Chris Hitchcock

Arabic translator & CIOL chartered linguist. unremitting poster of Levantine Arabic content at

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@oliverwkim Most MENA countries feel to me like they count as developmental states that failed to transition (ISI, extensive gov planning apparatuses, etc etc) but might not meet your definition. Turkey, Iran, Egypt...

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@pharyngealschwa This is a widely shared one!
Can you also say يطوّل لسينو as a verbal equivalent?

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@bot6296293293 @pharyngealschwa looks to me like استنظر

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@iskdin (Eastern) Arabic varieties share this (بصير) - something areal going on there by the looks of things.

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@PhDniX There are very frequently serious problems with translation and transliteration, I've noticed, although that's less of an issue than this kind of straightforward inaccuracy

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@PhDniX Perhaps al-Duri was a very precocious three-year-old

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@matt_boot_ @yakabikaj Yes I don't think there's stress on the article - to the point actually that sometimes it sounds just like مهم on its own

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@PhDniX I feel like I have seen this usage in some more classicising modern texts, like maybe Taha Hussein. Obviously the classical~modern line gets fuzzier the further into this kind of literary work you get, though

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@arif_c_ Someone (perhaps me) should translate this

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@avzaagzonunaada @FGSixtensson yes, I think 'present subjunctive' and 'past subjunctive' are the terms. but I think 'subjunctive' is more commonly used in pedagogy to refer to 'were' being used after 'if' - that's the context people know it for

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@EmbraBurgess @shjsat kaçakçı - pronounced by some more eastern people as sth like [qaçaχçı] - I wonder if the χ got reinterpreted cos of the pronunciation of r as uvular in some Mesopotamian dialects - interesting

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@laryngeus @sanawbar13 My sense is that this (only?) happens in common phrases - issanaadi, ilmarraadi, etc - and that ilbet da is just one of the usual Egyptian pronunciations of بيت with shortening in a closed syllable. Does it happen in other positions too?

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@sanawbar13 @laryngeus I went looking for something about this previously but I didn't find anything. Let us know if you manage to!

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@jwiechers You would think they'd be extra careful to avoid this sort of thing in this kind of situation

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@katiedimartin They've put the right video up now (where she does say that). This is really bad, but I think it was probably the result of someone who doesn't speak Arabic being responsible for the cutting of the video and then putting the subtitles on the wrong bit

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@marcowenjones There are quite a lot of other small inconsistencies that also might be the result of multiple takes of the interview where she said slightly different things + subtitles being put on wrong take

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@marcowenjones For what it's worth, it's quite common for subtitles to be provided for a whole video and then the vid to be cut by someone who doesn't speak the language, which quite often leads to the wrong subtitles being assigned to the wrong bit of the video

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@realmrpomble @laryngeus there are different theories. One of them is prepositional (بـ) iirc. Another is that it's from a contraction of بدي or something like that marking the future and then got generalised. There are definitely papers out there on this and I might be misremembering

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@PirainoXlations The problem is there's a race to the bottom at the agency end. There is still a top-end market ofc that humans aren't going to be pushed out of any time soon, but plenty of clients aren't that bothered about quality. Or just don't know the difference.

[Chris Hitchcock @chm3na]

@jonathanddownie @abdullahalmf @PirainoXlations Yeah, a lot of translation theory is more building on philosophical questions about whether anything can ever really be translated and what meaning is than it is anything of practical significance