Last month, I met with Beirut Spring's Mustapha and Lebanon.Profile of the Lebanese Political Journal back in Lebanon. The meeting was in the heart of Beirut, Hamra Street.
What did we talk about? About ourselves, about politics (of course!), about our blogging experiences (a serious conversation on Macintosh navigation between Mustapha and LP), and most importantly about the words "blog" and "blogging" and whether we can coin a term for them in Arabic.
So...what would we call "blogging" or "weblogging" in Arabic? We started coming up with funny terms, all of which sounded horrendous. What can we say...Arabic is a classical, flowery language that has failed to keep up with the quick pace of things, especially in the face of rapid technological change. In English, even "google" has become a verb; watch it be included in the upcoming edition of Webster's dictionary.
Anyways...We're still working on an Arabic term for an activity that has become a reality in our part of the world and will sure become part of our everyday discourse in the near future. This is why it is important to start coining an Arabic-specific term (as opposed to the typical transliteration of an English word to Arabic--blog will become "blogh" (check Arabic spelling above)...)
What do you say? We're open to ideas here. We'll sure get back to you when we find the term. Perhaps then we can copyright it and claim credit!
Note: A special thanks to Mustapha from Beirut Spring for his creative graphic contribution above.
"Nobody knows how many rebellions, besides political rebellions, ferment in the masses of life which people earth."
4 comments:
save yourself the trouble... just find out what the french word is, and use that :p
Great graphic!
Arabic bloggers all over are already using an arabic term for this: مدوّنة
http://www.arabblogcount.blogspot.com/
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