Comments on: el 3arabia dada

By: Erik Brandt

Erik Brandt — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:31:25 +0000

Cheers for the comment, Hisham! Achlan wa sachlan!

By: hisham abbas

hisham abbas — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:58:54 +0000

hisham abbas…

Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts !…

By: FELLA612

FELLA612 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:29:22 +0000

Now that I think of it, when I lived in Thailand the number “5″ was used in to show laughter in a text message. In Thai the number “5″ is pronounced “ha”; 555, LOL, its all the same.

By: Erik Brandt

Erik Brandt — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:23:16 +0000

I believe that they do that for the same reasons you describe, Ben. You picked up on the right comparisons, there is a global language developing faster than anyone can keep up - also see the posting on the Japanese cell phone books that are so popular now:

http://geotypografika.com/2008/01/24/aktuell-from-jerrold-maddox/

By: FELLA612

FELLA612 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:59:26 +0000

I think this is very similar to teen text’ers here in america. BRB, BFF, OMG, WTF, even young adults swap out #’s for words: “2″ replaces “to” “sk8″ replaces “skate”, there are many different variations. It seems the american TXTRS use these to communicate more quickly, while your students in Doha use them to preserve their individual dialect.

I was wondering if these roman characters your students are swapping for the arabic characters are also quicker to text (?)