Language as culture

Check out this article in The Economist on language as part of culture. I found the example of kitaab vs. sefer (book in Arabic and Hebrew) fascinating, especially with respect to the author's speculation on the divergence of the nouns, given the closeness of the verb "to write" in the two languages (katab/katav).

(originally posted over at LJ)

New verb for me

I've been trying to figure out the verb used in the little patter that Gabe Saporta does at the beginning of "Smile for the Paparazzi". The rest of it was simple enough, but I'd never before encountered the noun boludo or the verb boludear. Urbandictionary.com gave me a colloquial definition for the noun, then the Word Reference message boards gave me the definition of the verb...both of which appear to be Argentine or Uruguayan in origin/usage. Makes sense, I guess, since Saporta is from Uruguay originally (according to the Biochemist).

Coming soon?

Saw a preview for "The Visitor", in which Hiam Abbas has a role. She played Amal in "The Syrian Bride", and did an excellent job, so I'm thinking that I'll probably check it out if it comes to the new Landmark Theatre that opened on the east side of the harbor.

The Syrian Bride

I watched a very good movie last night, The Syrian Bride. Set in the Golan Heights, it follows the fictional wedding day of a Druze woman who is marrying by arrangement a Syrian cousin. Once she crosses into Syria, though, she will never be permitted to return.

The small scale dramas are all about her family: her sister Amal, who is trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage; her brother Marwan, a very slick guy engaged in "business" (I assume smuggling or something black/grey market); her brother Hattem, who married a Russian woman and was disowned; and her father Hammed, a political dissent recently released from prison, who is caught between the political/religious elders, Israeli security, and his family.

The larger issues are political, of course. Israeli bureaucrats create a special stamp just for Mona's passport, which the Syrian border guards cannot by law accept because of the dispute about the ownership/nationality of the Golan. The UN person is utterly frustrated by the attempt to be an intermediary between the two, ultimately abandoning the situation in order to catch her flight home to France. So Mona is left sitting in no man's land, not permitted to go back home (her passport had been stamped with the exit stamp already, you see) but not allowed to enter Syria.

The dialogue varied between Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, English and French. Sadly, I grasped much more of the scant Russian dialogue with my defunct Russian than I did of the Arabic. Most of the Arabic I caught was numbers, greetings, nouns and verbs; just words, random shards of dialogue.

Pathetic foreign language education

Check out this article from today's WaPo about the pathetic foreign language education available in the DC school district.

I blame NCLB.

Within the article there's a link to a table of all of the foreign language requirements for each state. It indicates that Maryland requires two credits of foreign language or ASL, but that there is no differentiated diploma system. Huh? There were several different "certificates" or tracks when I was in high school -- geared toward college, vocational, and technical education. Everyone had to have some foreign language education (the two year minimum) but for the academic track, three years were required and four years were strongly recommended. Has this program been abolished?