Who speaks Arabic out there?

[theweaselking]

I've got a pronunciation question for you, and my normal go-to guy for Arabic is offline.

I've been playing Arkham City because Valve has broken me and I am a sad person. There is a villain whose name is spelled "Ra's al Ghul". It's supposed to be Arabic for "the head of the demon". Liam Neeson played him in the movie.

Liam Neeson, who is a god in at least two religions, pronounced the name "Raz" - one syllable, soft a, same sound as "raspberry". In some scenes with other characters it was "Roz", same as "Rosalyn".

Arkham City pronounces it as "Raish" - hard A like Amos, s with a definite shh sound.

My question for you, Arabic speaker: If you had to say "head of the demon", what would it be? And if it was "Ra's al Ghul", how would you pronounce the first word?

Comments

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Father-in-law says: " Ras (as in raspberry or Rasputin) al-Ghul (The "gh" is like a strong French "r", think of a frenchman pronouncing "rule")"

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

The first question would be, of course: what dialect of Arabic is the speaker speaking in?

Etymologically, "ra's" is derived from reš /resh/ = "head", and this is the root of the name of the Hebrew letter resh and the Arabic letter re'. The apostrophe isn't for random punctuation, it's a glottal stop.

The '-s' is retained in Arabic for the word "head (http://translate.google.com/#ar|en|%D8%B1%D8%A3%D8%B3%20)", but it seems to be definitely /s/, rather than /š/ ('ess', not 'esh'). That is: "رأس" [ra's] means "head" (with many of the same subsidiary meanings of "chief", "top", "peak" shared by the word for "head" in many languages), "راش" [ra'sh] does not.

But I know bugger all about Arabic phonology and dialectology, so it may well be that there are dialects where the sin is realised as /sh/ or /z/.

Missing out the glottal stop would seem to be a mistake either way. And from my understanding of Arabic, the "l" in "al" would become "gh", so that "al ghul" is pronounced like "agh-ghul".



This is all from first principles and no actual experience with Arabic, so any native-speaker's commentary overrides anything said here.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

The Raish pronunciation comes from Batman: the Animated Series. At least, that's the first place I heard it. He wasn't created until three years after the Adam West TV series...

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the cartoon pronunciation being like "race."

[reyl.livejournal.com]

Definitely no "sh". Rass or ra-iss would be the best way. It means head (literal and figurative). And it's S like in "snake" not a Z sound. The A is like in "call" not "apple". Hope that helps!

If you want to hear it, go to google.com/translate... Enter "the head" (الرأس). The voice will pronounce "al-ra's" for you :)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Oh hey you're still not online on Skype but answering my questions anyway!

Awesome.

Google Translate says "rai-ees". "The Head Of The Ghoul" (because "the demon" keeps coming out as "Shai'tan") sounds like "rai-ees al hool", with a glottal inflection on the "H" of "hool" that I can't express in print.

So you'd agree that, for "the head of the demon" translated from Arabic, "Raish" is definitely the WRONG pronunciation?

(Yes, I am using you to fact-check Batman. That's how it works, because Batman sucks.)

[drcuriosity]

with a glottal inflection on the "H" of "hool" that I can't express in print.

I tend to refer to that as "dropping the clutch" on a word.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Is there any specific dialect GT uses? Is there any one Arabic dialect that's most like a 'neutral' US or UK accent would be? Maybe a better question: from what I've heard there are some Arabic dialects that are almost completely mutually non-understandable, is there a dialect that would be most understandable to our opposing dialects?

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the Ghul bit comes from the same root as Gul in LOTR (Nazgul = Ring Wraith). I'm not sure why it keeps being translated as "Demon", except that it sounds cooler.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

And, apparantly, the al ghul part of "Ra's al Ghul" is the origin of the name of the star Algol.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Apparently that star has a ton of neat names. (Am now fighting the urge to go read Lovecraft.)

[jerril]

Ghuls, for which I don't have the Arabic plural right now[1], started off as man-eating djinn that would mug desert travellers and devour them. Demon is very good translation for the word, although "ogre" would have good-enough connotations as well, but depending on the version "troll", "oni", or even "hag/witch" might be good enough.

Ghuls of course, like most folklore monsters, are fuzzily defined and change a lot depending on region and era. Most ghuls after the earliest, oldest stories are able to disguise themselves as humans in some way (very convincingely - djinn heritage). Ghuls being undead isn't one of the variations I've ever heard, but people being turned into ghuls (either via performing evil magic deliberately, like European werewolves, or as a "natural" result of acting like a ghul) was definitely a "thing" in some stories.

[1] Ghullim? I'm mangling that I'm sure of it.

[jerril]

As a totally uninformed English speaker, I'd suggest classical Arabic, as presented in the Koran, for most-useful-while-travelling, but that's not the same as "generic newscaster accent".

[marcus-felix.livejournal.com]

Actually, Egyptian might serve you well too. In many places you'll get funny looks for speaking Qur'anic Arabic - it's not unlike speaking King James English, and for exactly the same reason - but apparently, due to the proliferation of Egyptian cinema, the Cairene dialect is quite widely understood, at least in the cities.

On the other hand, to a certain extent, Arabic is Arabic is Arabic - I've spoken Cairene Arabic to Algerians, Libyans, Moroccans and the odd Saudi, as well as Nubians (legally Egyptian, but not particularly on the same cultural wavelength as the Cairenes I'm learning it from), and had it understood well enough.

The trick isn't the Arabic so much as it's the other things mixed in with it - lots of French in some parts of North Africa, Berber, Coptic, English - depends on the cultural history of the place. Those are the bits that catch you out.

Speaking as a (slightly) informed expat living in Cairo :)

[reyl.livejournal.com]

Egyptians pronounce stuff funny.
/Leb

NB I didn't grow up speaking Arabic, but I'm learning it as an adult. Much harder. Especially when people over there keep blowing each other (and themselves) up so I can't go study in Damascus like I dream of.

[reyl.livejournal.com]

There is no hard G in Arabic. غول There is no English letter for غ which is part of the problem. But the audio on google translate is accurate enough. There is no "H" sound in the word though. In Arabic chat speak, the letter is often replaced with the number 5, if that helps. ;)

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[secretagentmoof]

Again, depends on your particular region; qoph can be a hard g (see: Gaddafi and its myriad of alternate transliterations.)

[andrewducker]

Thanks, that was fascinating!