answers to this question. But the underlying reason should express what we hope to discover, accomplish, learn and experience. Answers which tell us that we might not be making the right choice involve expressing what we want to avoid or escape by leaving. Leaving home due to unresolved issues with your country, relationships in your life or other problems you may have is never the right choice. No matter how far you travel, whatever problems, conflicts and stress you have, they come along with you in the form of "emotional baggage".

Another question we might ask is where, or rather which country is most suitable. While this is a really good question, the answer should be flexible. That is to say you should have a few countries in mind where you'd be willing to live. (Have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice scenario) The reason for this is simply that depending on the current economical, social and immigration situations in a given country some regions will be easier than others to find work, housing, making a life. It's important to research the potential countries of interest before making a decision.

Also consider the fact that just because you have taken your "second choice" country for now doesn't imply that you will never live in your first choice country. This is about good timing. Assuming that you are looking for an adventure and creating your own path, often taking a longer route leads to a richer experience.

Speaking of good timing... When will this great adventure start? Factors to consider are:

• How much money will you have available? You may need time to save money before you go. Even if you have a job arranged before you arrive, you will need start up money. How much depends on the average cost of living in the country of choice. For example, even though its not always possible to arrange a job in advance in South-east Asia, the cost of living is relatively low. So you could conceivably show up with about $1000 and have enough to live off of until you find a job teaching English. Conversely, planning to live in most Western European countries requires much more money to get set up.

• Putting closure on commitments in your home country. Included in this would be, leaving your existing job, making decisons on what to do with existing property and family commitments. Know that even if you own property, that, by itself, is not a reason to slow you down on living abroad and it doesn't mean you must sell. It does mean you must research your options.

• Knowledge of destination country. To decide when to go, you must know factors on the country of choice such as, hiring times, cultural expectations and local support for setting up.

Use these factors to decide when you will leave and stick to it. Actually set a date and year.

Lastly is... How? We will talk about how to set up next week.

It's a Boy! It's a Girl! No, it's an Onion!

It's been 11 days since I planted my onion and pepper seeds. Nothing happened, so I was beginning to think the seeds were duds - or, much more likely, that I'd planted them wrongly. So imagine my joy when yesterday evening I scanned the containers looking for anything green and I found this tiny little shoot!



Note: picture deliberately blurred to deter stalkers.

Flaming Bloggers

If you read the UAE Community Blog or Secret Dubai Diary, you'll be aware of some down and dirty, and frankly at times disgraceful 'exchanges of views' in the comments on some articles in the last week (especially this). Like a moron I got drawn into some of these threads. For my pains I have been misunderstood, misrepresented and insulted by people who really ought to know better.

At the end of the day there is nothing, nothing at all that you can write will stop these trolls from writing their ignorant, prejudiced and abusive garbage. And there's something about the anonymity of the Internet that just erases all pretence of civility.

Yukk.

Eid Mubarak

Enjoy!

Sahha eidkoum! and Yobe languages

And Eid Mubarak, everybody! I've already posted on the etymology of this term before, so for lack of anything new to say on it, here's a nice site I've come across: Yobe languages, with handy materials on six minor Chadic languages of Nigeria.

Eid Mubarak

EID MUBARAK!May Allah bless you and your family on this joyous day.I Love Eid PoemEid Celebration

Sadaqat al-fitr

صَوْمُ شَهْرِ رَمَََضَانَ مُعَلَّقٌ بَيْنَ السَّمَآءِ وَاْلَرَضِ وَلاَ يُرْفَعُ اِلاَّ بِزَكَاةِ الْفِطْرِSayyidina Jarir رضى الله تعالى عنه narrates that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said:"The fasts of the month of Ramadaan remain suspended between heaven and earth and only through Sadaqat al-fitr they are raised to heaven." (That is, they are accepted only after Sadaqat al-fitr is paid.) [Abu

Happy Diwali

A Happy Diwali to all my Hindu buddies and lurkers.

Birthday Boy

It's my birthday! And it's the weekend! Yayyy! It's still Ramadan though, and BetterArf has a rehearsal from 8 o'clock tonight. So the plan is to do Iftar at the MOE Kempinski. I think she has invited a bunch of folks to join us, although this is meant to be a closely-guarded secret.

BetterArf got me some fab presents, including Terry Pratchett's latest book 'Wintersmith' (I love the way he always brings out a new one just in time for my birthday), and Gordon Ramsay's 'Secrets' - full of totally inspirational recipes...can't wait to get stuck in.

HSBC sent me a text message to wish me a happy birthday, but they left out the bit 'and here is some free money to help you celebrate'. Again.

And how old am I? Put it this way: this is the last year I'll be able to describe myself as 'forty-something'.

Google Earth for linguists - and more Tunisian Berber

I've been playing around with Google Earth lately, and apart from all the obvious things you do when you get a satellite picture of the earth to play with - find your house, places you've been, etc. - it became clear that the ability to create and save placemark files opened up some interesting applications for linguists. To make a linguistic map, all you have to do is:
* create a new folder for the linguistic map (menu Add > Folder);
* list villages and towns that you know speak the language;
* look up their coordinates (where necessary) on sites like FallingRain - or better yet, record them with a GPS while you're there;
* go to them in Google Earth (you can type in rather than placename) and create placemarks for them (the pin button near the bottom right corner);
* change the icons for the placemarks if you have distinctions you want to make;
* add text to the placemarks (or folder names) in the Comments field;
* save the resulting folder as a KMZ file to be reopened in Google Earth.

Google Maps won't let you draw borders in, but (where relevant) this can be handled easily enough: File > Save Image, open it in Photoshop or GIMP, add a layer (so you can see the original at any time if you mess up), and draw the borders which, if you've plotted enough points, should be pretty obvious by then anyway. Filled in in suitable monochrome, this will look nicer in print, but has disadvantages: you lose the ability to attribute lengthy text to individual points (which shows up in Google Earth if you click on them), not to mention the ability to zoom in, or see the overall topography and environment.

By way of an example (possibly relevant to my PhD plans), here's one I did earlier: Tunisian Berber - Shilha. It has a bibliography of everything I could find on Tunisian Berber under the main folder, with works on individual villages cited under their placemarks, along with quotes on the vitality of Berber there. Berber is highly endangered in Tunisia, so I used four icons to represent different stages: a ghostly grey square for places where it disappeared shortly before 1900, a small bluish square for ones where it was still spoken in the 1930s, a white and blue circle for places where it is probably still spoken, and a larger white and blue square for places where it is still spoken by almost the whole population. It is divided into four subfolders, corresponding to different regions. As you will see, these varieties, in addition to being confined to less than thirteen villages in the whole country, are rather inadequately investigated - contrast the wealth of literature on and in Kabyle, or even Tashlhiyt. I hope this "cartographic bibliography" is found to be useful.

One Point Four Billion Dirhams. Itisalot.

The lovely Etisalat have just announced a third quarter profit of Dhs 1.4 billion. This is an increase of 41% on the same period last year.

I thought we had laws against obscenity in this country.

Virtues of Charity

By Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (r.a)1. It is mentioned in a Hadith that generosity is a great attribute of Allah Ta'ala. In other words, Allah Ta'ala is extremely generous.2. It is mentioned in a Hadith that the servant of Allah gives a small piece of bread as charity. In the sight of Allah Ta'ala that small piece increases to such an extent that it equals the size of Mt. Uhud. In other words,

Don't Postpone Joy!

Leaving your home country to face the unknown of a new culture, new career and new life style is never an easy decison and is not for everyone. The purpose of this blog is to share personal experience as well as practical advice for taking the big leap... travel and live abroad.

For many years, I was a disgruntled architect who moved from job to job and city to city hoping to find the right fit. I finally realized that the best option for me was to stop following the beaten path and create my own. However, the question was how might I go about doing this? What could I do to earn a living aside from architecture? What was I good at? At that time, as far as I knew.. not much else.

I began to ask myself, to remember, when was I happiest? Forget about money, (momentarily) forget about how. What times in my life was I happy? Well, I was happiest during the time I was working on a Master's degree in Architecture. More specifically while I was doing the study-abroad component of my training in Italy. It wasn't just Italy, it was the freedom I felt, the discovery process and being a foreigner that contributed to my happiness.

I decided that just the act of living abroad might be just the adventure I needed to jump start my spirit. I had not yet decided how long I wanted to spend outside of the country or what I would do when I returned but I knew for sure that the sheer act of travel was exactly what I needed to discover where my future lies.

After identifying what I would do post- architecture, the big questions were which country and how to make money. Ironically, this part was not particularly difficult for me. Since I had no interest in returning to school, there is only one career that is in demand in many parts of the world that I was qualified for and that is teaching English as a second language. I choose Japan because at that time it was relatively easy to find a job and no experience was required except being a native English speaker. Perfect!

From that moment on my life has been an endless adventure that still hasn't ceased to surprise me. I have no regrets and through weekly chronicles I will describe the events that have taken place since the fateful day that I left for Japan. After all, its been almost seven years that I've been living outside of the U.S. and after a few continents and many countries later, I've found myself in the south of France. I hope that by sharing my experiences and a little advice here and there that I can help others take that big leap.

Mobile Number Buggriation

Our belovéd Telecoms Regulation Authority has just announced that we have until December to sort out our mobile phone books. Currently, all mobile numbers in the UAE have the prefix '050'. If you are calling a mobile number from another local mobile, you can drop the prefix. But from December, that prefix must be dialled. Partly this is because Itisalot is running out of capacity on 050, and they are going to introduce 056 if they get any new subscribers. And of course, du will need a prefix of its own.

I met somebody who works for du the other day. The conversation went something like this:
du guy: Hi, my name is zzz and I work for du, and that's all I'm going to say about that.
me: So I'm hearing that du could use another year or two before they launch?
du guy: zzzzip.
me: ??
du guy:

Hmm. I actually sent an email to du at the end of September, explaining that I had been under the impression they would launch by the end of September and wondering what was actually happening. Sadly I have not had a reply yet. Neither has 7Days, who were getting themselves into a bit of a strop about it a while ago. Anyhoo, the current zeitgeist says they'll get something on the market by the end of this year. But really they'll need two or three years to get their act together. I'm disappointed by the current radio silence: they started off well, but have been completely absent recently. This does not inspire confidence.

Ho hum.

Basil Babies Update 2

Well I don't know about this gardening lark: I thought my basil plants would be ready for consumption by now. I mean, it's been over a week since I planted them, and all I've got are 2-leaved thingies on an inch-long stem! They look like little gaping mouths - maybe I should give them some cheese or something.



I seem to have caught the bug though (as long as it's not a mealy bug - those ugly little gits ruined BetterArf's previous attempts at hort couture). The day before yesterday I planted bell peppers, and yesterday I did some onions. Neither of those have sprouted yet either!

Aramex Update

Finally, proof that bloggers are not just loonies screaming in the wilderness. I blogged the other day about MidEast courier company Aramex. The article had been prompted by this post on a Jordanian blog (Aramex is a Jordanian company).

Somewhat amazingly, the CEO of Aramex, Fadi Ghandour, commented on Hala's original post, and invited her and any of the other commenters to meet him and talk about it. That is just one of the coolest things I've ever heard. Sadly I won't be whizzing up to Amman for the meeting, but I am really, truly impressed. First of all that somebody at Aramex read the post, and secondly that this is how he deals with it. Absolutely amazing!

Any board member from Itisalot or the TRA care to comment?

Walkin' The Plank

If you've been reading MamaDuck's Most Excellent Blog (and if not, why not?), you'll have an inkling that I've gone and got me a part in the upcoming Dubai Drama Group panto. I wouldn't have considered attempting such a thing if it had not been for a phone call BetterArf got from A Person Who Shall Not Be Named, suggesting that there was a role in the panto that would be purrfect for moi. And BetterArf was thinking 'hmm, could be a part in it for me too!'.

We used to be pretty active in DDG until we moved out to the sticks of Djelybeybi and just getting to rehearsals became almost impossible. But this is our last year in DoBuy so we thought it would be bluddigoodfun to give it a go. Also BetterArf and I have never actually been in a show together.

So we went off to the audition. Now, I'm no great shakes as an actorrr, but I can do funny, and this is a funny role. BetterArf is a pro, of course. She read her audition piece and got a standing ovation. I mean, like, wow, you had to be there. Although if you weren't there you could have probably heard her in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.

Rehearsals start on Friday. We will of course be plugging the show relentlessly and insisting that you all buy tickets 'cos this is likely to be the last time you can see this particular blogger making an eejit of himself on stage in DoBuy, and certainly the only time he'll attempt to do so in a Welsh accent look you.

Oh yes, 'Walkin' The Plank' = 'Treading The Boards'. 'tis Treasure Island and we is Pirates aharrrrr!

where am I?

This blog is not dead. This blog is not alive. I'm not sure what to say. I hope to go to a website. I think a website would be more useful.

There is lots of good info in my blog about learning Arabic. Good luck mining!

Jeremy

The Needy One

Prepared by Muhammad AlshareefShaykh Sa'eed ibn Musfir tells the following account...I was walking out of the Haram (the Ka'bah in Makkah) when I saw a man begging from everyone that passed by him. Just then a man who had parked his tinted Mercedes excessively close to the Haram in a designated VIP parking walked passed the beggar on his way to his car. As he pulled the keys out and the alarm

***mex

I had a very pleasant lunch with a client of mine a few days ago, and he suggested that they would use ***mex (well-known MidEast courier company) to deliver a CD of stuff to me for the project we are working on. I must have done a big-time cringe, or fallen off my chair, because everyone around the table looked a bit startled by my reaction to the name.

I have blogged about this company previously:

Aramex Does it Again
Banks And Couriers

And today I came across this post:

Kharamex

Which reminded me of a phone call I had maybe four or five months ago from a salesman from ***mex. He wanted my company to sign up for a contract. I think I really spoiled his day. I told him that having been on the receiving end of their service, I would not wish to inflict that on anyone I was sending stuff to - actually what I think I said was 'I would rather die than give money to ***mex'.

He wanted to know more so I told him. Then he started begging a bit, offering free stuff and extra discount. I explained that they could be as brilliant as they liked collecting stuff from me, and I have no doubt that they can do that rather wonderfully because that's where their money comes from, but if they insist on bothering the recipient for idiotic requests for location (when it is clearly written on the package, and especially if they have delivered to that address previously) and lying about when it will be delivered, I will not sign up for that. I want people to be pleased to receive stuff from me, not to feel harassed.

Foo. I felt really really sorry for the guy calling me, really I did. Really. But hey, until ***mex gets its act together on the delivery side (oh and they've only had 24 years to get things organised), I will get out my barge-pole and not touch them with it.

More Time Wasting

Also on the 'What Famous Leader Are You' site is a test to determine which blockbuster movie you resemble. Now this is weird. BetterArf recently bought DVDs of a load of Frank Capra movies, and she lurves them all to bits. So how apt is it that I am...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

!

A Complete Waste Of Time

OK, this is a silly thing to waste bit o' time. Find out which Famous Leader you are. This is me...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Not sure about the 'emaciated' bit! Or the 'do gooder'. Hmmm...but I did it twice, once with 27 questions and once with 40 and got the same bleedin' answer each time!

Firefox Blocked!

This is just unbelievable. I was trying to download Mozilla Firefox on BetterArf's laptop. You can get to the site ok, you can hit the 'download' button, and you can read and accept the terms and conditions. And then you get the pale blue screen of death.

Itisalot (© Prometheus): WTF are you playing at now?

Sheng and other links

Sheng is the 'Slanguage' of the Future offers plenty of food for sociolinguistic thought: here we have a columnist at once decrying the prescriptivists who are offended by this urban "slang" and urging that Kenya's "tribal" languages be abandoned to extinction in favor of this new trans-tribal language. (For a more academic Sheng link: Talking Sheng: The role of a hybrid language in the construction of identity and youth culture in Nairobi, Kenya.)

Other links:
Anthro-Ling offers a myth in Rumsen Ohlone - I guarantee you won't find this elsewhere online...

Bulbul on languages named after products (no, not as an advertising gimmick!)

And Language Hat on Wade-Giles, edifying for Chinese learners anywhere

Basil Babies Update

The babies have been busy growing today, and look how they all lean over towards the sunlight. Tomorrow I'll turn the trough round and see what happens - I might end up with zig-zag stalks.

My Babies!

Never mind Tom Cruise and wottsername, I'm not asking $3,000,000 for a glimpse of my babies. Here they are, for free!



Actually, this isn't all of them, there's a stack more further down the trough. Sadly a whole lot of them fried in the sunshine today, so the nursery is indoors now.

Aren't they cute? And aren't they tall!

Faster than the wind

Abdullah Bin Abbas narrates that the Apostle of God (sallallaho alaihi wa sallam) was superior to all men in generosity and the doing of good to the people in general, but in the month of Ramadhan his benevolence knew no bounds. In Ramadhan, (Angel) Gabriel came to him every night and the Prophet (sallahu alaihi wa sallam) recited the Qur’an to him. During Ramadhan the Prophet (sallaho alaihi wa

The Miracle Of Life

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that Keefieboy^TM is no gardener. But BetterArf has green fingers an' thumbs an' everything. She has ideas that she might get me interested in agroculture when we get our smallholding atop a remote mountain in Arsendabeyond, España. As a prelude to this, she got me a packet of seeds when she was in Andalucia.

Nice.

Apparently if you stick 'em in soil, by some kind of magic they will turn into basil bushes (boom boom). This seems a bit unlikely to me, but a few days ago I got me some compost, threw it in a trough, glugged some water on it and sprinkled the seeds around. There were no signs of life after a few hours. Nothing the next day. By evening, I was a bit dejected, thinking 'my babies are dead'. But yesterday evening I spotted a couple of dozen tiny green leaves. It's a miracle!

My babies!

Kabyle dialect geography and the Kutama-Zwawa divide

Recently I came across A. Basset's Etudes de Geographie Linguistique en Kabylie (1929) - an interesting if incomplete work mapping the distribution of different body part terms across the Kabyle Berber-speaking region of eastern Algeria. The variation is significant, but I noticed a persistent trend: if there was any variation at all, the small Kabyle-speaking area east of Bejaia very often seemed to have a different term, or terms, than the rest of Kabylie. For example, the whole rest of the area has either aqerru or aqerruy as the normal word for head; this small eastern area instead has both ixf and akerkur. Almost the whole area has allen for "eyes"; the far east has taTTiwin. For "ear", everywhere has amezzugh, except the far east, which has imejj. For "knee", variants of tageshrirt (or Arabic borrowings) are nearly everywhere except the far east, which has afud. What's up with that?

A quick look at Ibn Khaldun suggests an explanation. In his History, he outlines the locations and notional genealogies of the principal Berber tribal confederations of his time. He describes the Zwawa - a name more generally associated with Kabyles - as extending through the mountains from Dellys to Bejaia, and the much larger Kutama group as extending throughout a wide area (the northern half of which is now Arabic-speaking) stretching from the Aures Mountains to the coast between Bejaia and Buna (modern Annaba), as well as including scattered groups outside this range, around Dellys and in Morocco (modern Ketama in the Rif.) (He personally inclined to the view that the Zwawa were in origin a subgroup of Kutama, but notes that this was not generally believed.) In other words, the division between Kutama proper and Zwawa lay around about modern Bejaia - exactly where the suspicious isoglosses I noticed seem to be. The next question: where these far eastern dialects diverge from the rest of Kabyle, do they resemble Chaoui?

(See الخبرعن كتامة من بطون البرانس and الخبر عن بني ثابت for the Ibn Khaldun quotes.)

Etisalat's Annual Broadband Satisfaction Survey

No doubt you lucky lucky beoble who live in the UAE and are hostages of Etisalat will have been invited to do their annual 'Hostage Satisfaction Survey'. And you've probably thought 'I can't be bothered - the questions are always phrased so that whatever you say makes it look like you actually like Etisalat'. That's what I thought, but then I had a look at it and I have to say it's better than previous years; your options are no longer limited to a range of 'quite good' through to 'excellent', they now have a ten-point scale that goes from 'terrible' to 'outstanding' or words to that effect. And there are free-text boxes dotted around where you can write an essay telling them how great or how crap you think they are.

I was a bit stumped on the satisfaction rating for the proxy though: the question is 'How IMPORTANT the following network and other related aspects for an Internet service are to you?...Internet Filtering/ Content Blocking (feature by which the ISP blocks certain websites)' and the answer options go from 'not important at all' to 'extremely important' - it's very hard to answer that when what you want to say is '99% of censorship is immoral and a contravention of basic human rights so please go burn your damned proxy'.

And it was interesting to see a number of questions asking about the possibility that you may be thinking of switching to an alternative supplier.

Etisalat - this survey is a brave but hopelessly belated attempt at pretending that you give a damn what your hostages think. But you already know that you've lost the vast majority of your hostage base even before the new operator starts operations. You have acted as smug and callous monopolists for as long as I have lived in this country. You have bled us dry.

Theft: Been Robbed I Have

Somebody has seen fit to steal the header from this blog and use it on their website (in a somewhat horrible Flash thingy). I am not impressed. I have emailed the owners of the site but have had no response so far.

The sad thing is that this is a site that normally I would support in any way I could. But if the authors of it think that that support extends to them helping themselves to my intellectual property without even asking, they really need to think again.

Names will be named.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose..

"nice girl, been all over and finally landed in the land of my ancestors! the last seven years have been funny, sad, memorable, disgusting and just recently..nearly crippling! Allah yestur!"

that's most of what can be found, at the moment..

we are waiting, white rose, you said hi, we said Hiyat! take all the time you want, we be waiting!

welcome to iraq, and welcome to the blogsphere.

oh, and Poe Kicks @$$!

Zakat

Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam. It has been mentioned, along with daily Prayers (Salaat), over seventy times in the Qur'an. From this we can conclude that after Salaat, Zakat is the most important act in Islam.وَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلاَةَ وَآتُواْ ٱلزَّكَاةَ وَٱرْكَعُواْ مَعَ ٱلرَّاكِعِينَEstablish Salaah, pay Zakat and bow your heads with those who bow in worship [Qur’an 2:43]Just as