Gasp! Rasp!

Did you know they were spelled raspberries?

I did not.

"Fleas"

There are two sisters from Iraq in my Level 3 English class, a class provided for new immigrants to Canada. The two women are quiet, so I walk over and sit with them. Tonight I noticed one writing in Arabic under new words.

She was not translating, though. She was transliterating--putting the sounds of English into the writing of Arabic.

"Fleas" = Faa + Laam + Yaa + Miim (those are the letters)

I used to do exactly this in reverse! Figuring out how to represent Arabic in the Roman alphabet was a pet passion in Morocco! Some people use numbers. I used capital letters and accents.

Wednesday, I'll show the young women from Iraq my old lessons, which appear as a tangle of English, French, Arabic, and Arabic-transliterated-into-Roman-alphabet. Hopefully they will get a kick out of it.

On the commute

I sometimes translate things into Turkish for fun.

Kırmızı bir güneş

Denize düşüyor

Ne yaz sıcaklığı!

A red sun

Falls into the sea

What summer heat!

Ay yüksek

Erik çiçeği gölgeler

Yastığımın üzerine düşüyor

The moon is high

Plum blossom shadows

Fall on my pillow

--Original haiku by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), translated by someone else from Japanese into English.