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Saturday, February 23, 2008
A phrase for any occasion
In my trips to Iraq, I’ve never met an American-born soldier or marine who had received any formal Arabic training. They’re out there, but they are very few.But now that troops in many regions of Iraq are focused on nation-building more than war-fighting, they are picking up the essentials of Iraqi Arabic.
Here, a partial list of the vocabulary set of an American in Iraq:
- wasta — connection (used in the context of government favors)
- mako mooshkila — no problem
- shlonek? — how are you?
- zein — good
- moo zein — not good
- shway zein — sort of good
- al-hamdoolilah — thank God
- qadaha — cigarette lighter
And, written on a dry-erase board in a Marine tactical operations center: boos teezee — kiss my ass.
