This Nigerian guy who tried to blow up a Northwest flight from Amsterdam as it was landing here in Detroit studied Arabic for a bit in Yemen. However it was that he decided to carry out an anti-Christian revenge mission in the name of the modern proponents of terrorism, "What a waste of his intellectual journey!" I say.
If only he had had a chance to work with the American working class...We studied Arabic in the age of dinosaurs, when we studied with Charles Pellat, who came from the Sorbonne to teach us about Al-Jahiz, and right here in Michigan, we studied with Charles Bellamy, who helped edit with Ernest McCarus a wonderful selection of Modern Arabic Poetry. I'll have to scan it and put it on my private web site.
Also, now in the midst of teaching English, I speculate on whether the words and vocabulary with which Arabic literature and newspapers discuss the issues now is not almost completely different from the words and vocabulary of typical pre-intermediate English courses which select from the topics of the developed world, and use words like "systemic," as Obama was prompted to use. A word with no meaning which all the newsmedia seem to understand immediately.
I got a rude shock in my English teaching to Saudi's yesterday when I prepared an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos to show the excitement of the first Voyager 1 pictures in 1979. It was completely confusing to them...and I realized it was because the planets have completely different names in Arabic.
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