Thread: Arabic for bellydancers

Hi,

this weekend I'm teaching a one hour 'Arabic for bellydancers' workshop at the Leuven bellydance festival, organised by Artemisia. I have finished preparing the workshop and I want to teach:

- some basic Arabic vocabulary (hello, my name is ..., thank you, ...)
- some dance-related vocabulary, mostly for the pronunciation
- top ten of Arabic words used in songs
- do's & dont's when choosing an Arabic dance name and learning how the write your dance name in Arabic.

It's only one hour, so I don't have much time, but I would like to know what you would like to learn during a workshop like this.

Any suggestions?

Definitly pronunciation of BD terms. Since I live this life on line a bit I see a lot of terms written but have no idea how to say them. How cool to teach how to write you dance name as well! I would love to see something like this in the US (hint, hint).

Which dialect of arab do you speak?

I'm not a native speaker. I'm a master in arabic and islam studies. I can speak standard Arabic, fusha.

Two things that I think would be very useful are:

A brief explanation of how the different dialects pronounce words that are common lyrics in dance songs (e.g., "jamila" vs. "gamila," "qalbi" vs. "albi," etc.)

A list of common religious idioms (e.g., "in sha' Allah," "ma sha' Allah," etc.)

My Arabic is extremely primitive, but these two ideas seem to come up a lot when I'm talking to other dancers about Arabic. Particularly with the idioms, people seem to be very confused about how a song can have "Allah" in the lyrics and still be okay for dancing.

Words to watch out for in Arabic, like any offensive words (swearing) or making it easy to identify if the song is something you shouldn't dance to otherwise.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

A list of common religious idioms (e.g., "in sha' Allah," "ma sha' Allah," etc.)

My Arabic is extremely primitive, but these two ideas seem to come up a lot when I'm talking to other dancers about Arabic. Particularly with the idioms, people seem to be very confused about how a song can have "Allah" in the lyrics and still be okay for dancing.

Almost everything in arabic has Allah in it.

Person A asks: "are you coming out tonight?" Person B: "Inshallah"
Usually what it really means is I dont know. If god makes me. lol It could be used in a song that is talking about how god wills the two people to be together.

Mashallah : Thank god or that's great.
Ex,. We are in love, Mashallah ex. they make a perfect couple, mashallah.


I think it would be awesome if someone would teach that course near me. There are a ton of things I want to learn that I don't know. It's hard to learn arabic unless the person translates everything they say or makes you say things to others in arabic.

I would also do a brief introduction of the language: a lot of people don't know that Arabic has a lot of different dialects than sound different, with often very different vocabulary, differences in grammar, atc. For example, Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Moroccan and Fosha itself. This could make it a little less overwhelming.

The spoken terms, such as greetings I would keep very colloquial, and religion neutral if possible, for example instead of Assaleymu Alleykum I would teach Marhaban; instead of the fosha way : kayfa haaliku? I would teach a more colloquial form : kayfa haalak... etc.

and yes, the terms Alhamdilla, Ma'shallah, and Inshallah are not necessarily religious (Muslim) terms, Christian Arabs use it the same way, referring to God.

I would love to learn more....
Could speakers be VERY VERY giving and post a word/phase a week here on bhuz? Like word to look out for in songs, common words etc.
I for one would love to learn some basic phases!!!!!
Also, sorry to high jack the thread, is there a REALLY REALLY good translation site for songs?
I love some songs but don't know what is being said so the overall mood of my dance would not be good if wrong, so I avoid dancing to them.....

we're going to need 10 hours, not one!!
those all sound like great ideas, and we will definitly repeat this!

Artemisia

Originally Posted by faaria

I would love to learn more....
Could speakers be VERY VERY giving and post a word/phase a week here on bhuz? Like word to look out for in songs, common words etc.
I for one would love to learn some basic phases!!!!!

Here are some previous bhuz threads you may find helpful:

http://www.bhuz.com/forum/arabic/221...ro-arabic.html
http://www.bhuz.com/forum/rest-belly...-look-out.html

Originally Posted by faaria

Also, sorry to high jack the thread, is there a REALLY REALLY good translation site for songs?
I love some songs but don't know what is being said so the overall mood of my dance would not be good if wrong, so I avoid dancing to them.....

What do you mean by "REALLY REALLY good"? My web site has almost 100 translations of Arabic-language songs, as well as translations of some Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew songs. See Translations to Song Lyrics from the Middle East and North Africa

The translations on Shira's site are good! Usually I take look there first (saves me the trouble to translate it myself), when I don't find it there I go to an Arabic music site (La7oon) and search for the Arabic lyrics. A good site, with a lot of lyrics but the whole site and navigation menu are in Arabic though.

x

I went to two workshops that explored Arabic for dancers a couple of years back and I found them really enlightening. They did not get into dialects and suchlike. Rather, they taught you the meanings of words you are likely to hear and what you might do when you hear them.

The first one was by Caroline Evanoff of Cairo, who spoke little Arabic when she arrived in Egypt and started trying to work as a dancer. Her workshop focused on teaching handy words that you'll hear in songs. So, ana, albi, albek, aini, ainek, omri, omrek, hob, hobi, leyli etc etc and of course the indefatigable behebek. Knowing first person and second person was really, really helpful to me and it's helped me guess at a few things since. Another thing that stayed with me from Caroline's workshop was her comment that you obviously have to be cautious about who you're looking at when you get "behebek", since you don't want to be giving *someone* the wrong idea (or I guess declaring your love for the groom at a wedding). She said she got great responses when she pointed out some old granddad-type person on "behebek", which everyone thought was cute and funny. And she said it's important in such a case to do your pointing on the "ek" otherwise it looks odd and doesn't make proper sense.

Originally Posted by Anadil-Sarah

Hi,

this weekend I'm teaching a one hour 'Arabic for bellydancers' workshop at the Leuven bellydance festival, organised by Artemisia. I have finished preparing the workshop and I want to teach:

- some basic Arabic vocabulary (hello, my name is ..., thank you, ...)
- some dance-related vocabulary, mostly for the pronunciation
- top ten of Arabic words used in songs
- do's & dont's when choosing an Arabic dance name and learning how the write your dance name in Arabic.

It's only one hour, so I don't have much time, but I would like to know what you would like to learn during a workshop like this.

Any suggestions?

Sounds like a great class! In one hour, you will barely have time to cover what you've listed. I did a very similar workshop at Desert Dance Festival in San Jose, CA, in September and taught all of what you listed, except for conversational stuff like "hello, my name is... I did teach thank you and please. ..g.: As I posted in the thread called "Arabic in Class" in this forum, I'm teaching a 2-hour version in Milpitas, CA on Feb 1st, which will include words, phrases most often heard in songs, along with some Arab gestures often associated with them, and practice listening and moving with some popular dance songs.

Thank you for the suggestions!

The workshop was yesterday and everything went fine! I hope I can teach it again some other time, it was fun to do!

x Anadil