The war on terror must be fought on every single front. The latest assault on our freedoms and values came in the form of meteorological nomenclature with Jihadi agents disguised as weathermen calling our good old fashioned American dust storm a Haboob, an Arabic word. Luckily, citizens of Arizona -- heroes in the ongoing war to keep America American, as God, if not Native Americans, intended it -- are ever vigilant. One patriot wrote into his newspaper:
After living here for 57 years, I have seen an "Arizona dust storm" or two. What irritates me is the growing trend to call our Arizona dust storms "haboobs." While other countries in the world may call them that, this is the United States. Even more, this is Arizona, not some Middle Eastern nation. I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob. How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term that is clearly an Arizona phenomenon. Dust storms such as we have are as unique as cacti and diamondback rattlesnakes. Keep it as it is -- an Arizona dust storm!
Sadly, the linguistic attacks on our culture are not limited to meteorology. Words of Arabic origin infiltrate our vocabulary more than we would like to think. In solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Arizona who are fighting to keep our language free of foreign influence, I have singled out 10 words of Arabic origin and offered good old fashioned American language names for them. Of course this list of 10 is not exhaustive but just representative grains of sand in the vast infidel Arabian desert that threatens to replace our American homeland. My fellow Americans, let us speak American!
*Nader, Nadir, close enough. Let's be honest -- it's all transliterated anyway.
Follow Katie Halper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kthalps
Safari is from Arabic sort of, but was borrowed through Kiswahili. "Safari" describes any trip or journey in Kiswahali. "Habari za safari?" "Nzuri sana." How was your trip? Very good.
That all stated. "Haboob" is a horrid word. It is offensive to the ears (soundwise) and the meaning is not well enough known to be used in general speech. It would be like referring to a hate as a шапка and expecting everyone to know what it means.
The people in Arizona who are upset over haboob have sympathizers in another part of the world.
That is, the Arabic word for desert is tesertum. It originates as the Latin word desertum, meaning a place abandoned by people. I have read an Egyptian editorial decades ago that it must be that we adopted the Arab word! Nope, the derivation is the Latin verb desero, deserere, deserui, desertus = to desert, abandon. Desertum = a thing abandoned.
Here's an odder one. Booze is an Islamic word. One reason the Moslems tolerated the Christian minority is that Christians were allowed to make wine and beer as a religious exemption from Sharia. For personal consumption only. (Wink, nudge.) Thus the Christians were the bootleggers of the Islamic world. The Christians in Egypt continued to speak ancient Egyptian for 300 years and the ancient Egyptian word buza for beer survived. In Turkey buza means a local sour honeyed beer. Any European sailor in Istanbul or another Middle Eastern port knew to ask for booze when he was on shore. Thus it transferred into English.
That is the real problem. There are enough terms within the language to avoid confusion through outside words.
A problem with English is that it is able to adopt almost any word easily. Of course to do this there needs to be some understanding of the word in populace.
We did.
"We call it 'pocket bread.'"
And the filling? "Flavor sauce!"
That's the secret to selling weird foreign stuff in Arizona. Name it something 'merican!