The following are actual headlines I've read on CNN Arabic's newsfeed within the past three days, without the assistance of dictionaries or other translation aids. I thought I'd share:
Anwar al-Awlaki ... for jihad against "the Great American Satan"
Clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli forces ... West Bank and ... north of Jerusalem
Israel ... on Arabs "..." in memory of Al-Nakbah ("the Catastrophe" -- what Arabs call the day Israel was establish in 1948)
Killing of Thai workers by a Qassam rocket in South Israel (while this news was sad, it excited me, because I was able to guess the word for "rocket" by context clues!)
Tiger Woods returns to playing following the scandal of ... (this one was hard at first because I couldn't figure out who the hell "Taaygur Woudz" was)
Clinton in Moscow for ... "Start 2" and the Middle East
How would you know that you were someone who is addicted to sex? (best headline ever)
... "Hello Kitty" ... Melia Obama
Names of famous people are hard, because they're spelled out phonetically, so Hillary Clinton becomes "Heelaaree Kleentoon." Also, Arabic doesn't have some of the letters that English does, so General David Petraeus becomes "El Jinraal Dayfeed Batrayoos." More hilariously, Oprah becomes "Oobra." Yes. They love Oobra in the Middle East.
The commenters are also fun. I get excited when I start understanding phrases like "Obama is in the hands of the Zionists." It makes me hope that one day I will be good enough to plug these phrases into Google Translate for the federal government. Inchallah.
Wa aydhan ana sa3eed li an 3alamtu an a7id min asdi9a2i laysa fi kyrgyzstan alaan. Al7amdullah.
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