(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Here are some common patterns using the root k t b, whose basic meaning is 'writing':

From "why Arabic is terrific", which also contains the hilarious "Glottal stops are everywhere in English but we are not trained to hear them, so a long portion of one of your first Arabic classes will be devoted to blowing your mind with the fact that English words like 'apple' and 'elegant' do not start with a vowel" and the absolutely true "There's something about intelligence agencies - maybe the familiar comfort of a three-letter acronym on the wall, maybe the late-night spanking parties - that draws fraternity boys like ants to a picnic, and right now the road to bro advancement leads through an Arabic classroom. Their complete lack of a sense of irony allows these students to combine sincere appreciation for The Fountainhead with a desire for a lifelong career in government service, and the hardest part of studying Arabic is having to listen to their asinine opinions after they have gained enough proficiency to try to express them."


EDIT: Replaced the table with an image of the table, since Livejournal wanted to add a dozen BR tags before it for some stupid reason.

Comments

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

EDIT: Replaced the table with an image of the table, since Livejournal wanted to add a dozen BR tags before it for some stupid reason.

It's not a stupid reason: it's because internal carriage returns are turned into <br> automagically, and while LJ recognises ^M<tr> as not needing a shiny linebreak, it is too dumb to recognise them elsewhere, and so you get a lot of Breaks where they shouldn't be, and the rendering engine can't lose them (because they might be important or something), and can't render them either (because <tr><br><td> doesn't make a lick of sense), so it renders the breaks, all of them, then it renders the table. Or it renders the table, then the breaks. Or it ignores the breaks after all. It depends on which engine you're using.

Wait: yes, it is stupid.

Suggested fix: format your table, then go through and delete every carriage return between <table> and </table>. And hope you don't have to edit that table.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Or turn on the "Disable Auto-Formatting" checkbox.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Pfft. That's crazy talk.

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

I know. It's a fab language at this point. Wait until you get to defective verbs - you'll be wanging your dictionary through windows..

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

It really is terrific. And as someone who’s studied Arabic at night school in Washington, DC, I can doubly confirm that last quote.