Why I dabbled in Arabic

A few years ago at the local junior college I took introductory Arabic, just one evening class per week. A few days a go my daughter texted me this picture of a mosaic in the floor of the kitchen in her new apartment and asked if I could figure out what language it was and what it meant. No problem: باَلصحة Health! I never expected to attain any level of command of the language, but I wanted the script to be more than just exotic squiggles to me. Sometimes it is useful to be able to make sense of the Arabic soft keyboard in Google Translate. (A peek at the structure of a non-Indo-European language was interesting, too.)

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This is used in the dialect way of saying wish you good meal in all Arab countries.

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Thanks for the added info, I’ll pass it on to my daughter who will be glad to know. It makes perfect sense given its location in the kitchen, as well as the presence of the initial “b”, which I have a hazy recollection of as a preposition, and which Wiktionary confirms: " at, by, in, or with."

After I gave her the answer that I found, my daughter confirmed it with the father of an Iraqi friend, though I don’t think he included that bit of info. (And I don’t know why she needs to confirm info that I give her. :wink:

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Sure, I will be glad to help with anything related to Arabic. بالصحة :slight_smile:

With the new mini stories, hopefully we can do more than dabble. As temptation google “Crime in ramallah Millennials’ lives in Ramallah haaretz”. The first paragraph of the review is x-rated, but the book does look interesting.