Word for the Travel Wise (02/17/06)

Why I had to go through great lengths to get this word today is beyond me. Here I thought finding the words for colors in different languages would be fairly easy, but proved myself wrong. Or let me put it this way instead, I found the word, but couldn’t read the text and then wanted to check for accuracy, but couldn’t find a second source to do such. Normally I would have picked the brains of my Arabic speaking friends, but not a single one could be found online. So I’m just throwing this one out there blindly, hoping that is somewhat correct. If not I’m sure you’ll correct me in my error, but without further delay here it is.

Today’s word is an Arabic word used in Libya:

akhdar – green

Now, the Arabic 2000 site from which I found this word had it written in Arabic text and in its phonetic form as ‘aXDar.’  From what I’ve found in learning Farsi and little Arabic the ‘X’ is often used for the ‘kh’ sound and I for one prefer the ‘kh’ version of the word when learning. ‘X’ is a great letter, but it looks off. That’s just me. In any case in discovering Libya is one of the only countries to have a completely solid colored flag I thought I’d explore the word for the color green. Little things like that excite me as you can probably tell.

My Language Exchange is an excellent site in making friends across the globe while zoning in on the areas that give you the most trouble in your language of choice. While most services are free, contacting other members does cost a very small fee. Other learning tools for free standard Arabic online include this Learn Arabic site which has some remarkable lessons. The audio sounds a bit off for me, but they’ve got both the Naskh script (easy to read when learning the alphabet) and the Latin spelling of the letter. Babel Arabic is another good source. Planet Edu has an online listing of Arabic schools all over the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. Lastly, for purchase and a quick pocket guide there’s the Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic Phrasebook, which should be the closest to that spoken in Libya verses Moroccan Arabic.

Past Arabic words: wafin