Linguistics!
November 30th, 2006 by chris
Noted blogeuse Annie, as in “Annie, get your,” as in Jewbiquitous, wanted to know why I spelled it “Balestinian” instead of “Palestinian” or “Qassammy Davis, Jr.” According to… oh, probably Michael, the dialect of Arabic spoken in Syria (including its left arm, Lebanon) has a phonetic quirk whereby they don’t use the voiceless bilabial stop, /p/. When pronouncing loanwords, for example “Palestine,” they tend to use the voiced cognate, /b/. This leads to some hilarious minimal-pair hijinks, such as:
“The plight of the Palestinian people” becomes the amusingly accurate “the blight of the Balestinian beoble.”
“All-h be praised” becomes the delicious “All-h be braised.”
And so, since I’m kind of an ass, I refer to Those People as the Balestinians.
Posted in we love puppies |
November 30th, 2006 at 18:43
You ain’t the only one, bubba. I have always found it hard to spell that (hack) work with a “P.”
BTW, gave you a shout for yer piece on the Embarrassing Shower. Great stuff.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:02
Thanks for the explanation. Sorry it took me so long to see it.
Guess that it is sort of like the Israelis who pronounce is “Phalestinian” which, the first time I heard it, I thought was a pun. You know “Phallustinian.” Yes, I am mature.