Archive for December, 2009

The Arabian Nights

Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by in Culture

The Arabian Nights (ألف ليلة وليلة) is a large collection of stories that are believed to be of Persian origin. They became prominent in the West in the eighteenth century when they were translated into French. The main characters of the story are king (شهريار) ‘Shahryar’ who kills his first wife after betraying him, and then he marries a girl every night and kills her in the morning in retaliation from all women. Then, he marries (شهرزاد) ‘Scheherazade’ who is a bright and eloquent young woman who starts telling the king interesting stories, and she survives one night after the other for a thousand and one nights (ألف ليلة وليلة). The stories include myths about people, animals, genies, kings, etc. Among the most famous characters of the Arabian Nights are Aladin (علاء الدين), Ali Baba (علي بابا), and Sinbad (السندباد).

The Arabian nights

Climate Summit

Posted on 20. Dec, 2009 by in Vocabulary

Copenhagen Summit

The Copenhagen UN climate summit (مؤتمر الأمم المتحدة حول المناخ) has attracted a great deal of media and public attention. In this post, I provide some words and expressions related to the topic of the climate summit from news articles I read about the topic. I think these are timely, and I hope they would be interesting and useful to readers. I also provide a link to Arabic articles on the topic from bbcarabic.com website.

قِمّة

summit

مُؤتَمَر

conference

الأمَم المُتَّحِدَة

the UN

الدُّوَل الصِناعيّة

industrial countries

الدُّوَل النامية

developing countries

اِتِفاق

accord/deal/agreement

المُنَاخ

climate

ظَاهِرَة

phenomenon

التَّغَيُّر المُناخيّ

Climate change

الاِحْتِباس الحَرَاري

global warming

دَرَجَة حَرَارة

temperature

اِنبِعاث الغازات

gas emissions

مَخاطِر

threats

النَّشَاط البَشَري

human activities

كارِثَة

disaster

التَلَوث

pollution

التغيّر المناخي – تغطية خاصة

(Climate change – special coverage)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/indepth/cluster_climate_change_tc2.shtml

political vocabulary

Posted on 18. Dec, 2009 by in Vocabulary

In this post, I give some vocabulary items related to political terms.

سِياسَة

Politics

سِياسيّ

Political

اِقتِصاد

Economics/economy

اِقتِصادي

Economic

دِيموقْراطِيّ

Democratic

دِكتاتورِي

Dictator

شِيوعِيّ

Communist

مَاركِسِيّ

Marxist

اِشْتِراكِيّ

socialist

رَأسِماليّ

Capitalist

مَحَليّ

Local

إِقلِيميّ

Regional

دَوْليّ

International

عَالَميّ

Global

دَوْلة

State

جُمهُوريّة

Republic

مَمْلَكَة

Monarchy

حُكُومَة

Government