Last week one of the teachers at my school introduced me to an Arabic palindrome. Like me, you mightn't remember exactly what a palindrome is, and if you do, then maybe you mix it up with an anagram. But really a palindrome is harder to make than an anagram because a palindrome is one strict type of an anagram. The easiest English palindrome I can think of is "Madam" and from that you can probably guess what palindromes are all about. A palindrome is a word or sentence (or more) that it is the same word or sentence when read right-left or left-right.
My favourite website has a few more English examples
But the Arabic example this teacher gave me was -
بلح تعلق تحت قلعة حلب
Even if you've never learnt any Arabic before you can probably make out that the letters of that phrase form a palindrome.
The new Microsoft Word 2007 now translates English/Arabic (or many other languages) when you hover the mouse over a word. It's quite a cool new feature. Just to show it off and to translate this palindrome - here's a screenshot from Word 2007.
I put all the hover over translations onto the same picture for display simplicity.
Reading from right to left (or left to right if you prefer :) ) the first word is date, as in the fruit that grows on date palms. In this case it's actually the plural.
The second word means hang - as in the the dates hang
The third word is a palindrome itself and it means below, underneath
The forth word means castle
and finally, the fifth word is the name of a city in Syria.
All together it means dates hang underneath a castle in Halab.
Quite elegant isn't it? Because of the 3 letter root system of Arabic it makes the language better suited to palindromes than Latin languages. But despite that there doesn't seem to be a single word for palindrome in Arabic. English seems to have more depth in having a single word to describe things, coming from its Latin roots I guess.
I found a longer list of Arabic palindromes at the forum of Arabic Translators International
While I'm on the topic, most Yemenis believe Arabic has more vocabulary than English but according to the Internet research I've done English has the greatest vocabulary of any language. I'm not sure which is true. Arabic I've heard has approximately 7 different words for "love" compared to our single one and at least two words for date (as in the fruit). But the question arises as to what counts as a single word because in Arabic one single root can have up to 10 different verb patterns, so does that count as one word or 10? And then each of these verb patterns can be conjugated into past/present, singular/dual/plural, 1st/2nd/3rd person. I think it'd be an interesting comparison to make and also to compare what number of unique Arabic words a native Arabic speaker uses in their everyday lives compared to the number of English words a native English speaker uses. As well as the number of words speakers of the respective languages are familiar with on average. My curiousity in this comes from wanting to know how many words a learner needs to learn.
My favourite website has a few more English examples
But the Arabic example this teacher gave me was -
بلح تعلق تحت قلعة حلب
Even if you've never learnt any Arabic before you can probably make out that the letters of that phrase form a palindrome.
The new Microsoft Word 2007 now translates English/Arabic (or many other languages) when you hover the mouse over a word. It's quite a cool new feature. Just to show it off and to translate this palindrome - here's a screenshot from Word 2007.
I put all the hover over translations onto the same picture for display simplicity.
Reading from right to left (or left to right if you prefer :) ) the first word is date, as in the fruit that grows on date palms. In this case it's actually the plural.
The second word means hang - as in the the dates hang
The third word is a palindrome itself and it means below, underneath
The forth word means castle
and finally, the fifth word is the name of a city in Syria.
All together it means dates hang underneath a castle in Halab.
Quite elegant isn't it? Because of the 3 letter root system of Arabic it makes the language better suited to palindromes than Latin languages. But despite that there doesn't seem to be a single word for palindrome in Arabic. English seems to have more depth in having a single word to describe things, coming from its Latin roots I guess.
I found a longer list of Arabic palindromes at the forum of Arabic Translators International
(القلب المستوى) أو (ما لا يستحيل بالإنعكاس)
(Symmetry by Characters) (Palindrome)
مصطلح (القلب المستوى) أو (ما لا يستحيل بالإنعكاس) هو نوع من البيان والتلاعب البديع بالكلمات أو بالحروف، يكون في الغالب على صورة جمل متناظرة الأحرف أو الكلمات، وقد يكون أحيانا على شكل كلمات متناظرة الأحرف تقرأ في الاتجاهين من اليمين ومن اليسار فلا يتغير معناها مثل كلمة نون.
أمثلة من اللغة العربية على القلب المستوى:
النص القرآني: (كل في فلك) 33 سورة الأنبياء
النص القرآني: (ربك فكبر) 3 سورة المدثر
وقول العماد للقاضي الفاضل: (سر فلا كبا بك الفرس)
ورد القاضي الفاضل عليه: (دام علا العماد)
وقول القاضي الأرجاني: مودته تدوم لكل هول - وهل كل مودته تدوم
وقول الحريري صاحب المقامات: أسى أرملاً إذا عرا - وارع إذا المرء أسا
كمالك تحت كلامك
سور حماه بربها محروس
بلح تعلق تحت قلعة حلب
بلح تعلق بقلعة حلب
بكر معلق بقلع مركب
أرض خضراء
زوج عجوز
ساكب كاس
حوت فمه مفتوح
حصان ناصح
While I'm on the topic, most Yemenis believe Arabic has more vocabulary than English but according to the Internet research I've done English has the greatest vocabulary of any language. I'm not sure which is true. Arabic I've heard has approximately 7 different words for "love" compared to our single one and at least two words for date (as in the fruit). But the question arises as to what counts as a single word because in Arabic one single root can have up to 10 different verb patterns, so does that count as one word or 10? And then each of these verb patterns can be conjugated into past/present, singular/dual/plural, 1st/2nd/3rd person. I think it'd be an interesting comparison to make and also to compare what number of unique Arabic words a native Arabic speaker uses in their everyday lives compared to the number of English words a native English speaker uses. As well as the number of words speakers of the respective languages are familiar with on average. My curiousity in this comes from wanting to know how many words a learner needs to learn.
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