If you are sitting next to someone on public transportation who irritates you...

[innerSpaceman]

Too bad €'s taking the train less nowadays ... he could have tried that on a certain stalkmirer.

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Too bad €'s taking the train less nowadays ... he could have tried that on a certain stalkmirer.

Sadly, in that case - it wouldn't have made a difference

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

Sadly, in that case - it wouldn't have made a difference

Just bring your braille monitor.

[Alex]

لداب نمآلا تاوق نآ ةيرصم



Boy do I wish I paid more attention back when I was taking Arabic in college. Not only could I impress by telling you what that means but I'd be able to get a really cool war profiteering job in Iraq.


Phonetically it looks like "ladabat namimala tawaq na hararsadmim." But I'm 90% sure I'm screwing that up, it was just fun trying to remember that stuff. Putting the individual words into online Arabic dictionaries doesn't find anything though. So it may just be nonsense. Or dialectical. Or I've screwed it up 100%.

[Tref]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Phonetically it looks like "ladabat namimala tawaq na hararsadmim."

That was my guess as well.

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

But I'm 90% sure I'm screwing that up ...

I am curious about the other 10% -- how is that divided up?

[Alex]

Well, I'm pretty sure I have the correct consonent sounds involved but a difficulty in Arabic is that short vowel sounds are not written, they're just known by the speaker of the language. All the dots you see are indicators of a long vowel sounds, but nothing about short vowels so in trying to string the consonants together into words I am almost surely screwing up (and, like all Semitic languages, it is written from right to left; it was cool that Firefox knew this and automatically put the next letter to the left of the previous one).

I know it would make the joke less funny but "arabic numerals" are not used in Arabic (what we call Arabic numberals actually come from India and the Hindu languages) so the clock isn't presented correctly.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Well, I'm pretty sure I have the correct consonent sounds involved but a difficulty in Arabic is that short vowel sounds are not written, they're just known by the speaker of the language.

Are they never written, or is it like Hebrew where they can be written in formal writing, but rarely are used by native speakers?