Wael Almahdi

Poetry شعر | Translation ترجمة | Mashriqi English| Winner of High Commendation from Stephen Spender Poetry Prize

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH Very brave my friend

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@PhDniX Hammaz in Bahraini means to massage

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@mardaka_ Folk etymology are hilarious. Like ‘aliwillam from Ali William, a fictional potato company. I personally (might've discovered) it comes from Qajar era Persian ālūye Malcolm, after the Englishman who introduced the potato to Persian.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@mardaka_ @Boba_is_back_on @KEBuHCAH Meanwhile عيش in Gulf Arabic is "rice"

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@PhDniX Interestingly, I don't hear it in my own dialect. Another one is /bæl/ (MSA) "but", vs Bahraini /bˁʌl/, "wow".
On a different note, Baharna Arabic has /kammˁal/, I can't figure out why the m is emphatic.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@PhDniX

Only recently I noticed that in my dialect, /b/ can become empathic, as in /bˁʌħær/. Have you heard of such a thing?

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH The schwas in Amazigh are crazy.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@PhDniX Thank you. A particular minimal pair is /xaːlɪj/ "empty" vs /xaːlˁɪj/ "my maternal cousin".

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH We have something similar in Bahraini Arabic. Yahāl "kids”, neutral, vs mayhal “childish grown-ups”.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH What a chimera

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH I think it's from فئة, “class, category”.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

Being woken up every hour by explosions and sirens and worrying about your sleeping kids really puts things in perspective. Thank God our people prioritize peace and stability.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

It's sad to see our peaceful country targeted. God protect Bahrain and its people. And thank you to all responders keeping us safe.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

Just realized that a lot of self-help books I (unfortunately) read as a youth channeled a watered down spirit of Whitman.

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@shahanSean Impressive scholarliness

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@KEBuHCAH The plural of snake in Maltese is amazing: sriepi

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

@Burrowsorca @KEBuHCAH بطيء الخطو in Arabic.
Literal calque

[Wael Almahdi @WaelPoet]

Amazing considering most Hungarian words are etymology unknown

[Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @KEBuHCAH]

another look at the top 50 languages on Wiktionary: Hungarian has the highest etymology rate, and Indonesian and Tagalog also have etymologies for more than 2/3 of their entries