58 | A Different Kind Of Crossover - Episode Transcript
Brooklyn, USA | February 9, 2022

[INTRO]
[MUSIC BED: Alsarah & The Nubatones live performance on B-Side, produced by BRIC TV]

Khyriel Palmer: You’re listening to the Brooklyn, USA podcast – an occasional audio love letter from Brooklyn to the world.

Khyriel Palmer: Languages have always stolen from each other. Words are borrowed, loaned, blended, and fused freely. This "lexical borrowing" is a consequence of cultural contact between language communities. It's a fact that, wherever language communities collide or connect, words are shared and languages change.

Khyriel Palmer: Musician Karim Douaidy grew up speaking French, Arabic, and English. In this episode, he reflects on the linguistic crossover between Arabic and English – two languages thought to have little in common. Here’s Karim…

[FADE MUSIC]

[KARIM DOUAIDY PERSONAL ESSAY*]
[MUSIC: "Faces" by Karim Douaidy]

Karim Douaidy: If I tell you: coffee, [poured coffee beans] algebra, [scribbling pencil] sugar, [poured sugar] or giraffes [giraffe moo]. What do you think they all have in common? Can you guess? Well… they actually all are common English words borrowed from … Arabic.

[MUSIC ENDS]

KD: I think it would be pretty accurate to say that I’ve always had a complex relationship to language. [accordion music] I was born and spent my childhood in France, [drum music] but then moved to Lebanon with my family when I was 10. And then, [banjo music] lived the better part of my adult life in the US. In reality, I speak French, Arabic and English fluently, but with different levels of proficiency. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve naturally gravitated towards using one language over the other for specific situations. I often like to joke that I dream in French [dreamy, cascading music], work in English [office sounds], but curse in Arabic. [someone cursing in Arabic, beeped out]

KD: So it’s not very surprising that, as I got older, I started getting interested in languages and specifically etymology. Etymology is the study of the origin of words, and the way in which their meaning can change with time. And so, as I started reading about it, I came to realize that it has this unexpected power to unlock the doors of history, if you will, and provide knowledge and insight into the evolution of our linguistic identities [CLIP: [MUSIC] Voice: “Open sesame”] Understanding how words appear, evolve, or even disappear in languages helps paint the picture of the wider social, political, and economic contexts that shaped our our modern communities and cultures.

KD: [FADE UP ambient sound of people speaking] One thing I learned is that, like other languages, the evolution of English has remained somewhat fluid throughout the centuries, allowing for new words to be invented or accepted into the official lexicon. The influence of other languages on English is especially visible in the number of borrowed words, or what we call “loan words”. Those are words that are adopted from one language into another with almost no alteration. [FADE OUT ambi] It’s in fact believed that about eighty percent of the words in the English dictionary derive from words of non-English origin. People might not realize this, but … so many common words used in English actually come from Arabic. [sound designed mashup of words of Arabic origin spoken in English: “Zero, Cotton, Lemon, Mattress…”]

KD: Take the word ‘Alcohol’. [cork pops, liquid fizzes out] There is somewhat of an interesting debate around this one although all theories point towards Arabic being the origin. One of them suggests that it is derived from the word al-kuhl, which means 'kohl', the black cosmetic powder used as eyeliner in many Arabic and Middle Eastern cultures. Admittedly a bit hazy ([whispered] “drunkenness pun intended”), this origin story has almost certainly been romanticized over the centuries, but the legend goes all the way back to Ancient Egypt around the 1st century CE, and one specific Alchemist called Maria The Jewess [MUSIC] who is credited with the invention of an apparatus similar to distillation [bubbling] and used to transmute base metals into gold [sound of metal coins].

KD: Ancient Egyptians had been painting their eyes for centuries with kohl which is made from grinding a mixture of carbon compounds like stibnite and phosgenite and it was a version of this distillation [bubbling] technology they used to enhance their characteristic formula. The practice of wearing kohl was both a superstitious belief to protect their souls [beam of light] and avoid evil spirits, and an actual cure against eye microbes [buzzing] circulating in the region of the Nile. So, the technology eventually spread in the region along trade routes [galloping horses], and was specifically passed along by medieval Arab scholars.

[END MUSIC]

KD: I hear some of you asking, “so how did it make its way into English?” [dreamy sound that gradually speeds up] Flash forward a few centuries later, [MUSIC] [ ambient market sound] when Arab fighters known as the Moors, controlled the Iberian Peninsula, or what is modern day Spain and Portugal. During their occupation, their language which was Arabic spread throughout the area, and infused Latin, the language spoken by the locals. [war, swords clashing] Over the next several centuries, waves of Christian-led forces took control of the Iberian Peninsula. By this time, the local language spoken there had already been forever influenced by the Arabic language. Many words, like kohl, survived and got integrated. As Latin began to influence the nascent English language, some of the Arabic words were passed on. Because the process of making kohl resembles distillation, it is believed “al-kohl” became a kind of a catch-all term to describe all types for distilled substances. “Alcohol” was later used specifically to mean ethanol, the essence or spirit released through the distillation process. The word was officially incorporated into the English language during the sixteenth century.

[END MUSIC]

KD: But then, something quite fascinating happened. The Western word “Alcohol” eventually returned to Arabic as a loan word and became “al-kuhul”. So today, there are then two Arabic words – one that started this development, “al-kuhl”, which still means kohl, and the loan word “al-kuhul”, which means alcohol! [sound of reaching a new level in a video game]

KD: Isn’t that cool? ([whispered] “no pun intended here.”) Realizing how much crossover exists between two cultures that aren't linguistically closely related, especially about a word that is not necessarily always associated with Arabic culture. I find it to be soothing in a way, [MUSIC: "Faces" by Karim Douaidy] seeing how much history is shared between our various communities. A different kind of crossover happens in my head everyday though, when I speak and have to choose my words, trying to say something in English but all I can think of is the word in French, or Arabic.

KD: Language is obviously much more than just a system of communication, it is also very much a mirror to the soul, it reveals how words are the threads to the social fabric upon which art, poetry, science, education have been developed and perpetuated. Those loanwords are basically just the tip of the iceberg. And so, when you look a little closer and dig a little further, that’s when you uncover the real universal power that language has in showing how connected we all are. I guess, in all fairness..for some of us [cork pops, liquid fizzes out]
… al-kuhul can have that effect too.

[MUSIC ENDS]

[VOICE MEMO]
[BEEP] [voicemail audio] Zak Sherzad: My name is Zak Sherzad, Zakaria Sherzad. I am originally from Afghanistan, born in Lausanne, Switzerland. I grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. As a child, I was exposed to different languages: Dari, Pashto, French, Italian, English and some Arabic. I was always fascinated about languages, and their sounds. To me, languages open up a different part of your brain and brings a new horizon to the thinking. I feel each language has its own characteristics, like each musical instrument has its own timbre, pitch, rhythm, and cadence, as well as different use of body parts. For instance, as simple a phrase as “my name is Zak” – in French “Mon nom est Zakaria”, in Farsi “ من زکریا” – even though the same person, same voice, but the quality of sound changes. That has a different attitude because of each language has a different alphabet, sounds, and use of the vocal power. Tongue movement, like some instruments such as woodwind, the use of breath, and the pressure, and the lips versus string instruments by plucking and pushing the string. Each language is more apt to express a different kind of feeling and expression. Like Persian language is more poetic and very visual versus English, much more pragmatic and analytic, but much better to explain things.

[BEEP]

[MUSIC BED: Adesuwa live performance on B-Side, produced by BRIC TV]

[CREDITS]
Khyriel Palmer: Brooklyn, USA is produced by me Khyriel Palmer,

Emily Boghossian: and me Emily Boghossian,

Shirin Barghi: and me Shirin Barghi,

Charlie Hoxie: and me Charlie Hoxie,

Mayumi Sato: and me Mayumi Sato,

Khyriel Palmer: with help this week from Karim Douaidy. Watch and listen to more of Karim’s work at www.karimdouaidy.com.

Khyriel Palmer: Thank you to Zak Sherzad for leaving a message.

Khyriel Palmer: To learn more about the Endangered Language Alliance, support their work, and view their interactive language map, visit www.elalliance.org.

Khyriel Palmer: If you want to tell us a story, or somehow end up on the podcast, check the show notes for a link to our guide on recording a voice memo on your mobile phone and sending it to us on the internet. And if you like what you hear or think we missed something, comment, like, share and subscribe, and follow at BRIC TV on twitter and instagram, for updates. For more information on this and all BRIC Radio podcasts, visit www.bricartsmedia.org/radio.

Khyriel Palmer: We are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee people. We acknowledge the many Indigenous Nations with ties to this land and we recognize that the Lenape still call Manahatta home.

[END MUSIC]

Google doc of transcript: https://bit.ly/3LiueKF