Yogurt Scripts
I give you a complex of commercial language and alphabet use in Moroccan product packaging:Two occurrences of Roman script:
- Moufid, an Arabic word meaning useful or beneficial
- OCT, date stamp
Arabic script, representing French loan words and Arabized French words:
- danun (“Dannon”)
- vitaminat (feminine plural, “vitamins”)
- kalsyum (“calcium”)
- vanila (“vanilla”)
- gh (abbreviation for ghram, “grams”)
Arabic script, representing Arabic words:
- dirham (itself a root word from the Greek drachma)
- yustahliku qabla 27 OCT (“to be consumed before Oct. 27”)
- yuhfizu fi daraja 6° c (“to be kept below 6° C”)
I guess I just find it kind of funny that Roman script is used to write an Arabic word, even as Arabic script is used to write non-Arabic words.
posted by John Schaefer @ 5:25 AM
4 Comments:
I should have added that the word "yogurt" does not appear here, nor does it need to: "Danon" is a Colloquial Moroccan Arabic word that means "pre-packaged processed yogurt," in much the same way that the word "Dumpster" in Colloquial American English refers to "a large trash bin that can be dumped mechanically by a specially equipped truck."
I find this kind of stuff fascinating. It's interesting that "Danon" is like "Kleenex" (also, in Egypt at least, a colloquial word, meaning "paper tissue for blowing your nose, among other things"); in Egypt "yogurt" is "zebadi."
Hybridity on a stick!...or in a yogurt package at any rate.
DA: Kleenex is also the Moroccan word for tissue. Where does zebadi come from? Isn't zubda the word for butter?
Jamie: I would not hybridize on a stick,
I would not hybridize in description thick,
I would not hybridize with Turner nor Geertz,
I would not hybridize except with yogurts.
(You know... as Tony Webster was always correcting me... Geertz should rhyme with yogurts...)
Post a Comment
<< Home