Saturday 7 March 2009

Today's discoveries

Things that I really need to change about myself:
1. use less water when brushing my teeth.
2. stop reading in the car so my head doesn't get dizzy.
3. wear a shirt for a little while and then throw it clean in the washing basket.
4. stop pulling out my iPod, camera, memory stick etc... without ejecting it from the programs.
5. stop chewing so much gum, I need to go to rehab for that. But then "Wrigley's" might loose half of their profit.
6. stop checking my horoscope everyday even though I don't believe in that kind of stuff, I like it when it turns out all wrong compared to what is written in the stars for me, especially when it is not good.
7. stop doing my homework while chatting on msn with my friends.

Today I was listening to people closely not just hearing them, and I realized that in the Arabic language (by the way even in German) we adopted English words. For Example: T-shirt, water hose, mobile, laptop, light, time, lip gloss, box, radio, pencil, camera, video, telephone, computer, calculator, and loads more.

In pronouncing them, they might sound a little different than the "real English" but still we use them as if they were Arabic (or German for that matter). For example, "light" the Bahrainis pronounce it "late" and use it in their daily conversations.

To all those words we actually have Arabic words that are completely different but they are only used in formal talking or writing, otherwise it's always the English words we use.

Now the weird thing is people don't realize anymore that this is not a different language that they are using, they have got used to these foreign words as if it is their own language.

And in the Arabic language here in the Gulf there are a lot of Indian words mixed with our language, because we have a lot of Indians living here, we adopted words from them too. One good example is our currency for the coins, here in Bahrain it is fils but we say rupee, though rupee is the Indian currency.


By the way, our currency for the notes are called Bahraini Dinar.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Salam. Rupiah is actually Indonesian currency, while Indian's is Rupee. I guess you have a lot of Indonesians living there? :)

Mariam said...

hehe sorry it is actually rupee but my spell check changed it. but yea we also have a lot of Indonesians here too.